Yet another Hacker News

Through Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Patrick Stewart taught us the measure of a man

48 points apress 1 hour ago 16 comments

agentultra 54 minutes ago | parent

francisofascii 50 minutes ago | parent

I enjoyed the episode reference in the title.

Lerc 46 minutes ago | parent

I find it fairly amazing that they could say this without mentioning the episode "The measure of a man" in which Picard literally makes the case.

Perhaps it is uncomfortable for people to think about now.

monkeydust 29 minutes ago | parent

One I need to rewatch

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708807/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov...

reactordev 27 minutes ago | parent

In case people are wondering... This is THE scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRHAkfoxSFM

ChrisArchitect 36 minutes ago | parent

Patrick Stewart has died

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50294702

bottlepalm 29 minutes ago | parent

So many posts and comments are saying the same thing. I guess it's one of the things we remember most about Patrick Stewart and his portrayal of a starship captain. The quintessential captain. Honorable, wise, but humble, diplomatic, reasonable, with high morals, and fortitude under pressure.

wahnfrieden 29 minutes ago | parent

It’s weird to me because he didn’t write the character and didn’t even watch the show. These tributes aren’t about him.

It’s like writing an obit about how much you like warmed hotdogs when local 7-11 worker dies and everyone sharing their taste for warm hotdogs in the comments.

vkou 20 minutes ago | parent

He didn't write the character, but he delivered it. The delivery is just as much a part of Picard as the writing.

jawilson2 20 minutes ago | parent

Sure, but it's hard to imagine, say, Robin Williams or Tom Hanks bringing the same energy to the role. I also have to imagine that after the first season, the loop closed a bit, and the writers started writing JLP with Patrick Stewart in mind. Few people are as synonymous with a role as Patrick Stewart with JLP.

In your analogy, it is more like you know a great hot dog place in Chicago that has been around for decades, then the original owner dies, his kids take over, and it is bought out by private equity. The hot dog obit would be as much for the original creator as the hot dog itself.

tracerbulletx 19 minutes ago | parent

A person's work is a valid part of their life, and for fans of a celebrity probably the only part they really have the ability to speak about other than they heard he was a nice guy. The way a work of fiction impacts your life is a valid reason to remember an actor fondly I think. I also think if a hotdog vendor died it would be ok to talk about how fucking good the hotdogs he made were and how much it meant to you to stop to get one after work or whatever.

shevy-java 29 minutes ago | parent

> Stewart, of course, was far more than Picard. He anchored the X-Men film franchise and was for decades a dynamo on stage.

Actually, Patrick's biggest impact, IMO, was via theatre. It's where his skills originated from. You can notice it in his performance - in Star Trek TNG, he had a stronger presence on the screen, without necessarily overacting. Jonathan Frakes was also an excellent actor, but Patrick was IMO better. His roles had a much stronger screen-presence.

In the wolverine franchise, he could not do as much as he did in Star Trek, and in Logan I noticed his health was getting worse, e. g. he looked increasingly frail. That was about ten years ago. I think his health was worse than he conveyed, with his somewhat surprising recent death really. You typically don't die as quickly from Alzheimer, so I guess there may have been some additional neurological issue.

Overall I think his role in Star Trek was the most impactful though. He and the others kind of resurrected Roddenberry's idea to some extent. (Roddenberry was more impacted from the cold war, so his views became a bit more outdated compared to the 1990s and beyond. But watch what Nichelle Nichols had to say here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSq_UIuxba8)

TFNA 6 minutes ago | parent

The Xavier character in Logan was literally written as decrepit, senescent and dying. It was the job of makeup among the crew to make Stewart look that way. I wouldn't draw any conclusions about Stewart's actual health at the time from that film.

kstenerud 20 minutes ago | parent

I think the most memorable of the Picard-focused TNG stories for me was "Tapestry". It really hammered home how much of one's potential is lost when one never takes risks.

W-Stool 18 minutes ago | parent

"Tapestry" changed how I looked at life.

aquova 8 minutes ago | parent

I've always felt very conflicted about the ending of that episode. That to Picard, a life as a reliable if ordinary astrophysicist on the Enterprise was literally a fate worse than death always shocked me, given that I could think of no greater opportunity in life than to be an ordinary astrophysicist on the Enterprise. I understand it was not what he personally strove for in his career, but I always felt a little awkward as he lambasted it.