Oh captain, my captain!

Lufthansa is going on strike, starting tomorrow, so my flight to England this evening is rather fortunately timed. It's going to be first London, then Stratford, then London again in a mixture of work and pleasure. Stratford and the production of Hamlet being the leisure part, obviously. Looking forward to it also invoked a fit of nostalgia and Patrick Stewart fangirling, which I'm now going to subject you to.

Like many a non-English person, I first saw Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation. He was obviously different from Kirk, which was a plus in my book. (I grew up with ST, but never was a Kirk fan, so was glad that the new captain was not a clone. As opposed to early Riker, who struck me that way.) I can still recall when this general approval became something definite, for both character and actor; the second season episode Sarek, which, old Trek girl that I was, I had been looking foward to because of Mark Lenard's return as Sarek, Spock's father. Mark Lenard was his dignified self and other than missing Amanda I enjoyed Sarek's return to the ST universe immensely; also, the metaphorical treatment of Alzheimer's was sensitively done. But to my surprise what really made the episode for me was that sequence where Picard, whom an illness-affected Sarek had mind-melded with in order to carry through the important negotiations he was on board for, was experiencing the raw force of Sarek's unsurpressed emotions plus his own. It was an intense scene and an amazing bit of acting on Patrick Stewart's part, and I sat there in front of my tv screen, riveted. One of the reasons why it was so effective was that Picard normally was such a controlled individual himself, but I think it would have worked even for first time viewers without background knowledge; it was that good a scene.

Afterwards, I was both a Stewart and a Picard fan. I liked the mannerisms ("tea, Earl Grey, hot"), I liked those occasions when we saw characters getting beneath Picard's skin (Q and Lwaxana Troi in different ways, and Vash), I liked when he kept his control. I liked the way his anger was there but reigned in and the way he used it in the "Data is a toaster" argument from Measure of a Man (which, btw, must have influenced Ron Moore long term, because the crucial argument here - if androids aren't treated as a sentient species and new life, then they are a slave race - was going to be ever so important for BSG), and the sense of curiosity and fascination with other cultures you got in episodes such as Darmok (if you've read a certain Heroes story of mine, yes, the way Picard works out a way to communicate did influence me), and the way Stewart could convey intelligence just by reaction shots and Picard listening. I liked that the show was fully aware that the good Captain did have it in him to be pompous, as dignified people often do, and pointed this out to him (Q's "Jean-Luc, Jean-Luc, sometimes I think the only reason why I come here is to listen to those wonderful speeches of yours" in True Q directly after a passionate Picard speech comes to mind); TNG often gets critisized for presenting its characters too perfect, without human flaws, but I never felt that was the case with Picard.

With tv being so very different today, it's hard to convey the full impact of the Best of Both Worlds two parter and the subsequent episode Family had on a first time viewer back then. In an age where, say, John Crichton in the four seasons of Farscape is subjected to a non-stop battery of mental, emotional and physical assaults, including one opportunity where he if not for a dea ex machina would have killed his beloved while under someone else's control, Picard being abducted by the Borg, transformed into Locutus, getting a lot of Star Fleet personnel killed and even after being liberated still feeling the effects probably doesn't seem to be a big deal. But if your basis of comparison is classic Trek where if our heroes were tortured, they manfully resisted, and no matter what trauma happened to them, they were okay at the start of the next episode, it is a big deal. Things like becoming Locutus just didn't happen to Kirk. And most crucially, episodes like Family where basically nothing happens except for the main character dealing with the aftermath of having been the instrument of destruction (and even the two subplots, one with Worf and his parents, and one with Wesley and his late father, are strictly character-focused, with no action scene in sight) had not existed. So seeing Picard visiting his family and finally losing control and crying in the French vineyards over what happened was unprecedented (and again fantastic, performance-wise; also, I'll always love RDM for that script which allows Picard to show a gentle, dead-pan humour when dealing with his nephew along side of exploring the Borg aftermath). It made Picard real to me in a way few tv characters before had been.

Once TNG was over, I came gradually to the point where I decided my favourite Star Trek show was in fact DS9, which is still the case. But if you ask me that age-old Trekker question about favourite captains? No question about it. Jean-Luc, I'm still yours. As for Patrick Stewart in regards to Picard, I'll never get tired of reading his awesome smackdown of a reporter who indulges in stupid clichés about sci fi fans:

Q: When you're onstage, aren't you worried about weird Trekkie fans in the audience?
A: Oh, come on, that's just a silly thing to say.
Q: But they are weird.
A: How many do you know personally? You couldn't be more wrong. Here's the thing: if you say the fans are weird, that means there is something essentially weird about the show, and there is nothing weird about it. I'm very passionate when people like you snigger.

Things like this, ladies and gentlemen, would be why I am a fan.

Multiverse!

One more post before I head off to the airport, because as it turns out, andrastewhite, after Multiverse was delayed by various RL issues, has decided to put up the stories that are there at multiverse2004 and to skip over the anonymity phase as it's a month later anyway. This makes me very happy as it means I can print out some fictional goodness to read on my flight, plus I can confess to my own effort this year, which was:


Game, Set and Match


, a Doctor Who/Blake's 7 crossover in which a certain evil overlord meets a certain evil overlady. I had great fun writing it. There are no villains like British tv show villains, I tell you. As to what everyone else has written, expect recommendations from that island in the silver sea once I'm there and had the chance to read the stories!