Commentary
When I was a child I was a big Star Trek fan. I mean a very big fan. I wore the uniforms, I went to conventions, and everything in my room was Star Trek-related.
So the news of the passing of actor Patrick Stewart, who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” brought back a lot of memories and hit me hard.
It got me thinking about our shared culture and how the stories we consume and that capture our imagination shape us as people and as a society. It also leaves me wondering how new technologies, particularly AI, are going to change these types of shared cultural experiences.
I grew up as an only child in a small town. I had a lot of time on my hands and had to use my imagination to occupy myself. Diving into the world of Star Trek helped me do that.
I can still vividly recall the exact episode and scene of the first time I was flipping through television channels and caught an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” mid-scene. From that moment on, I was hooked.
“Star Trek” episodes had exciting phaser gun fights and starship battles, with theatrical characters and compelling plots. This kept viewers entertained, young and old alike. But, more importantly, it offered eternal lessons about human nature.
The framing device of the show is quite brilliant and poignant. The starship Enterprise is primarily an exploration vessel that sets out to travel the farthest reaches of the galaxy. After setting out on their first mission, they encounter the all-powerful and immortal trickster Q, who considers humanity a deeply flawed species.
Q threatens to end all of humanity with the snap of a finger because of how rotten and war-like and uncivil people can be. Q says humans are beyond redemption. But Picard counters that he knows humans can be good and that learning to be good and choosing to be good is part of the human experience. He offers to prove it to Q, and the all-knowing being agrees to the wager. And so begins a seven-season television show that sets out with the bold task of redeeming humanity.
The question of what it means to be human is explored most powerfully by the crew members in their interactions with those who aren’t humans. The being Q, the android crew member Data, and the malicious collective the Borg are the recurring non-human characters that serve as the main plot devices for that journey.
What makes this otherwise whimsical journey through the stars so powerful and believable is the majestic, Shakespearean acting skills of Patrick Stewart, without which the show would have been a lesser product.
Within hours of the news of Stewart’s passing, I quickly saw how many people felt the same as I did in how much the show, and particularly the character of Picard, meant to them.
On social media, people of all ages and from all walks of life were posting their favourite scenes and moments. Picard is a straightforward leader, who places great expectations on others and himself. Integrity, virtue, bravery, honesty—these are just some of the words that describe his character.
Picard also possesses an ironclad sense of moral clarity, remaining steadfast in the pursuit of what he believes to be right and true. This is missing in much of today’s popular television and culture, where even the main characters and heroes can be duplicitous and morally questionable.
Picard was a role model and something of a TV father, although cut from a different cloth of many of the parents on family sitcoms of the 1980s and 1990s who were considered “America’s Mom” or “America’s Dad.”
These stories created a shared culture and shared values. That’s what was on display after news of Stewart’s death emerged and people reminisced over their favourite Picard scenes.
Is that still the case today? I’m not so sure. There is so much content out there—with many streaming services and cultural silos keeping us apart.
The all-time record for shared TV viewing experience was decades ago, with the series finale of “M*A*S*H” in 1983. It was viewed by 105 million Americans. Despite the fact that the American population is 50 percent larger today, that record has never been beaten. (In 1998, the finale of “Seinfeld” had 75 million viewers, and in 2004 the finale of “Friends” had 52 million viewers.)
Artificial intelligence now promises to create video content just for us, if we only prompt it with the right characters and scenario. It’s an intriguing idea, a movie for you and no one else to hold dear and cherish. What does it mean culturally, though?
Picard meant a lot to me, as I sat there all alone in my small-town basement. Then I met others and learned Picard also meant a lot to them. There’s a term for that. It’s called community.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
