Captain Jean-Luc Picard stands on the bridge of the USS Enterprise in full uniform, holding a hat and a cane. Then, he breaks into song, working through the alphabet one letter at a time with a corresponding compliment, and dances.
Patrick Stewart filmed the performance in 1991 as a surprise for Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, reportedly for his 70th birthday. It was never meant for public eyes, but it eventually surfaced as an extra on the Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 5 DVD in 2002, and fans have been passing it around ever since.
It’s circulating again now. Stewart died on October 28th at his home in Los Angeles at 86, after what his spokesperson described as “a brief struggle with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia.”
What makes the clip more interesting than a goofy outtake is that it was made for Roddenberry, who actually didn’t want to cast Stewart as Picard. Apparently, he hadn’t pictured a classically trained, bald British stage actor as his new captain. Stewart said for decades that somewhere in Paramount’s archives is a note Roddenberry wrote saying he never wanted to hear Stewart’s name mentioned again.
In 2020, Stewart told The Hollywood Reporter that even after he got the part, Roddenberry would visit the set and watch him, and Stewart could tell he was wondering what this guy was doing in his show.
Yet after four seasons in, Stewart stood on the set Roddenberry built and serenaded him anyway.
Roddenberry died in October 1991, a couple of months after that birthday. In his 2023 memoir, Making It So, Stewart wrote that he was “deeply saddened” by the loss, and that as the show went on, he found himself missing Roddenberry’s presence.
