Sad day.
His role as Picard defined what a good leader and authority figure should be like for me.
For me it was Optimus Prime first.
He was my childhood hero.
Damn. I knew he was old, but I didn’t know he was ill. Alzheimer’s and Lewy body dementia, apparently.
The article I read describes it as a “short battle,” so presumably he didn’t have it for long. Probably for the best for him not to have to drag it out, but still. Horrible news.
I’ve seen speculation that he chose to go out on his own terms.
Assisted dying is legal in California.
Multiple places reporting he died to “live music” surrounded by family.
Sounds planned
It’s the same thing Robin Williams had, so I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m glad he could go peacefully.
Yep, watched my Nan go through vascular dementia.
I get the diagnosis, i’m off to switzerland
I live in Oregon and it’s legal. We call it the “Death With Dignity Act”.
Where i am it’s illegal, but nitrogen is legal and I have access to duct tape.
Talked to a Swiss guy the other day about this very topic, it’s pretty hard to access if you’re not Swiss or very wealthy
Off a bridge it is then.
Send someone who campaigned against my right to go out on my own terms to clean my brains off of the pavement
Hopefully you can find better options domestically if the time comes. More and more places are legalizing it.
🇨🇦
I mean death can be fairly predictable even without assisted dying.
He had the resources to have fully in-home hospice care and to have his family stay with him. The medical staff probably saw the monitors and gathered the family.
Of course this doesn’t prove it wasn’t assisted death, just an alternative possibility
I would be… less sad if this is the case. My only wish for him is that he was cognizant when he went.
I would hope you have to be for assisted dying
Exactly, yeah.
I didn’t want to speculate out loud, but yeah I was wondering. I also live in a state that allows assisted dying. If the writing was on the wall and I knew I was about to start losing my faculties, I might choose that path to spare my loved ones having to watch me die one little piece at a time.
Damn. I knew he was old
Well, Star Trek NG first aired in 1987, and there he already looked fucking old!
a lesson for the kiddos. you can look old and still have a very long time left. it’s called mid-life for a reason =)
As a middle-aged bald, I needed this.
Picard looked so old the first time I watched TNG. The second time he was much younger than I remembered. Seems to appear younger to me every rewatch
Wee baby Seamus
He was only 47 when TNG first aired.
Eerily similar to Imurodic Syndrome which Captain Picard suffered from at the end of TNG.
those don’t kill quick
assisted suicide maybe
Or 86. Which can kill surprisingly fast, although not when you think about it.
sure but i’d expect cancer or heart attack / stroke or pneumonia
those are what get you at 86
Fuck. I grew up with TNG and a single mother. His performance as Picard was about the closest I had to a male role model for a long time. Goodbye, Sir.
That was exactly my origin story too. I’m now a physics professor at a world leading University in no small part because of him.
I want to write something to the family. No idea if there’s going to be a tribute book anywhere but I would love to contribute if so. I wrote in Hawking’s at Gonville and Caius…
Fedi server does NOT checks out 😏
Glad to hear you are teaching physics and not poetry.
There is a way keep and eye out and you’ll be able to.
Not the worst role model.
Same
Every obit will mention his roles as Picard and Professor X. Let’s celebrate his other awesome roles, like Uriel Septim VII in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, or just being himself as he read Shakespearean sonnets each night to the world during COVID lockdown. Or my personal favorite, his scene in Extras that still makes me laugh.
He was a terrific Gurney Halleck in Lynch’s Dune.
And honestly, from everything I’ve heard about the man, he was just an all-around lovely person. Caring and supportive of anyone who had the good fortune to know him.
A fun fact I enjoy about his role as Uriel Septim is that apparently he was given a large booklet (90 pages apparently) of notes on his character’s background, motivations, the world’s wider lore, as well as notes that linked into roles Stewart had played before. The Oblivion team were worried that they’d overload him with too much information, but Stewart was, in fact, delighted by all the details, and remarked that he wished all of his roles would give him so much to work with.
King Leodegrance in Excalibur
This was Patrick Stewart’s best role. Sterling from the 1995 film Jeffrey.
My favorite role of his was Ahab in the 1998 Moby Dick.
Whoa, now moby dick references in star trek first contact feels like an easter egg
Sejanus in I, Claudius.
If you sail the seas, track down Blunt Talk, he’s amazing in it.
Blunt Talk is deeply underrated.
Such an underrated show. I loved it!
When I was in college I had a Shakespeare course that required me to get through about one play per week and I was falling behind on the reading. However I learned that the campus AV room had tapes of Royal Shakespeare Company productions which you could check out. There’s not always a Hollywood movie of every Shakespeare play and not all the movies stick to the text. But the RSC ones did 100% and they were well made. They weren’t captures from live performances with an audience, more like soap-opera level of production values.
But guess who was in all of them.
Patrick Stewart got me through college.
Everyone seems to be forgetting he was Director Avery Bullock
“Some Of Use Spent The Late 80s & Early 90s Getting Laid, Smith.”
DJ Buttercup and you put respect on that name.
And that time he told us all that he’s uncircumcised and didn’t know.
They spent the entire voice acting budget on the guy that died immediately in Oblivion. Money well spent.
As king Ricard in Robin Hood: men in thighs. ‘It’s good to be the king’
Thank you for that! Never seen that before.
Also check the outtakes of him trying to get through the scene with Gervais not keeping it together https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JlLbZVxRH60
Or as Pigtrick the severed pig’s head in Bait.
RIP
Thanks, that actually helped with this.
His comedic chops were vast and underused.
It’s not used to feel good. Not for base pleasure, certainly. It’s a medicine to improve our lives, like penicillin or opium…
I can play the bass solo to My Generation.
I somehow thought he’d just live forever, I guess.
Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.
He will. In all of our memories.
Same. I genuinely cried when I found out. I’m not usually the type to look up to celebrities, but I always admired Patrick Stewart as an actor and a person. Knowing he’s gone makes the world feel a touch emptier.
Man, that sucks. An absolute legend. There are few people, fictional or real, who had a more profound influence on my outlook on life, humanity, and what’s good in this world than he did in his role as Captain Picard.
RIP, mon capitaine. You will be missed.
Time to start rewatching some thing to remind us what humanity could be and what it should be.
I do wish I was able to watch some of his legendary work on the stage and not just tv and movies.
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RIP Patrick. He had one hell of impact as an actor.
Not just an actor. He was one of the greatest human beings.
I will always remember him from Guardian organized sketch “what has European Convention on Human Rights ever done for us”.
What no? There is so many shitheads around his age (and some also MUUUUCH unhealthy looking) that could die and instead he dies?
Bro he was 86. It’s not like he was too young to go.
Shatner’s still alive, so it feels weird that Picard is gone.
And Shatner even had early-onset Alzheimer 20 years ago, though he called it mad cow disease to make it seem cooler
He did act right up through his final year of life, which is kinda wild.
Exactly this is natural but somehow does not seem to happen so often to disgusting people of similar ages
Specifically 1
yeah that person to start with
You just know.
There so many shithead out there that most of their deaths go unremarked.
And you just know that Ian McClellan is going to follow soon because spouses always tend to follow soon after. Damn.
If Ian goes, I go. Been feeding that man my life force for years. Im not ready for Gandalf to go
Don’t put that evil on us, Ricky…
? Patrick Stewards wife/widow is a young musician.
It’s a joke about how close they are/were. Their friendship was one of the most wholesome things to exist in this world and now Sir Patrick is gone. I hope someone is checking on Sir Ian.
Thank you for the explanation! The downvotes were like… not really helpful. g
Ian’s message is heartbreaking
Oh Captain! My Captain.
I can’t…
I had to put together a deck for work and they said “add some personal themes”. Mine was all Trek. He was leading every slide.
My stomach hurts. My heart hurts. I’m literally in tears.
I grew up with TNG. I used to watch it every evening with my dad. I’m not a big Trek fan but I absolutely loved that show when it was on. It’s what got me interested as a kid in science fiction and space.
I’m actually kind of gutted right now.
Wil Wheaton lost a man who was more of a father to him than his real dad.
Captain Picard was a fictional role model for me as a kid, since I had a shit upbringing. It hurts me to see him gone, so I can only imagine how hard it is for Will.
That’s one of the best things about TNG. The characters were decent, moral, caring, people who provided good role model for viewers. It’s great to know that the actors were also good, caring people who formed a tight knit family and took great care of the awkward teenage Wil.
This line in particular from Wil’s blog post hit me:
He always texted me back when I reached out to him directly, no matter what it was about, and he always — always — made me feel special.
Yeah that line melted my heart into a puddle. Poor man is probably going through it right now.
They’ll always be boldly going through their art.
in between sobs, as I choke back tears: “Shut up, Wesley.”
Hwil Hweaton is an ok guy.
Rest in peace, Captain.
He seems like a good guy to me, someone who isn’t afraid to take a stand and use his (small) platform to stand up for what he believes in, and he’ll admit to mistakes when he makes them. I also think he’s a great writer.
And, I don’t think he’s be such a good guy if it weren’t for his TNG castmates.
Damn.
That should be a cup of Earl Grey (hot)
my condolences u/The_Picard_Maneuver
