This story about “Picard” originally appeared in the Race Begins issue of awards magazine TheWrap.
In 1994, after its seventh and final season, “Star Trek: The Next Generation” was nominated for its only Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series. Patrick Stewart, who hosted the show as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, remembers the nomination well. It was the same year that he earned a SAG Award nomination.
“Those two were the only two (above the line) nominations we got,” Stewart said. “Next Generation” was nominated for several Creative Arts Emmy Awards, for crafts like makeup, cinematography, sound mixing, and more, but was otherwise consistently overlooked. “The fact that Brent Spiner has never been recognized in such a way for the extraordinary work of him playing an android for seven seasons. And Jonathan (Frakes) and LeVar (Burton) and Marina (Sirtis). We get used to it. We knew there would be no recognition… until the last season.” What exactly happened?
But in the three decades since “The Next Generation,” its follow-up series, Paramount+’s “Star Trek: Picard,” exists in a much friendlier landscape, one in which genre storytelling is no longer a stranger to the conversation of the awards. The third and final season of “Picard” has been critically acclaimed and warmly embraced by fans, though it’s still a long shot to pull off the same punch as its predecessor and earn an Outstanding Drama Series nomination. Award recognition or not, Stewart is excited about the cultural shift.
“What is happening is long overdue. And now there are awards for the work: actors, directors, as well as designers and writers. And it’s exciting,” she said. “I watch a lot of television at night. And the paths that some of these series take are extremely adventurous, dangerous, shocking, even disturbing. I think that’s good for my industry. And it’s certainly good for my profession, because it’s put people center stage. The diversity of color, background, language is transforming the industry. I am 100% in favor of it.”
In its last season, “Picard” took a risk. Writer and executive producer Terry Matalas, who joined the show in season 2, came up with the idea of a big season 3 sendoff, not only for Jean-Luc but also for the rest of the “Next Generation” crew. . Rather than a portrait of Picard in his twilight years, Matalas refined a total “Next Generation” reunion, with key characters (including Burton’s Geordi La Forge) re-entering Picard’s life. It was a gamble that risked tarnishing the original series’ stellar reputation.
Stewart admitted that he had “significant hesitations” about the nostalgic tone the reunion created for a show that always looks to the future. “I know there are strong sentimental feelings about ‘Next Generation.’ And that’s lovely. It affects me. It moves me. But that’s not essentially what ‘Star Trek’ is about,” he said. “I didn’t want all that work to collapse into in-jokes about the previous show or comedic episodes or even romantic episodes.”
Also risky was showing a different side of Picard, now an Admiral. In the final season he is downright vulnerable, thanks to the appearance of Jack (Ed Speleers of ‘Downton Abbey’ and ‘You’), a mysterious young man who is revealed to be Jean-Luc’s son. (His mother is Beverly Crusher, once again played by Gates McFadden.) Discovering new facets of a character he’s played for so long was refreshing for Stewart, as was the creative license that comes with being on a broadcast network rather than syndication (like the previous series). “I was told that I even used, and it became an episode, the f-word,” he said. “It was an improvisation. But that’s just one example of the freedom we all began to feel: that we could expose ourselves and the characters in human ways that weren’t necessarily ‘TV series’. I find that in much of what I watch these days. And I applaud him.”
Whatever reservations Stewart had, he exhaled them long ago, easing into last season’s enthusiastic response. But it was more than that,” he said. “And that was the work of my fellow producers, directors and showrunners, Terry Matalas in particular because of what he created for us.”
Read more of The Race Begins issue here.
