The Unauthorized Trekkers’ Guide to the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. James Hise van

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СКАЧАТЬ out of the fans who send letters and come up with reasons why things on the show look the way they do. You get letters from people telling you how brilliant this concept is because of the structural dynamics and design and air flow. In reality, you just thought it was a neat idea and it’s the best you could come up with on the spur of the moment.”

CHAPTER

       2

       CHARACTERS AND CAST

CAPTAIN JEAN-LUC PICARD

      At the time of the voyages chronicled in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Picard has recently completed a twenty-two-year mission as captain of the deep-space-charting starship Stargazer and is legendary in Starfleet. With only eleven percent of the galaxy charted, the Stargazer contributed important information to these chronicles. Tragedy was no stranger during those two decades of exploration, as it was near the end of the mission that Jack Crusher was killed saving the life of Picard. Jean-Luc accompanied the body when it was returned to the family, thereby meeting Jack’s wife, Dr. Beverly Crusher, and the very young Wesley Crusher. Beverly requested posting with Picard on the Enterprise, even though she subliminally blamed him for her husband’s death.

      Picard feels some guilt himself, and in the episode “Justice” found himself having to weigh the Prime Directive against the life of Wesley Crusher when the boy violated the inflexible laws of a planet. Picard would have been troubled with any crew member thus endangered, but the dilemma took on added weight when the person in question was the son of the man who had saved his life. The inherent unfairness of the situation led Picard to confront the entities responsible, thus saving Wesley, whose progress since then has been watched by Picard with growing pride.

      PICARD’S ROOTS

      Picard was born on Earth, in Paris, France, in the twenty-fourth century. His lack of ethnic accent is explained by advanced forms of language instruction. Picard betrays his Gallic background only in times of deep emotional stress. He uses French on rare occasions, as when he bade farewell to Dr. McCoy in “Encounter at Farpoint,” or when he visited his ancestral home in “Family.”

      The young Picard was a far cry from the disciplined commander of the Enterprise. In “Samaritan Snare,” he reveals to Wesley that he has an artificial heart since losing his original one in an ill-advised brawl. Still, his career has been an exemplary one; a young and awestruck Lieutenant Picard was in attendance at the wedding of the legendary Spock, an incident referred to in “Sarek” but not yet shown in any of the motion pictures.

      Captain Picard can be very tough and pragmatic, but he is also a romantic who believes sincerely in honor and duty. He is a philosophical man with a keen interest in history and archaeology. He still accesses information in the old-fashioned way, from books, and is especially fond of Shakespeare and 1940s hard-boiled detective fiction. The past, to him, is as vast a storehouse of knowledge as the future, and must not be disregarded or forgotten. His gift to Data, the complete plays of Shakespeare, is a fitting guide to the various aspects of humanity, and is much cherished by the android officer.

      Although baldness had been cured generations before the twenty-fourth century, the men of this time find the natural look appealing, and Picard is content to remain so. He is not vain, and has no interest in cosmetic surgery or other artificial enhancements of his external appearance. With the advanced medicine and extended life spans of his time, Picard in his fifties is just entering his prime and would be comparable to a man of thirty in the twentieth century. Active-duty Starfleet males and females are in prime physical condition through their seventies.

      While still relatively young by twenty-fourth-century standards, Picard remains content with a “starship love,” a personality attribute accented by his twenty-two-year duty on the Stargazer. But on the Enterprise 1701-D, with its ship’s complement of over a thousand crew and family members, Picard is facing new challenges to his skills, experience, and intellect, learning along the way that life is more complex than he ever imagined.

      PATRICK STEWART

      Patrick Stewart reveals that he was “compelled” to become an actor “as a result of an argument.”

      At age fifteen, Stewart left school and landed a job on a local newspaper. He also happened to be an energetic amateur actor—the two vocations didn’t mix.

      “I was always faced with either covering an assignment or attending an important rehearsal or performance,” he explains. “I used to get my colleagues to cover for me, but often I would just make up reports. Finally, I was found out. I had a terrific row with the editor, who said, ‘Either you decide to be a journalist, in which case you give up all of this acting nonsense, or you get off my paper.’ I left his office, packed up my typewriter, and walked out.”

      There followed two years of selling furniture. “I was better at selling furniture than I was at journalism,” Stewart observes good-naturedly. He also enrolled in drama school at the Bristol Old Vic to bring his skills up to the level of his enthusiasm.

      The actor used to see his roles as a way of exploring other personalities and characteristics, but nowadays it has become more of a means of self-expression. “When I was younger, I used to think in terms of how I could disguise myself in roles. Now I want my work to say something about me, contain more of my experience of the world.”

      A FAMOUS BRIT

      Patrick Stewart has become a highly regarded actor in Great Britain from his roles in such BBC productions as I, Claudius, Smiley’s People, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, all of which have aired in America. His face is also known to American filmgoers from roles in a variety of motion pictures. In the David Lynch adaptation of Dune, he played Gurney Halek, one of the more prominent roles in the film. In Excalibur, he played Leondegrance.

      More recently, he was seen in the strange science fiction film Lifeforce as the character Dr. Armstrong. On stage, he starred in London in a production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which garnered him the prestigious London Fringe Best Actor Award. As an associate artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Stewart is considered one of the leading talents of the British stage. His impressive list of stage credits includes Shylock, Henry IV, Leontes, King John, Titus Andronicus, and many others. In 1986, he played the title role in Peter Shaffer’s play Yonadab at the National Theatre of Great Britain.

      Patrick Stewart moved up to directing in The Next Generation in the fifth season, and his work includes the excellent episode “Hero Worship,” as well as ‘In Theory.”

      After supervising producer Robert Justman saw Stewart onstage at UCLA, the actor was cast as Captain Picard. “A friend of mine, an English professor, was lecturing and I was part of the stage presentation,” he recalls. A few days later he was called to audition for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Since then, he has become a well-known face, although occasionally fans get confused. One woman accosted him at a party and racked her brains until she recognized him. “You fly the Endeavor,” she told him triumphantly, when her memory finally clicked, “and you play William Shatner!”

      But Patrick Stewart got his biggest surprise when the July 18, 1992, issue of TV Guide revealed that in a poll of readers, he was voted the sexiest man on television with 54% of the votes, beating out Burt СКАЧАТЬ