Actor Patrick Stewart enthralled Star Trek fans on Saturday by announcing that he will resume his role as Jean-Luc Picard in a new series of the saga. The 78-year-old British actor said he will once again represent the iconic role of the Enterprise ship’s capitan during a surprise appearance at the annual Star Trek convention in Las Vegas.
“It is an unexpected but delightful surprise to find myself excited and invigorated to be returning to Jean-Luc Picard and to explore new dimensions within him.” he added amid shouts of celebration: “He may not and I stress may not be a captain anymore, he may not be there Jean-Luc that you recognize and know so well. It may be a very different individual. Someone who has been changed by his experiences. 20 years with a past which is more or less exactly the time between the thirty last movie nemesis and today. We have no scripts as yet, we’re just talking talking, talking storylines.”
The new series, which will be aired on the CBS All Access streaming service, will focus on Picard’s life after Star Trek: The Next Generation. That series was developed between 1987 and 1994, had 178 episodes and generated four films, the last in 2002. CBS and producer Alex Kurtzman also worked on three other Star Trek series apart from the second season of Discovery for 2019, and the four Short Trek shorts which were 10 and 15 minutes about specific characters from that series and will be released this fall. One will be based on the Starfleet Academy, written by Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz (Gossip Girl, Runaways); another miniseries which will encompass the plot of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and the other will be animated, according to Variety magazine. Kurtzman, who relaunched the film universe with JJ Abrams, has an exclusive five-year contract with the production company.
“I will always be very proud to have been a part of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but when we wrapped that final movie in the spring of 2002, I truly felt my time with Star Trek had run its natural course,” said Stewart, also known as Charles Xavier from the X-men movies. “it has been humbling to hear stories about how The Next Generation brought people comfort, saw them through difficult periods in their lives or how the example of Jean-Luc inspired so many to follow in his footsteps, pursuing science, exploration and leadership,” he said.
#REDAlert. The time has come to Make it so! @SirPatStew will be returning to his iconic role as Jean-Luc Picard in a new #CBSAllAccess #StarTrek series that tells the story of the next chapter in Picard’s life #STLV #MakeItSo pic.twitter.com/gDaJBS0SVf
— Star Trek (@StarTrek) August 4, 2018
It is an unexpected but delightful surprise to find myself excited and invigorated to be returning to Jean-Luc Picard and to explore new dimensions within him. Read my full statement in the photo. #StarTrek @cbsallaccess Photo: @shervinfoto pic.twitter.com/8Ynuj3RBNm
— Patrick Stewart (@SirPatStew) August 4, 2018
“I feel I’m ready to return to him for the same reason – to research and experience what comforting and reforming light he might shine on these often very dark times,” he said. Star Trek, a multi-million dollar cultural phenomenon, turned 50 in 2016. The details of the new series, which will also be produced and written by Pulitzer-winning novelist Michael Chabon (who has also scripted one of Discovery’s shorts), including its title or release date, remain a secret.
In 2017 CBS (outside of the US can be found on Netflix) launched Star Trek Discovery, a series that works as a prequel to everything previously told in the original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space 9 (in which the pilot Stewart also had a cameo) and Voyager. The second season of Discovery will reintroduce, as well, the Captain of the first pilot episode that Gene Roddenberry wrote in 1965: Pike, now played by Anson Mount and who will be accompanied by a young Spock. Paramount also works on the fourteenth film of the saga, directed for the first time by a woman, SJ Clarkson, and a script written by Quentin Tarantino.
