With the announcement of Star Trek IP coming to STFC last year, one of the officers we were looking forward to was Jean-Luc Picard, or to friends, John Luck Pickerd.
For many of us who grew up in the 80s or 90s, Jean-Luc Picard was Star Trek. He was our captain. The sober voice of reason in charge of the new Enterprise. He was the leader we always wanted to work for and the one we aspired to be. And while a very proper and reserved character, his humanity was often on full display.
Captain’s Maneuver
Make It So – Increase the effectiveness of combat-related Officer abilities by 2 x 10%.
This makes Picard essentially another version of Pike. But the one major difference is the way that synergy works here. While with every other officer in the game, synergy depends on officer class, in that you’ll get a bigger bonus from having a mix of officer classes on your bridge. But Picard’s synergy comes regardless of officer class. You’ll get max synergy even with three command officers on your bridge.
Keep in mind that this only applies to combat abilities, so you won’t get a mining bonus here, or a warp boost from Cadet Scotty. And it’s also important to know that, as with Pike, this is added to your officer ability (not multiplied), which will mean that it will tend to be better on defensive abilities.
Now, for just a bit of editorializing here. Picard’s captain’s maneuver really needs to be the Picard Maneuver. Now, some of you might want that to be the short distance warp jump from the Battle of Maxia, while in command of the Stargazer. But you’d be wrong. It’s the patented shirt-tug, that Picard did 284 times during TNG and the subsequent films.
And yes, someone took the time to count them all. Enjoy.
Jean-Luc Picard Officer Ability
Engage – When fighting hostiles / armadas, increases critical hit damage by 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%
It’s the officer ability that makes Jean-Luc Picard more useful than Pike. While Pike’s ability is great for grinding XP on your ships, after a while, you’re going to max them out, and this becomes a vestigial ability.
On the other hand, increasing the damage from critical hits will always be useful – especially against armadas. Imagine pairing him with your 5% Khan against armadas. So eventually your critical hit chance will approach 100%, and the damage done by each of those hits will also increase.
Casting Jean-Luc Picard
The most challenging casting decision when Star Trek: The Next Generation was in development was that of the captain, Jean-Luc Picard. Gene Roddenberry wanted a William Shatner-type. So when Patrick Stewart was suggested for the role, didn’t like the idea of an older, bald English actor as the lead actor on the new Enterprise. He liked Stewart as an actor, he just wasn’t who Roddenberry was looking for.
Bob Justman, who was a producer on the Original Series was the one who discovered Stewart, teaching a course on Shakespeare at UCLA was the one who first suggested Sir Patrick.
Stewart’s main competition for the role was Belgian actor Patrick Bauchau. His name probably doesn’t ring a bell, but he’s had a long career. Going back over his credits, the first thing I remember seeing him in was the James Bond film, A View to Kill, where he was Scarpine, Zorin’s henchman, the one who flew the blimp. He was in the Tom Clancy film, Clear and Present Danger. Ironically, in the disaster movie 2012, he played a character named Roland Picard. But I think I remember him most playing Dr. Chase’s father in an episode of house.
Also up for the role of Picard was Barrie Ingham, who later showed up as the stereotypical Irishman in the TNG episode, Up the Long Ladder. The guy trying to make moonshine in the Enterprise cargo bay.
Other actors up for the role were Mitchell Ryan, who later went on to play Riker’s father in the episode, The Icarus Factor, and Roy Thinnes, star of the late 60s cult classic, The Invaders.
After a number of auditions, and a good deal of pushing from Rick Berman, Roddenberry agreed that Stewart was best for the role… with the stipulation that he wear a hairpiece.
By this time it was down to two actors for Jean-Luc Picard: Stewart and Stephen Macht (who later appeared on Deep Space Nine.) They read for Paramount executive John Pike, who said that they should, “Go with the English guy, but lose the wig.”
Patrick Stewart Biography
Sir Patrick Stewart was born in Mirfield, England on July 13th, 1940. He was the son of Gladys and Alfred Stewart. His father was a regimental sergeant major in the British Army, and was among those evacuated at Dunkirk in late May 1940, just before Patrick’s birth.
Alfred Stewart suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and was an abusive father. (This has led Sir Patrick to become involved with UK charities, Refuge and Combat Stress, seeking to help victims of both domestic violence and PTSD.)
His interest in acting started at Crowlees Church of England Junior and Infants School, where an acting teacher, “put a copy of Shakespeare in my hand [and] said, ‘Now get up on your feet and perform.”
He continued to study drama in secondary school, before leaving school at age 15 to increase his participation in the theater. In 1966, he became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
He made his television debut a year later, on the BBC soap opera, Coronation Street. By the way, Coronation Street is the longest running soap opera in the history of the world, having debuted in 1960, and with over 10,300 episodes aired.
Here he is in 1969, performing on the BBC as Horatio with Ian Richardson as Hamlet in Kenneth Clark’s documentary series, Civilisation.
For the next 20 years or so, Stewart was a working character actor in television, films and theater. He was Vladimir Lenin in Fall of Eagles; Sejanus in I, Claudius and Karla in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
In 1975, he played the romantic lead in a production of North and South. But this one had nothing to do with the US Civil War but was about the North and South of England. Interestingly enough, the other North and South, the 1985 US television miniseries that was about the US Civil War featured not only Jonathan Frakes, but also Picard-candidate Mitchell Ryan. (And Trek actors Jean Simmons, Kirstie Alley, and David Ogden-Stiers.)
While they were working together on a 1980 BBC production of Hamlet, Patrick was talking to actress Lalla Ward, who was playing Romana on Doctor Who at the time.
“You used to be in Doctor Who didn’t you?” said Stewart, to which Ward replied, “Yes, I still am actually,” and he said ‘I mean why do you do all this television, why don’t you do proper stuff like theatre,’ and Ward said ‘Well I love it actually, I love doing Doctor Who.’ ‘But science fiction, I mean why would you want to do science fiction?’ Ward said, ‘I don’t know – I think partly because you learn so much technical stuff, it’s really interesting,’ and he said ‘Oh I wouldn’t want to do that sort of stuff.”
Ward later said, “I haven’t run into Patrick Stewart since, but I look forward to it so I can say, ‘Funny, why do you do all that sort of science fiction stuff you do now, why aren’t you doing the proper theatre-like real actors.’
Ironic then that after a couple of seasons on the BBC as the lead of Maybury (not Mayberry, no Andy Griffith here), his major roles from there on out would be in sci-fi.
First, he was Gurney Halleck in the 1984 film, Dune. Which I know I saw when I was a kid, but haven’t watched since.
And then there was the absolute bomb, Lifeforce in 1985, about space vampires. Obviously. I can’t do justice as to how bad it really was, but the episode of How Did This Get Made? on Lifeforce is worth checking out.
Then came all of TNG (see above), and the TNG films, and seven X-Men films. Seems like Lalla got the last laugh.
Even during The Next Generation, Stewart never really got away from his theatrical roots. He did a one-man show on Broadway in 1991 where he performed all 40-plus characters from A Christmas Carol. In two different productions, he played Prospero in The Tempest, the part Data played in the TNG episode, Emergence. He returned to the role of Claudius in a 2007 production of Hamlet, across from 10th Doctor David Tenant in the title role.
And he appeared with his friend Ian McKellan and fellow X-Men performer in a 2009 production of Waiting for Godot.
On the screen, other than sci-fi, he again played Ebenezer Scrooge in a TV production of a Christmas Carol, did a guest appearance on Frasier, and had a bit part in the 1991 Steve Martin movie, L.A. Story.
In 2003, he showed up on Top Gear as the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car.
And this is to say nothing of his voice-over work for animation, on shows and movies like American Dad, The Prince of Egypt, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Chicken Little, The Pagemaster, or The Emoji Movie.
All of this before coming back to Trek with Star Trek: Picard last year.
And I’ll close with one of the cooler things that Sir Patrick. When it came to casting the role of Kamin’s son in the TNG Episode, The Inner Light, it was Stewart’s son Daniel who played the part.