Patrick Stewart (1940-2026)

[Beloved Aunt]

Patrick Stewart

I only know Patrick Stawart through American Dad!, but he's legit pretty great on that show.

[Big Ben]

Some of my earliest memories are of watching him on Star Trek with my father. He was a defining figure not only in Shakespearean circles but in the Science Fiction space as well. To say that I wish more people and characters embodied the kind of optimism and hope he represented in Star Trek: The Next Generation is a colossal understatement. I cannot really even begin to quantify how awful I feel about his passing. One of the very best to ever do it.

[Finch]

I never really cared much for his films and TV shows but he was such a warm, funny and gracious man on all of the chat and comedy shows I'd come across on YouTube that his loss still stings.

[therewillbeblus]

My favorite role of Stewart's was as a guest on Frasier. I agree, Finch - his sense of humor really set him apart from many of his generation

[flyonthewall2983]

I liked the first season of Blunt Talk

[hearthesilence]

Crazy that Captain Picard can live to a ripe old age and still be outlived by Captain Kirk - Shatner was even performing onstage last month at Riot Fest with a heavy metal band.

[hearthesilence]

Forgot about this, but when I was living in London for school, he was earning rave reviews for Macbeth. That stage production eventually traveled to the U.S. and within a few years later it was filmed as a BBC production.

[domino harvey]

There’s a fascinating television special with Stewart where he and another actor give contrasting performances of Shylock and until I saw Stewart’s take, I never understood how Shylock could be considered a comic figure. It’s a great interpretation, no idea if it’s on YT or a BBC player, a professor showed us it in college

[hearthesilence]

This one?

[domino harvey]

Yep! He gives a full performance of it in the comic register at some point in the special as well

[hearthesilence]

Found the full episode, which is about an hour-long. (Looks like it was the fourth episode in a nine-episode series.)

[thirtyframesasecond]

Green Room was a very different kind of role for Stewart. Rare to see him demonstrate genuine menace.

[colinr0380]

Long before Star Trek: The Next Generation, Patrick Stewart was turning up in supporting roles in quite major films: Excalibur; the mentor figure in Lynch's version of Dune; having an intense moment in LifeForce.

He also had a couple of interesting Shakespearean Revenging/Avenging Patriarch roles, playing against type as a bad guy in the great matched pair of 1997's Dad Savage and 2015's Green Room. EDIT: Ah, thirtyframesasecond beat me to it!

And there is also his appearance on the Ricky Gervais series Extras, playing a nudity-obsessed version of himself.

"It's a comedy, is it?"
"... No."

[hearthesilence]

"On the grass!"

[DeprongMori]

Yep! He gives a full performance of it in the comic register at some point in the special as well

My Facebook remembrance:

I remember back in the late 1980s, after Ellen and I had just finished watching the Royal Shakespeare Company series, “Playing Shakespeare”, episode by episode on VHS tape(!) from the Watertown MA public library.

Afterwards, we were switching channels and were stopped in our tracks — “OMG!!!! It’s Patrick Stewart — at the helm of the Starship Enterprise!!!”

Fare thee well, Patrick Stewart, in your journey into that undiscovered country.