The last place you can do Shakespeare on TV

We lost Patrick Stewart on October 28. As a kid who grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation, it was one of those rare celebrity deaths that hit me personally.

Patrick Stewart made TNG special. Prolific Star Trek guest star James Sloyan (who we also lost this year) once described TNG as the last place you could do Shakespeare on TV. Stewart, a classical Shakespearean actor, brought a gravitas to the role that elevated every script he was given. The show was never afraid to let a grand, carefully delivered monologue be the climax of its stories. Indeed, many of its best scenes and episodes could easily be transposed to the stage.

Sure, it was convenient from a production standpoint that many of the show’s episodes could consist entirely of people talking at each other on prebuilt sets, both to save money and for the sake of the gruelling production schedule. But it was Stewart who made it work through the unapologetic, unselfconscious theatricality he embodied on screen.

In a way, the most enduring contribution of Stewart’s TNG was its positive vision of liberalism. Captain Picard was restrained, rational, willing to be persuaded. He inhabited a world where individual and institutional competence could coexist with respect for individual rights, and where force could be brought to bear not out of anger or aggression, but in defence of others. Where progress was possible but not inevitable.

One to beam up.