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The man behind Jean-Luc Picard aimed for the stars in all his work and made TV nobler for it

Published October 30, 2026 1:49PM (EDT)

(Trae Patton/Paramount+. ©2021 Viacom, International Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Before the prestige drama era, people rarely associated nobility with the small screen. In old Hollywood’s thinking, television was cinema’s inferior cousin. Syndication ranked even lower. And syndicated science fiction shows? Total jokes.

Sir Patrick Stewart , who died Wednesday in Los Angeles at 86, changed these impressions when he accepted the seven-year mission of “ Star Trek: The Next Generation .” As Jean-Luc Picard , the captain who inherited the helm of USS Enterprise from William Shatner ’s James T. Kirk, Stewart embodied franchise founder Gene Roddenberry’ s humanist outlook.

Picard, the actor’s greatest TV legacy, is a paragon of grace: empathetic, dedicated to a mission of understanding and devoted to preserving what is best about Starfleet.…