Patrick Stewart’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard beamed into a dull 1990s Ireland when nerds needed him most

If you were a geeky teenager in early 1990s Ireland, then Patrick Stewart and Star Trek: The Next Generation will have beamed into your life at precisely the right moment.

How grey and dull Ireland was at that moment – and what a dash Stewart cut as The Next Generation (TNG) materialised one random Saturday evening in 1990, played on by that stirring theme tune and all ablaze with its whizz-bang special effects.

These were tough times for dorks. At school you would be picked on and ridiculed – and that was just the teachers (at least it was in my case). Even if people weren’t laughing at you, they had no idea what you were banging on about when you talked about the Lord of the Rings or Ursula Le Guin. You were out there all alone in a void of nerd-dom.

And then came Stewart’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard, at the helm of the shiny, slimline Enterprise-D – a vessel so sleek and minimalist it looked fabulous even when the Borg were trying to smash it to smithereens.

Stewart, who has died at 86, brought something new to science fiction – dignity and decorum. Until then, sci-fi on the telly had arrived slathered in cheese. Yes, we all loved the original Star Trek – but you did have to make peace with William Shatner’s overcooked acting. And sure, we adored Doctor Who – but even as 10-year-olds, we could tell the monsters were made of pipe cleaner and bin bags.

TNG was different – it looked great, and Jean-Luc Picard excelled as the stern yet understanding commander you could imagine real people following into a sticky situation. He was rational and even-tempered, and his voice had the quality of carved granite. When he said “make it so”, you knew his crew would jump to obey.

What an aura he brought. Even if many Star Trek fans in Ireland could not at that time have told you the difference between Bosco and Macbeth, there was no mistaking his thespian superpowers – every time Picard ordered a “tea, earl grey, hot” from the Replicator in his quarters, it was as if he was delivering a soliloquy at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Stewart was 46 when he was cast as Picard and from the start had a clear understanding that the character’s gravitas as a Starfleet captain was bound up in his decades of experience as an actor. “The fact is all of those years in Royal Shakespeare Company – playing all those kings, emperors, princes and tragic heroes – were nothing but preparation for sitting in the captain’s chair of the Enterprise,” Stewart said.

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That he was prepared to give his best to science fiction was more novel than we might think today, when big names jostle to be in the next Marvel caper or Game of Thrones spin-off. Back then, many actors of Stewart’s stature would have thought sci-fi beneath them.

Can you imagine Richard Burton in Doctor Who? Anthony Hopkins (future Marvel star) guest-starring in The Six Million Dollar Man? But Stewart appreciated that, if he was going to do Star Trek, then he had to accept it, and its audience, at face value. This was significant as it meant that no matter how ludicrous Next Generation’s storylines (and they could be silly, especially at the start), you could count on Stewart to elevate the material.

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Some celebrity deaths hit harder than others – and for Trekkies Stewart’s is one such case. He took Star Trek seriously at a time when few outside the fan base did – and for that, all of us geeks, no matter where in the galaxy we reside, owe him an enormous debt. Let us all together raise a cup of “tea, earl grey, hot” in his memory.