It’s part of the prime directive: observe but do not interfere. And yet, fundamental to all of Jean-Luc’s philosophies are those ideas that we all have a right to live and exist and to be who and what we are. To have been programmed by the Borg to become one of them was a profoundly damaging experience. PS: It’s a complex relationship made, as you observe, by his experience with the Borg. What was it like exploring both of those aspects of how Picard relates to that kind of synthetic artificial life? It shows so much empathy for the former Borg who had been rehabilitated. But he also had that traumatic experience with the Borg and the first season of “Picard” really explores both sides of that. GD: What’s interesting about the way the story unfolds this season is that Picard has this very dual relationship with artificial intelligence and synthetic life. So that’s how sentimental and emotional I’ve been about all this. But I wanted to have something concrete that reminded me of that scene and if you can see the print, the picture that’s behind my head, that also came from Picard’s studio and was there in that scene. I asked the company if they would let me buy the chair. From where I’m sitting right now, I’m looking across my studio and there is the chair that I was sitting in when I played that last scene. I found that very, very potent and playing that scene with Brent Spiner, who I adore and whose work I love was such a good experience. And indeed, this continued so interestingly and so emotionally until we got to the last few days of shooting the final episode of Season 1 when I had a long scene, for a science fiction series, a very long dialogue scene, six pages, with Picard and Data talking about what it means to be alive and coming to the conclusion that death has to be one of the benefits of being alive, that our lives cannot be extended indefinitely. And then they had, of course, set me up the idea of introducing Data into the story and Data was, well, everyone loved Data, but particularly, Picard had a very special relationship with him and part of his problem, they wrote into this first script, was that he was profoundly guilty that Data had to die in order for Picard to move and to get back to the “Enterprise.” I was very moved by that. I was in my vineyard with my pitbull and I was yelling in French at some of my workers and clearly not happy, disturbed, restless, short-tempered, irritable, all the things that Jean-Luc could never be in the original series. PS: Well, immediately, the script of Episode 1 showed us a very different Jean-Luc Picard, right away.
#PATRICK STEWART OH MY STAR TREK ANDROID#
GD: And what was your feelings after that pitch when you finally read the first script and you saw this new adventure that Picard was embarking on, how it deals with his feelings about Data and this new android that comes into his life? What were your thoughts on that first script? I was so excited by what they told me they wanted to do with Picard that I would have been a fool, I think, not to sign up. Sorry, that was a rather long answer but that’s literally what happened. And when I met with them a second time, I was won over. Rather in the way that Logan closed “X-Men” for Hugh Jackman and myself, by doing a totally different kind of story with a different situation and setup and everything changed from how has it been for 12 years of “X-Men.” This is what they were doing with Jean-Luc Picard.
#PATRICK STEWART OH MY STAR TREK SERIES#
I mean, I would have been a fool to have said, “No, I don’t think so,” because what they were proposing was so close to the only kind of “Star Trek” series that I would possibly be interested in. But then I listened to these clever, wonderful writers talking to me about their ideas and I asked them to put all their ideas on paper, and a day later I received 35 pages of pitch and it was interesting enough. Kirsten Beyer as well, who is probably the world’s leading authority on everything “Star Trek,” so, whereas it had not been my intention to meet with them, because I’d been turning down “Star Trek” spinoffs moments from the day after we finished filming “Nemesis,” the last “Next Generation” film, because I felt that I’d said everything I had to say, as Jean-Luc Picard, and that there was no more to tell. Alex Kurtzman, Akiva Goldsman, well, Michael Chabon wasn’t on board then but he was very shortly afterward. When I was invited to a meeting to talk about a new series with Jean-Luc, I asked who the meeting would be with and when I saw the names, I knew that this was a meeting I had to take. Patrick Stewart: Well, initially, it wasn’t so much the story as it was the people who were writing it.