By Blake Larsen | A personal reflection for the NerdClan
Nobody asked me to write this. I’m fairly certain nobody was expecting it, and no one will care about what I have to say either. But Patrick Stewart has died, and I’ve been sitting here trying to make sense of why the death of an 86-year-old actor, a man I never met, has hit me so damn hard.
So, eff it. It’s my website. And today, I need to write something.
Over the years, so many people have asked Mary and me to cover Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s a perfectly reasonable request. We have spent the better part of fifteen years talking about television, examining the stories we love, dissecting characters, arguing about writing choices, and trying to understand why certain pieces of art stay with us long after the credits roll.
And there’s a part of me that would absolutely love to do it.
But I’ve always resisted, because I’ve come to believe that there are certain things in life that just need to be yours. They occupy a place so close to your heart, so deeply intertwined with who you are, that trying to examine them objectively almost feels like a betrayal.
For me, those things are LOST and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
I love them in ways I can’t adequately explain. Even the bad stuff is good to me. The questionable episodes, the silly plotlines, the weird creative decisions. I embrace all of it because it’s part of something that has become inseparable from my own life. There is no objectivity in that kind of love. It’s all-encompassing, irrational, and pure.
And I want to keep it that way.
Which probably begs the question: Why the hell am I writing about Patrick Stewart?
Because this isn’t a review of The Next Generation. It isn’t a retrospective of his career or an attempt to explain why Jean-Luc Picard is one of the greatest characters in television history.
It’s simply about a man who, without ever knowing it, helped raise me.
And I think I need to tell you why.
Somewhere Among the Stars
It will probably surprise absolutely everybody (sarcasm very much intended) that while other kids my age were spending the late ’80s and early ’90s discovering Nirvana, wearing flannel, and eventually playing Green Day’s Dookie until their parents wanted to throw the stereo out the window, I was wishing that some cosmic accident would transport me onto the bridge of the USS Enterprise-D.
God, I wanted to be there.
As you could probably imagine, this was NOT the coolest thing on the planet for a middle schooler to be obsessing over. I was very much an outsider. A dork. And I was HEAVILY bullied. But I always had my other family on the Enterprise.
I wanted to walk those carpeted corridors. I wanted to stand at the enormous windows in Ten Forward and stare out into the stars. I wanted a tricorder, a phaser, a communicator, and whatever else Starfleet would give me.
And I did my best to make it happen.
I built my own toy phasers. I made my own Starfleet uniform. I even bought a communicator from the Star Trek magazine that showed up at my house religiously. That magazine might as well have been a sacred text to me.
I was utterly, completely obsessed.
Looking back, what strikes me is how much of that obsession was driven by the idea of possibility. There was an entire galaxy out there, full of extraordinary things to discover. Strange civilizations. New worlds. People who looked, lived, and believed differently from one another.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it was this beautiful, enormous ship, filled with people who genuinely believed humanity could be better than it was.
As a kid, that’s a pretty intoxicating idea.
But as much as I loved the Enterprise, the technology, and the adventure, there was always one person who made that universe feel like somewhere I belonged.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard.
The Man I Wanted to Be
I idolized my dad growing up. I really did. He taught me a tremendous amount about life, about working hard, about responsibility, and about what it meant to be a man.
But my dad was old-school Boston. The kind of guy for whom watching a bunch of people in pajamas flying around outer space was pretty much the definition of a waste of time.
He never got into Star Trek with me. It just wasn’t his thing.
And that’s okay.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized that our parents give us what they can, shaped by their own experiences, their personalities, and the lives they’ve lived. Sometimes the things we need come from other places.
For me, one of those places was the bridge of the Enterprise.
Jean-Luc Picard was the model of the man I wanted to become.
He was intelligent, thoughtful, kind, curious, and just. He carried himself with an extraordinary sense of dignity, and his authority came from the trust he earned rather than the fear he inspired.
He believed that people deserved to be heard, even when he disagreed with them. He believed in diplomacy, in knowledge, in history, and in the extraordinary potential of humanity.
And perhaps most importantly, he understood that being a leader meant accepting the responsibility to make difficult choices.
I loved that about him.
Picard could be stern. He could be stubborn, arrogant, frustrated, and even frightened. He made mistakes. He carried regrets. Sometimes the weight of his responsibilities nearly crushed him.
But somehow, those imperfections only made me admire him more.
Because even when he struggled, he kept trying to do what was right.
There were times when Picard would stand before some admiral, alien ruler, or seemingly omnipotent being and defend a principle that everyone else had decided was inconvenient. He would argue for someone’s dignity, question an assumption, or demand that those around him consider the consequences of their actions.
And I would sit there, this little kid from Massachusetts, listening.
Really listening.
I didn’t understand every philosophical argument. I certainly didn’t appreciate every historical or literary reference. But I understood the feeling behind them. I understood that Picard believed being a good person required effort, reflection, compassion, and courage.
I wanted to be that kind of person.
I still do. And I try every day.
The Family You Find
There’s something else here that I’ve rarely talked about, and I suspect it’s part of why Patrick Stewart’s death is affecting me the way it is.
Both of my grandfathers died before I really had the chance to know them.
I never had that relationship with an older man who had already lived a full life, made his mistakes, gathered his wisdom, and could sit with me and explain the world.
And while I had my father, there were parts of my emotional and intellectual life that we simply didn’t share.
Somewhere along the way, Jean-Luc Picard filled a portion of that space.
I know how ridiculous that might sound. I’m a 43-year-old man talking about a fictional character from a television series set in the 24th century as though he were a member of my family.
But that’s genuinely how it felt.
He became this strange combination of father, grandfather, teacher, and moral compass.
And the thing is, I felt safe with him.
That’s the part I keep coming back to.
When Picard was on my television, I felt safe.
No matter what was going on in my own life, there was something immensely comforting about seeing him in that captain’s chair. His presence carried a kind of reassurance that I have struggled to find anywhere else.
It was in the way he spoke, the way he listened, the way he would pause before making a decision. Even his silences seemed to convey that he was considering something important.
I felt as though I could trust him.
And through that trust, I could believe that whatever problems were unfolding around me might eventually make sense.
Sometimes Picard would teach me something about morality. Sometimes he would challenge an assumption I didn’t even realize I had. Sometimes he would force me to consider how another person might see the world.
And sometimes he would simply remind me that there was still wonder out there waiting to be discovered.
That’s an extraordinary thing to receive from a television character.
The Voice That Still Makes Me Feel Safe
Here’s something Mary can tell you about me.
When I’m really sick, when I’m genuinely feeling like absolute garbage, there is one guaranteed way to know.
I’m watching The Next Generation.
It’s practically a medical diagnostic tool in our house at this point.
If I’m lying on the couch watching something else, I’m probably fine. But if Mary walks into the room and sees the Enterprise-D drifting through space on the television, she knows I’m hurting. Or if I need to feel hope during a time of need, the Star Trek: Generations soundtrack, or Picard Season 3 soundtrack is blasting throughout the house. (c’mon you can’t tell me that Make It So isn’t one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written.)
And I find that fascinating.
Because here I am, decades removed from the kid who built his own phaser and dreamed about exploring the galaxy, and my instinct when I’m at my most vulnerable is still to return to that ship.
To those familiar corridors. To those familiar voices. To that familiar captain.
There’s something about Patrick Stewart’s voice that has always made me feel as though everything was going to be all right.
That beautiful, measured, unmistakable voice.
He could deliver a line with such authority that you believed every word of it. He could communicate compassion with the smallest change in tone. He could make you feel the enormous weight of a decision simply by allowing himself a moment of silence.
I know he was a classically trained actor. I know he spent years performing Shakespeare and inhabiting characters like Macbeth and King Lear. I understand why so many people regard him as one of the great actors of his generation.
And I know an entire generation of people grew up loving him as Professor Charles Xavier.
But for me, Patrick Stewart will always be Jean-Luc Picard.
Because somehow, through that performance, he reached across a television screen and gave me something I desperately needed.
A sense of security, and belonging.
And a belief that the world, despite its many problems, could still be a good place.
How Do You Mourn Someone Who Never Knew You?
I think this is the part I’m having the hardest time reconciling.
Patrick Stewart never knew me.
He never knew there was a little boy in Boston who worshipped the character he played. He never knew about my homemade Starfleet uniform, or the communicator I ordered from a magazine, or the countless hours I spent imagining myself aboard his ship.
He certainly never knew that decades later, a grown man with a wife, children, and a career spent analyzing television would still turn to his performance for comfort.
Why would he?
I was one of millions of people who loved his work.
And yet, here I am, genuinely grieving the loss of someone who had absolutely no idea I existed.
I suppose that’s one of the strangest and most beautiful things about art.
The people who create it put something of themselves into the world, and then that work goes out and takes on a life they could never possibly imagine.
It enters people’s homes. It becomes part of their routines. It accompanies them through childhood, adolescence, heartbreak, illness, and all the ordinary messiness of being alive.
And sometimes it becomes part of the foundation upon which a person builds their identity.
Patrick Stewart spent years giving life to Jean-Luc Picard. He brought his own intelligence, discipline, sensitivity, and humanity to that character.
And somewhere in the process, he helped shape mine.
I imagine there are countless other people feeling something similar today, all mourning someone they never met, each carrying their own deeply personal relationship with the same man.
There’s something wonderful about that, even in the sadness.
An actor can spend a lifetime perfecting his craft, earning awards, performing on the greatest stages in the world, and becoming internationally famous.
And somewhere, completely unbeknownst to him, a child is learning how to be a better human being because of something he did.
What an extraordinary legacy.
The Final Frontier
I keep thinking about the final episode of The Next Generation, “All Good Things…”
If you know, you know.
After seven seasons of exploring the universe, confronting impossible ethical dilemmas, facing down the Borg, and being put on trial by Q, Picard finally joins his crew for their regular poker game.
It’s such a small, beautiful moment.
This man who spent so much of his life maintaining a certain distance from the people under his command finally allows himself to sit down among them.
To simply be with them.
As a kid, I loved the ending because it meant that, somehow, everything was going to be okay. The Enterprise would continue its mission. These people would continue their adventures. Somewhere out there, beyond the limits of what we could see, the future was still waiting.
As an adult, I find myself moved by something else.
Picard had spent his life exploring the unknown, searching for new worlds and new civilizations, and discovering extraordinary things about the universe.
And in the end, one of his greatest discoveries was the family sitting right in front of him.
I think there’s something in that which speaks to why I loved him so much.
Because the little boy who wanted nothing more than to be aboard the Enterprise was ultimately searching for something pretty simple.
A place where he belonged, felt safe, and where the people around him believed in one another.
And Picard gave me that.
Patrick Stewart gave me that.
Thank You, Captain
I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to cover The Next Generation the way I’ve covered so many other shows. There’s a part of me that still wants to sit down with Mary, pull apart the episodes, and share all the wonderful things I see in them.
But I suspect there will always be something inside me that wants to protect that relationship.
Because some things are simply too precious to examine from a distance.
And maybe that’s okay.
Today, I’m thinking about a little boy in a homemade Starfleet uniform, holding a toy phaser, playing with his Enterprise D model, dreaming of a future among the stars.
I’m thinking about a teenager who found guidance in the words of a fictional captain.
I’m thinking about a grown man who has a giant 5 foot painting of the Enterprise D framed in his office and still turns on Star Trek: The Next Generation when he’s sick because, somehow, hearing that familiar voice makes him feel a little better.
And I’m thinking about an actor who gave all of those versions of me something that has lasted a lifetime.
I know Jean-Luc Picard is fictional. I know the Enterprise-D is a television set, and that Patrick Stewart was an actor doing his job.
But I also know that the lessons I learned, the comfort I felt, and the person those experiences helped me become are all very real.
That’s the remarkable thing about the stories we love. The people who tell them can leave an imprint on us that lasts long after their work is finished.
And perhaps that’s why this hurts so much.
For almost forty years, somewhere in the back of my mind, Captain Picard has always been there.
Of course, I can still turn on the television tomorrow. I can still hear his voice. I can still watch the Enterprise soar through the stars, and for a little while, I can still be that kid who believed there was an entire universe waiting for him.
I suspect I’ll be doing that quite a bit in the days ahead.
And when I do, I know I’ll feel safe again.
Sir Patrick, you never knew me. You never knew the role you played in my life, or the comfort you gave me during moments when I needed it most.
But you helped shape the man I became.
And for that, I’ll be grateful for the rest of my life.
Thank you, Captain.
— Blake