From Chris Snellgrove
| Published
One of the greatest architects of the Golden Age of Star Trek was Ronald Moore, a young writer who came on board The next generation in season third and helped the franchise for a decade. Nowadays he is best known as a show runner for the excellent awareness Battlestar Galactica Restart series, but when his script for “The Bonding” brought him to TNG, he was only a young and inexperienced writer. And when he visited the set during shooting, Patrick Stewart Ronald Moore gave shocking advice: Captain Picard had to get in the fights more often in future scripts and put it more often.
Patrick Stewart & Ronald Moore
Of course, part of what Patrick Stewart’s advice on Ronald Moore makes so funny that the fans consider the older man to be worthy, formally … basically speaking the embodiment of Picard himself, right down to his formal way. Moore, however, discovered how informally the Sci-fi Icon could be when he heard Stewart’s funny advice for future scripts from Stewart: “Just think of one thing … The captain does not do enough or shoot in this series.”
In order to make things even more funny, this was actually the first time that is that Patrick Stewart And Ronald Moore had ever met. The young writer remembered that the actor was “very gracious and friendly when he learned that I had written (“ The Bonding ”), and Stewart wanted to know whether Moore wrote another episode. When Moore started describing his next script (“Defecting”), Stewart seemed to be interested in the action, but soon reminded the writer that Picard had to put it more often and got into further fights.
Patrick Stewart then turned and went away from Ronald Moore after dropping this amusing advice, and we like to believe that he was fully aware of how shocking these words came from Captain Picard’s mouth. Despite the efforts of the actor, the young writer with whom he spoke was anything but shocked. Moore remembered the story and came to a conclusion that many fans would agree: “This is the captain of the Enterprise when they ask me.”
Now we know what you ask: Has Patrick Stewart get his wish and has Ronald Moore ensured that Picard has more action scenes both in and outside the bedroom? Surprisingly yes: Moore wrote “Tapestry”, the famous flashback episode to Picard’s Starfleet Academy Days. Although this is not the sexieste episode in Trek history, we can flirt the future captain with several women and (thanks to the reality waring forces from Q), we can finally seal the deal with Marta, a former classmate for which he always contained secret feelings.
And thanks to Ronald Moore, Patrick Stewart received many additional action scenes on the screen for Picard: The author wrote both “Gambit” (in which Picard a group of reckless mercenaries and “chain of the command” (in which Picard handed over after he was handed over to a longer torture after being recorded on a top secret spy mission). Most Klingon episodes from TNG (which proved that the captain was not intimidated by threats of warrior with half of his years and his double strength) and wrote “All Good Things” (the series finale when a time of Jumping Picard has to save the entire universe).
At first glance, Patrick Stewart’s advice on Ronald Moore seems to be a bit youthful, and some fans think Tng Films. However, while we look at the list of Moore scripts that have taken into account the actor’s request, we can note that these are some of the best episodes of the entire series. And maybe Stewart knew something about his character early on that none of us would have suspected: Picard is really at its best if he can channel his inner James T. Kirk.
