Why Patrick Stewart Was Disappointed With The First Two Seasons Of Star Trek: TNG

With the possible exceptions of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” and the little-discussed “Star Trek: The Animated Series,” none of the extant “Star Trek” shows began at their strongest. Ask any Trekkie, and they will tell you that “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” and “Star Trek: Voyagers” didn’t really “get good” until their respective third seasons. By then, their showrunners had each zeroed in on the true nature of their characters, and knew what kind of stories could be explored.

With “Next Generation,” you can sense the shift almost immediately. The third season of that series not only changed the Enterprise officers’ uniforms, but it also brought back Dr. Beverly Crusher after actress Gates McFadden had been inexplicably removed for the second season. Even more noticeably, “Next Generation” moved from wide stories about the whole ensemble to more focused stories about each individual character. One episode may focus on Worf (Michael Dorn) for instance, while the next will be a Geordi (LeVar Burton) episode. Those who know about the show’s background drama will know that the season 3 shift coincided with executive producer Michael Piller taking over as showrunner, replacing Maurice Hurley. With Piller in charge, the show finally fell into focus, and it remained strong for its remaining five years.

Those first two seasons before Piller took over were, however, quite rough at times. The documentary “Chaos on the Bridge,” about the first two seasons of “Next Generation,” details the interoffice bickering that took place behind the scenes, with Gene Roddenberry, his personal lawyer Leonard Maizlish, and several others vying for control over the show’s scripts. No one could decide on a unified vision, and egos clashed.

The cast remembers those early years of chaos quite well. Patrick Stewart, the actor who played Captain Picard, talked about the 1987 and 1988 seasons frankly in a 2023 interview with The New Yorker. He felt that those early seasons lacked a vital sense of intimacy.

Stewart wasn’t concerned with the politicking between show creator Gene Roddenberry and the writers, of course. He’s an actor. He was concerned about the character work on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and how the scripts, once finalized, communicated Captain Picard’s inner life and his relationship with his fellow Enterprise crew mates. For the first two seasons, he felt that Captain Picard was a little too stern and aloof.

This was, of course, the goal. Roddenberry liked the idea of his characters remaining professional, and avoiding all interpersonal conflicts. A result of that, though, was that Picard came across as lacking depth. “I watched the first and second seasons,” Stewart said, “and I was disappointed with what I saw, particularly the first season, and specifically my work. I found it lacking intimacy. It was very authoritative, but there were few other qualities in him.”

Roddenberry and Stewart even had a meeting once about Captain Picard, and it was something of a brusque affair, at least according to Stewart’s autobiography, “Making It So: A Memoir.” It seems that Stewart asked Roddenberry directly for some more insight into his character, and Roddenberry merely instructed him to read the Horatio Hornblower novels by C.S. Forester. Stewart had read those novels, and Roddenberry simply said “Read ’em again.” Stewart learned that character work on American TV shows was lonesome, requiring little inter-actor collaboration. Kind of by necessity, Stewart had to incorporate that lonesomeness into the character. He emerged as authoritative, but somewhat inscrutable.

Of course, Stewart eventually learned to work well with his co-stars … although it required something of an intervention. In the New Yorker interview, Stewart repeated a story he has told several times about how he exploded in front of his co-workers … and how he was instantly embarrassed about it. The story goes that Stewart was content to be just as stern and serious on set as Picard was commanding the Enterprise. His attitude was in direct contrast to his fellow acting troupe, who were a lot more jocund on set. As he tells it:

“I tell the story of calling a meeting of my principal fellow cast members and telling them that I thought we were not disciplined enough, that we should not be fooling about on the set as much as we were, but taking everything seriously. And one of the cast members said, ‘Oh, come on, Patrick, we’ve got to have some fun.’ And I thumped the chair and said, ‘We are not here to have fun!’ Which they have never let me forget. They taught me so much about loosening up and being freer.”

After that, Stewart did indeed loosen up, and, as he put it, “I think that the work that we did got better through the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh seasons.” Trekkies would agree. Seasons 3 through 6 were the prime years for the show. Stewart continued to play the role for decades, returning most recently for the third and final season of “Star Trek: Picard” in 2023.