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L.I. Underhill is a media critic and historian specializing in pop culture, with a focus on science fiction (especially Star Trek) and video games. Their projects include a critical history of Star Trek told through the narrative of a war in time, a “heretical” history of The Legend of Zelda series and a literary postmodern reading of Jim Davis' Garfield.

6 Comments

  1. Glenn
    March 2, 2015 @ 9:31 am

    Considering that the TNG movies dedicated themselves to limp action plots for Picard (plus some gestures toward a love interest in First Contact and a ham-fisted love interest in Insurrection), at the expense of the more thoughtful character work he got more often on the television show when they didn't need Stewart to sign back on nearly as often, I really doubt he was joking about the shooting and screwing.

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  2. Josh Marsfelder
    March 2, 2015 @ 10:17 am

    You do make a good point about the TNG movies, and that's a theme I'll have to revisit and re-examine when I get to Star Trek Insurrection, which is where I believe a lot of this stuff really comes to light.

    Although, at least in the context of Star Trek First Contact, I think that particular flick can be explained away very easily with the hypothesis that the creative team didn't think Star Trek had beaten Moby-Dick into the ground enough already.

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  3. Ross
    March 2, 2015 @ 2:23 pm

    Given the public persona Stewart's been slowly adopting in the years since TNG-era trek petered out, it seems possible that he could in fact be both joking and also completely mean it.

    (Am I the only one who really wants to see Patrick Stewart make a Leslie Neilsen-style late-career 180 and become best known as a comic actor?)

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  4. Josh Marsfelder
    March 2, 2015 @ 2:57 pm

    Not at all: That would be amazing.

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  5. Daru
    March 2, 2015 @ 10:47 pm

    "Behr retooled the script into a fluffy Indiana Jones romp with time travel and girls-of-the-week. Roddenberry's major objection was, I kid you not, that Captain Picard was John Wayne and Behr's story wouldn't work because John Wayne doesn't fear anything and we wouldn't have those kinds of self-doubts in the 24th century."

    Man if Roddenberry thought that he was way out of touch. What a ridiculous idea, Picard as John Wayne! I thought when I loaded up the page and Wayne's photo there that that there was a joke coming, and I can't stand Westerns.

    It's a shame about the Captain's Holiday, as the actor who played Vash certainly did so with a lot of charisma I thought. Maybe there could have been a better story that didn't make such a fool of Picard's character, but also allowed the "socially awkward" and "romantic" aspects to come out to play.

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  6. Daru
    March 2, 2015 @ 10:48 pm

    Agreed that would be utterly wonderful.

    Reply

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