In ‘Logan,’ Patrick Stewart gave a take on one of the greatest minds on the planet suffering from what looks to be Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, or a combination of the two. Now, in ‘Star Trek: Picard’ he’ll be revisiting another one of his great roles 20 years after we last saw him. No longer a captain of the Enterprise, not even part of Starfleet, we see that Picard has moved on with his life after a great tragedy.
The long term effects of that tragedy, as well as no longer being a captain, have changed Jean-Luc’s persona and left him “a bit tormented.” While he’ll still have a strong moral compass, this won’t be the captain we once knew.
RELATED: ‘Star Trek: Picard’: Alex Kurtzman Shares Why Jean-Luc Is “The Captain We Need”
According to Stewart:
“One of the reasons he’s different is that Patrick Stewart has also aged 20 years. And that is a significant difference, not only in my physical life, which is OK but [my] emotional life, internal life. You get to a point where your view of the future becomes somewhat adjusted by how far away the future might be.”
The actor would go on to share that this isn’t just nostalgia creeping in but that “he’s a bit tormented, actually.”
While he won’t give away any spoilers, executive producer Alex Kurtzman also added that the iconic captain didn’t leave Starfleet on the best of terms:
“In looking back at his regrets, Picard says, ‘I let the perfect be the enemy of the good,’ He held, as he always has, such a high moral bar for how to behave in complicated gray areas. Then when he felt that Starfleet didn’t act in that interest, he took his toys and went home”
That being said, Kurtzman went on to make sure there was no confusion as to how Picard will be acting in the show and that he is “still very much the Jean-Luc that we know from Next Generation.” Even with that in mind, not everything is the same:
“[Picard] is much more broken. And he no longer has an armada behind him… It’s very easy to be the great man who faces complicated choices when you have an army behind you. It’s much harder when you don’t.”
RELATED: ‘Star Trek: Picard’ May Redeem ‘Star Trek: Nemesis’, Which Patrick Stewart Calls “Weak”
Executive producer Heather Kadin also chimed in sharing the motivation of Picard’s return:
“Is all about the guilt he feels over the loss of [Picard’s Next Generation pal] Data [in Nemesis], the guilt he feels over not helping as many people as he could have, about leaving Starfleet… he is wrestling with the choices he made. Were they the right ones? Were they not? They were probably the right ones at that time for who he was as a person, but now, twenty years later… [he] can go back and change them.”
Everyone rethinks their lives as they age and some of the choices which they’ve made along the way, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out for Picard.
Are you eager for ‘Star Trek: Picard’ to debut? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
‘Star Trek: Picard’ will beam onto your favorite streaming device through CBS All Access on January 23rd, 2020!
Source: TV Line
