The prospect raises its head at the end of the series’ third season, when Commander Riker orders an attack on a Borg starship with his assimilated captain aboard. Riker’s command – “Fire” – remains one of television’s greatest cliffhangers. Why? Because there was a genuine sense of jeopardy; a sense that the future of TNG might be with the swashbuckling Captain Riker at the helm of the USS Enterprise-D, rather than the austere Captain Picard.
Patrick Stewart’s superlative performance is the heart of the series. His Picard is strange and magnetic: a beguiling combination of gravitas and cold authority, titanic intellect and emotional withdrawal. He’s a diplomat, an arbitrator, a professional. He’s a boss you respect, admire and want to impress, but who stands aloof, just out of reach. Other characters might be more immediately compelling, but the enigmatic Jean-Luc Picard has incomparable depth.
Q Who is TNG’s best Q-centric episode. As the series progresses, the character becomes more benign: an irritating prankster rather than an outright villain. Here, though, he’s still at his malevolent best, sending the Enterprise-D hurtling across the galaxy and into its first confrontation with the Borg.
This gives Stewart something interesting to work with: Picard’s arrogance. There’s an important caveat here: Picard isn’t arrogant, per se. But he does have a certain arrogance. He believes in absolutes, absolutely. He unshakeably believes in Starfleet’s moral and practical worldview. As he tells Q: “Your help is not required.” Q sets out to prove him wrong, and does so with drama and glee.
Sarek: season 3, episode 23
In Sarek, Mark Lenard reprises his role as Spock’s father.
We watch Picard himself break down, sobbing, furious, completely unable to control his emotions. We’re so used to the captain’s composure that watching it collapse is shocking. Stewart delivers it masterfully.
Family: season 4, episode 2
Picking up in the aftermath of Picard’s assimilation by the Borg, the episode sees him return to Earth to spend time with his brother, Robert, at their family vineyard. Here, we see him outside the familiar structures of Starfleet: not as a Starfleet captain, but as a normal person, with a normal family. And like any normal family, not everything’s easy. Picard and Robert have a difficult relationship. Robert resents his brother’s success, while Jean-Luc is jealous of the simplicity of Robert’s life and his family.
The two eventually reconcile as Picard begins to confront the guilt and shame he feels over what he was forced to do while assimilated. His vulnerability has such an impact because Stewart has done so much to establish his apparent invulnerability. It’s the contrast that makes the episode – and the performance – so memorable.
The episode introduces the Cardassians and reveals that O’Brien has a fraught history with them. It explores loyalty, trauma and unacknowledged prejudice. It’s a great episode, with a great performance from Meaney.
The Drumhead: season 4, episode 21
The Drumhead sees the Enterprise-D embroiled in an investigation into suspected sabotage and conspiracy. There’s absolutely no action in the episode, directed brilliantly by Jonathan Frakes, and the tension is entirely rooted in character drama.
“The first time any man’s freedom is trodden on, we’re all damaged.”
The Inner Light: season 5, episode 25
One of the quirks of this list is that these episodes aren’t entirely representative of Captain Picard. In a typical episode of TNG, he cuts an isolated, intimidating, authoritative figure. He’s restrained and calculating. These episodes give Stewart some of his best material by offering a contrast.
Stewart’s achievement is to make Kamin both recognisably Picard and a man in his own right. The captain’s familiar traits are still there, but we see them expressed across a life far removed from the Enterprise. It’s poignant and affecting: great science fiction, carried by the weight of Stewart’s performance.
This is instantly notable, because it gives Stewart so much new material to work with. Firstly, it takes Picard off the Enterprise-D: away from the captain’s chair that he so effortlessly occupies. Secondly, it effectively turns him into a secret agent. Both of these changes are unnatural to Picard, and Stewart channels that unease perfectly.
Stripped naked, powerless, he becomes a pitiable figure, completely vulnerable to another’s whims. Previously, whenever we’ve seen Picard in danger, he’s always met it with stoic steel. Watching that fray is genuinely distressing. Stewart’s depiction of Picard pushed to – and beyond – his limits is incredible. It’s one of the defining episodes of the Picard canon.
Tapestry: season 6, episode 15
Picard is dying on an operating table, and Q – here in his increasingly benevolent form – offers him a chance to return to his youth and correct his regrets. What Picard comes to realise is that his regrets are central to who he is. Changing those decisions would mean pulling out a thread from the greater tapestry of his life.
It’s not a treatise on living without regret, but more an invitation to acknowledge that we are who are we because of our mistakes. And if you’re not happy with your lot in life? You have the power to act.
Lessons: season 6, episode 19
But when a new science officer boards the ship – one who looks incredibly like Crusher, it has to be said – Picard’s instincts about his romantic boundaries are put to the test.
It’s an important moment in the history of Picard: a justification for his emotional detachment from his crew, more than anything, but also a reminder that beneath the red Starfleet uniform is a man with a heart – albeit a mechanical one.
View Green Video on the source websiteAll Good Things...: season 7, episodes 25 and 26
But none of these (no, not even Star Trek: First Contact) ever felt quite the same. Partly, that’s because the character of Picard changed so much. On the big screen, Picard took on an energetic, aggressive action-hero role. The character changed, too, in the much-maligned Star Trek: Picard, becoming gushing and emotional. None of these are negative traits. But they felt incongruous with Picard: the character who had become so firmly established across nearly 180 episodes of television.
And make no mistake: it is a perfect ending, with Picard at its centre. TNG is an ensemble series, but it inevitably orbits its captain. The finale makes that literal narrative focus explicit, leaving him unstuck in time, slipping between his past, present and possible future.
Star Trek is available to stream on Paramount+ in March 2027.
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