P atrick Stewart managed to be lots of different things at once. He was a towering figure on stage. He was a literal superhero onscreen. And, at times, he wasn’t above sending himself up. It also needs to be said that he was a bald man.

And a pioneering one at that. Nowhere was this more clear than during his stint on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Previously, Star Trek had been a kind of space-set action show, where the relentlessly virile Captain Kirk would beam down to new planets to either punch or get off with all the aliens there. But then came its successor, and Kirk was replaced by a nonviolent intellectual called Jean-Luc. Worse still, he didn’t have any hair. What a sign of weakness.

The captains … Stewart and Shatner in Star Trek: Generations (1994). Photograph: Paramount/Allstar

But Patrick Stewart made it work. Not only was his cool temperament a nice change of pace from the 1960s take, but his sex appeal was undeniable.…