When the alert popped up on my phone a few days ago that Patrick Stewart had died, I felt nothing. I put my phone down and ignored it. I couldn't, didn't, and still don't want to believe that this giant talent who enriched the childhoods of so many of my generation (and the "next generation"!) was gone. It felt impossible, cruel, bizarre. I hoped it wasn't true.
But sadly it is.
It's probably hard to understand, in this era of streaming and overwhelming "content", how it exciting it was to sit down in front of the TV at 7 PM on a Saturday night to get a new episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (I made my mom plan dinner around it). The amazing writing and cast was, of course, "captained" by Jean-Luc Picard, played brilliantly by Patrick Stewart. The way he portrayed Picard's quiet, determined, steady leadership was incredible -- and that is why he became so popular with Trekkies and non-Trekkies a like. He was the kind of leader who wish (especially nowadays) we could always have.
Of course, Stewart's career spanned a lot more than Star Trek. There were the X-Men movies, other movies (including a hilarious cameo in LA Story), and his extensive stage career (lots of Shakespeare and more). And for my money, he appeared in two of the greatest BBC mini-series ever made -- the 1970s Fall of Eagles (as Lenin) and I, Claudius (as the evil Sejeanus).
In 1992 I saw him on stage when he did his wonderful one-man stage show of A Christmas Carol. I'll never forget how we came out on the bare stage, holding up a big edition of the book, and boomed in his memorable voice "Marley was dead ... as a doornail." And for the next two hours he gave a powerful, beautiful telling of the legendary classic.
Almost 20 years later I went to an event in the WNYC Green Space where he talked about his life and career. It was a wonderful thing to see him talk about about it. It also turned out that he was planning to move to Brooklyn -- which he did, eventually getting a brownstone in Park Slope.
And finally, in 2014, I saw him and Ian McKellen in the 2014 Broadway production of Waiting for Godot. It was great, and I blogged about it at the time.
There's so much more I could write about Stewart's wide-spanning cultural impact -- from Shakespeare to the multiplexes -- but, instead, just watch some of his work and you'll more than understand.
RIP Captain.
