Patrick Stewart' range and portrayal of Picard.
Starting to wonder if I'm alone I'm thinking PS has lost some of the presence and gravitas that made Picard so special on screen. He seems frail, weak and disinterested and his almost slurred speech lacks power and authority. Specifically in regard to his age, I've seen PS in interviews and other media where he gives a much more spirited performance. I just feel like this can't possibly be the same stoic and self assured character from TNG. Any thoughts?
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I've written about this before in my defence of seasons 1 and 2, but I'll reiterate here, slightly differently.
That's life. And that's the point of the show. You are not who you were 35 years ago, or 22 years ago. Patrick Stewart has said in many interviews that the reason he came back to the role is because he wanted to explore how time and aging changed Picard, because he'd gotten to the point in life where he could reflect on who he was during TNG and see how much he had personally changed.
If you are feeling a pang of "This is not my Picard, he's lost a step, he's not as self-serious as he used to, he's making questionable decisions," well...yeah, that's the point. And the same is true of the rest of the crew. They've all gone away and lived decades of their lives off screen.
We, in the fandom, also have a very weird perspective on things, because the old shows are a part of our present, as well as our past. That gives us a very unnatural sense of the "jump" in the characters.
For those of us old enough to have watched our parents' generation age from the prime of adulthood into old age, we know there is both pain and grace in the toll time extracts from us mortals. With each passing year comes some new frailty, or some slip in memory. They go from providers and protectors to needing care themselves. Hopefully, however, we also see in old age some wisdom, some acceptance, and a re-prioritization of what really matters.
Now, imagine if every week we watched 30 year old home movies of those elderly loved ones, and then, one day after years of absence, they show up at our homes, aged, worn, changed. We may barely recognize them.
Yes, this is a different Picard. Yes, there's pain in accepting that both Patrick Stewart and Picard are older men who've changed with time and don't have the same vigor we remember. I would argue, however, that making him the same character as in TNG, or the movies, would ring so unbelievable and hollow that it would come across as absurd and sad.
) and my only drawback was the absolute TEASE of that ending!
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