Welcome to Star Trekking, my blog berth for my Star Trek fandom.
A few months ago, I did a look back at Star Trek: The Next Generation where in over 7 different posts, I picked one episode from each season to spotlight, beginning here and ending here.
Starting today, I’m going to take another pass through TNG, this time focusing on one cast member per post. This will include the regular cast as well as significant recurring characters.
In light of the recent passing of Patrick Stewart, I’ve elected to start at the peak, the top dog on the Enterprise D, Capt. Jean-Luc Picard.
As the Captain, Picard is central to almost every episode but I want to look at the episodes that provide an unique focus on the son of the vineyard farmer turned space explorer.
We’ll Always Have Paris
Picard spent most of the first season being stern and aloof, keeping a certain remove from those under his command.
This episode gives us some perspective on the young man Picard was before. Apparently he was a bit of a cad not above ghosting a woman he was ostensibly in love with.
JENICE: We have unfinished business.
PICARD: Yes, we do.
JENICE: Why didn't you come to meet me that last day in Paris?
PICARD: I was afraid.
JENICE: Oh, I didn't want this.
PICARD: What?
JENICE: The truth.
PICARD: Oh, you want me to lie?
JENICE: Of course. A nice, soft, painless lie.
PICARD: Oh, I got the days confused. I thought it was Tuesday when it was Wednesday. I went to the Cafe Moulin instead of the Cafe des Artistes.
JENICE: Ah, that's better.
Samaritan Snare
This is NOT a good episode but we can’t talk about Picard’s character development without it.
The episode establishes Jean-Luc has an artificial heart and the circumstance of how it came to be. Picard makes a rather momentous decision to open up to Wesley as he shares the tale of his reckless youth and how he came to be stabbed through the heart by an angry Nausican.
PICARD: My mates and I were at the Bonestell Recreation Facility, which was something of a dead rough crossroads at the time, filled with an assorted bunch of galactic riffraff. When a trio of Nausicaans came in, they were clearly spoiling for a confrontation with a group of fresh-faced Starfleet officers such as ourselves.
Well, everyone in the group had the good sense to give these Nausicaans a wide berth, to stand off. Everyone, that is, except me. I stood toe to toe with the worst of the three, and I told him what I thought of him, his pals, his planet, and I possibly made some passing reference to his questionable parentage. And the next thing I knew, all three of them were on me and I was fighting for my life. I was actually doing quite well for a while.
WESLEY: You fought them? And won?
PICARD: I had this one Nausicaan down in this somewhat devious joint-lock when, unbeknownst to me, one of his chums drew his weapon and impaled me through the back. Curious sensation, actually. Not much pain. Shock, certainly, at the sight of serrated metal sticking through my chest. A certain giddy warmth. In fact I do actually remember that I laughed out loud. Well, it pierced my heart, of course. Well, if we'd not been so near to a medical facility, I would surely have died.
WESLEY: Really? Then what happened?
PICARD: Nothing. I was no hero, Wesley. I was an undisciplined, loud-mouthed, opinionated young man who was way out of his league. I learned a very hard, very painful lesson that day, but I learned it well. I hope you never have to learn it the same way.
This line "I do actually remember that I laughed out loud" will be relevant later.
Captain’s Holiday
Another episode that does not hold up as one of TNG’s best but it puts Picard in a position of being cut off from the resources of his ship and in a relationship with Vash, a woman who has not quite moved on from the recklessness that marked Picard’s youth.
Q-Pid
Q returns and places Picard and the crew in Sherwood Forest as Robin Hood and his Merry Men.
WORF: "Captain, I MUST protest! I am NOT a Merry Man!"
Vash returns and puts Picard in the awkward position of having his responsibilities as a Captain and his life as a man come into conflict.
Family
TNG does something unprecedented with an episode without an alien threat or some cosmic crisis to contend with.
Picard's ordeal with the Borg in The Best of Both Worlds remains a source of trauma that Jean-Luc is trying his damnedest not to deal with. Staying with Robert, his stern overbearing brother at the family vineyard sufficiently stirs the emotional pot enough to force Jean-Luc to finally break down and admit to his trauma, to the abuse he suffered at the hands of the Borg and Picard's guilt over not being strong enough.
Jean-Luc's fist fight with his brother in the muddy fields of the vineyard is powerful and cathartic.
It also leads to a charmingly funny scene when Jean-Luc and Robert awkwardly explain to Robert's wife Marie why there's mud everywhere.
(There's mud, and muddy boots, on the carpet, and drunken voices singing 'Aupres de ma blonde, qu'il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon' dum, dum, dum. Marie enters from outside)
MARIE: What in the world? What happened here?
ROBERT: Ah
PICARD: It's entirely my fault, Marie.
ROBERT: Yes, I fell down, then he fell and then...
PICARD: We both fell down.
ROBERT: We both fell down.
PICARD: Together.
ROBERT: We both fell down together.
MARIE: Have you two been fighting?
ROBERT: Fighting? No, certainly not.
Darmok
This episode is quite a classic. Picard is stranded on a hostile alien world, alone with Darmok, the captain of an alien ship.
Universal translator be damned, they can't frickin' understand each other.
It is fascinating to watch Jean-Luc's slow build towards epiphany as he pieces together why he and Darmok are on this planet. They are their to learn how to communicate so they can survive the dangers of this planet.
Chain of Command Part 2
I'll be honest, this is not an episode I particularly enjoy. Watching someone being physically and mentally tortured is NOT my idea of entertainment. BUT...
Jean-Luc Picard's grueling ordeal at the hands of Madred, a cruel Cardassian taskmaster is intense and a master class in acting from Patrick Stewart.
The cruelest test by Madred is insisting Picard succumb to his captor's perception of reality. Madred sits a desk under four lights. He says he will release Picard from his torments if he agrees there are five lights.
Picard's strength and fortitude are remarkable.
PICARD: There! Are! FOUR! Lights!
Back on the Enterprise, Picard confesses to Deanna Troi that there were cracks in his armor.
PICARD: I, er, I don't know where to begin. It was...
TROI: I read your report.
PICARD: What I didn't put in the report was that at the end he gave me a choice between a life of comfort or more torture. All I had to do was to say that I could see five lights, when in fact, there were only four.
TROI: You didn't say it?
PICARD: No, no, but I was going to. I would have told him anything. Anything at all. But more than that, I believed that I could see five lights.
Gambit Part 1 and 2 and Starship Mine
These episodes present opportunities to recast Jean-Luc Picard from wise and thoughtful Captain to action hero.
It's cool to see the bald, thin Englishman that Gene Roddenberry did not see as his next Capt. Kirk being a total bad ass.
Tapestry
Captain Jean-Luc Picard dies!
(A bright white void. There is a figure also in shimmering white nearby. Picard touches its hand and then sees who it is.)
Q: Welcome to the afterlife, Jean-Luc. You're dead.
PICARD: Q, what is going on?
Q: I told you. You're dead. This is the afterlife, and I'm God.
PICARD: You are not God.
Q: Blasphemy! You're lucky I don't cast you out, or smite you or something. The bottom line is, your life ended about five minutes ago, under the inept ministrations of Doctor Beverly Crusher.
PICARD: No. I am not dead. Because I refuse to believe that the afterlife is run by you. The universe is not so badly designed.
It seems an alien energy beam to the chest would not have killed Picard if he still had his human heart instead of the mechanical one.
TNG goes all Quantum Leap on us as Q sends Picard back in time to relive and re-do the youthful indiscretions that led to him being stabbed through the heart by Nausicans.
Picard is able to avoid being stabbed by the Nausicans even though it comes at the cost of the very friends he was trying to save.
But the cruelest twist to Picard's new fate comes when finds himself later in life assigned to the Enterprise as a dull, inhibited low ranking science officer. Reversing the recklessness of his youth undoes the very path that made Jean-Luc into a Starfleet Captain.
PICARD: You gave me the chance to change and I took the opportunity. But I admit now, it was a mistake.
Q: Are you asking me for something, Jean-Luc?
PICARD: Give me a chance to put things back the way they were before.
Q: Before you died in Sickbay. Is that what you want?
PICARD: I would rather die as the man I was than live the life I just saw.
So Q rewinds time and....
NAUSICAAN: Coward. Like all Starfleet. You talk and you talk but you have no guramba.
PICARD: What did you say?
NAUSICAAN: I said, you are a coward.
PICARD: That's what I thought you said.
(and Picard hits the Nausicaan. Picard gets stabbed, sees the knife sticking out of his chest, and laughs)
[Sickbay. Picard is laughing on the biobed)
CRUSHER: His vital signs are stable. Captain. Jean-Luc. You've been injured, but I think you're going to be all right.
Picard's laugh is a nice call back to the story he told Wesley Crusher back in season 2.
PICARD to WESLEY: I do actually remember that I laughed out loud.
The next episode on my list actually aired in season 5 before Tapestry but I wanted to save what I think is the best Picard centric episode for last.
Inner Light
An alien probe sends Picard into the life of Kamin on a world called Kataan.
It is a very fascinating journey watch Jean-Luc go from a very reluctant passenger in Kamin's life to fully living Kamin's life as a husband, father and grandfather as the episode covers years, decades in this life.
One element that helps us track this passage of time is Kamin becomes more proficient at playing the flute.
He also becomes aware of the grim reality that his world is dying. The sun is getting hotter and the water is drying up.
Kataan is dying.
Kamin is talking to his daughter and delivers a most moving piece of profound wisdom.
PICARD: Seize the time. Live now. Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.
This line has been quoted a lot in the many tributes offered in the wake of Patrick Stewart's passing.
The probe was the way for the people of Kataan to remind the universe they once existed and they can live on in someone's memory.
We hoped our probe would encounter someone in the future. Someone who could be a teacher. Someone who could tell the others about us. We have been gone for a thousand years. If you remember what we were, and how we lived, then we'll have found life again.
Back on the Enterprise, Picard is given a box that was recovered from the probe. The box contains Kamin's flute.
And Jean-Luc knows how to play it.
These are not the only episodes that put the spotlight on Jean-Luc Picard but I think I will leave it here for this post. And the episodes covered here are among my favorite moments with Patrick Stewart as the indomitable Capt. Jean-Luc Picard.
No matter the episode, Patrick Stewart always elevated Jean-Luc Picard and Star Trek: The Next Generation to a higher standard.
So who is next for the TNG character spotlight? I have no idea. I haven't worked out the methodology of my approach yet.
Thanks as always to Chrissie's Transcripts Site for the script excerpts.
Until next time, live long and prosper and make now always the most precious time.
