r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/[deleted] • 17h ago

Image Patrick Stewart signed the 6 years contract of Star Trek because he thought the show would fail

[removed]

603 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

62 comments sorted by

257

u/Casual_hex_ 17h ago edited 17h ago

Well it undoubtedly largely succeeded because of him. Such a great actor/character!

74

u/whatproblems 17h ago

yeah he literally saved/made the show

69

u/T0Rtur3 17h ago

I mean, you gotta give credit to others. Brent Spiner and Michael Dorn played their parts incredibly well. Yeah, Stewart did a phenomenal job, but that was in part to the rest of the cast.

38

u/BokeTsukkomi 17h ago

IMHO the whole cast is fantastic. Except Wesley, he was an asshole. 

13

u/GIC68 17h ago

I read somewhere that Roddenberry designed the Wesley character after himself (or what he wanted to be at that age).

12

u/Briglin 16h ago

Shutup Wesley

4

u/BluePantherFIN 15h ago

Not as bad as Neelix in Voyager. I still feel he was totally useless extra for the series.

3

u/MtnMaiden 15h ago

An alien cook ..igh

2

u/sartres-shart 14h ago edited 14h ago

Yep doing a rewatch of voyager and if the episode starts with neelix I'll fast forward till the star trek uniforms show up. If the episode is focused on him I'll skip it altogether.

3

u/T0Rtur3 17h ago

Yes. I mentioned them specifically because their roles were very A-typical.

3

u/romedo 17h ago

Well Wesley was the character, so did you find the character ´to be an asshole or is it Wil Wheaton you think did not portray Wesley well enough?

12

u/NihilistAU 17h ago

Yes

4

u/romedo 16h ago

thx I needed that clarity...

6

u/McLeod3577 15h ago

Whil Wheaton

2

u/FUKENA_DOT_COM 15h ago

Why are you putting so much emphasis on the H?

2

u/McLeod3577 14h ago

Family Guy.. the way Stewie says it. Actually more like Hwill Hweaton

1

u/BokeTsukkomi 16h ago

Sorry wasn't clear. I meant Wesley, not Wil Wheaton

5

u/sjbluebirds 17h ago

I used to contribute to alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die

15

u/big_guyforyou 17h ago

i'm in a private subreddit that wil wheaton is a part of. he doesn't how up very much, but when he does, we all love to give him shit for ruining star wars

6

u/sjbluebirds 17h ago

That's brilliant.

2

u/LordOfDarkHearts 16h ago

You are mean, but you are also right to do that

-1

u/GIC68 17h ago

Star WARS?

14

u/big_guyforyou 17h ago

he knows what he did

-1

u/seekAr 16h ago

Nope Wesley was awesome.

4

u/TheBadGuyBelow 16h ago

Michael Dorn really shined once he got to Deep Space Nine. Worf had much more to do at that point.

4

u/Dissident_Acts 17h ago

Cannot disagree. Now his characterization of Captain Picard is the core for the lore of what? How many Trek shows and movies? Without considering all of his other accolades, he would be a giant in every sense. Considering all those other efforts, a man of the arts for the ages.

1

u/No-Community- 17h ago

This exactly !!

1

u/Dissident_Acts 17h ago

I hope you have seen him in as many things as i have, especially unexpectedly. He's a treasure.

74

u/ILiveMyBrokenDreams 17h ago

Honestly I don't think most of us expected it to be successful. I didn't watch it at the time as I was pretty young, but I remember people literally laughing at the idea of rebooting Star Trek with a new cast.

37

u/Artistic_Worker_5138 17h ago

Yeah I think now when you hear Star Trek, it’s the one with Stewart that people are thinking about, rather than one with Shatner and Nimoy.

18

u/TheGrumpySnail2 17h ago

Having watched very little of either, I think of the original and somewhat campy and silly while TNG I think of as "the good one." That's the vibe I get from cultural osmosis, with no opinion of my own.

7

u/LexTheGayOtter 17h ago

TNG leaned heavily into campiness early on, especially in season 1

1

u/Darmok_und_Salat 16h ago

Can you explain "campiness"? Never heard that term

1

u/UnpopularCrayon 15h ago

Much of Season 1 were scripts written for the original show.

2

u/LexTheGayOtter 15h ago

Credit where its due season 1 made me burst out laughing more than once on my recent first watch

1

u/UnpopularCrayon 15h ago

I find most of them enjoyable. The characters aren't well developed, but I actually think a lot of the premises of those early episodes were interesting sci-fi.

1

u/LexTheGayOtter 15h ago

I do find it annoying that every time we see worf in combat in s1 its him getting his arse handed to him

1

u/UnpopularCrayon 15h ago

Yeah, he didn't learn how to fight until season 3. He took some martial arts classes that summer or something I guess 😂

5

u/Worried-Pick4848 15h ago

This kind of reboot almost NEVER works. They just happened to find a perfect storm of talent for TNG.

2

u/JetBrink 15h ago

30 years later and that's what the "fans" still do every time there's new content

30

u/BloodyRightToe 17h ago

Hoisted on his own Picard

5

u/2x4x93 16h ago

I'm not falling into that trap

0

u/kpeterson159 15h ago

Temba, his arms wide

7

u/ahenobarbus_horse 17h ago

A great decision that only cynicism could produce.

6

u/Hawkeye2024 17h ago

First season was really bad but it developed

6

u/NMMBPodcast 15h ago

Rich Evans on Red Letter Media once summed the first series up really well. Made in the 80s with some scripts from the 60s, written by guys born in the 20s.

1

u/pm_me_ur_demotape 15h ago

Wasn't the first series from the 60s? And the Next Generation was the 90s. Which one was the 80s?

3

u/NMMBPodcast 15h ago

The original series was in the 60s but Next Generation came out in '87. Some of the scripts for written for the original series that weren't realised at the time were repurposed for Next Gen.

5

u/EgotisticalTL 16h ago

A fantastic actor, but people forget how much he acted like a "this show is beneath me" primadonna during the first few seasons.

3

u/StreetsAhead123 14h ago

That show should be a mandatory watch. Not that you can force people to understand it but it wouldn’t hurt. 

3

u/akademmy 16h ago

And yet he took the role VERY seriously.

(thank god)

3

u/Darmok_und_Salat 16h ago

I can highly recommend his biography "Making it so" , where he mentioned this.

3

u/JetBrink 15h ago

I think he lived out of a suitcase and didn't unpack for like 6 months because he thought it would fail at launch.

4

u/jontysafe 17h ago

I was sceptical on first showing but after a few episodes the show just won’t me over with the whole team and the writers. John De Lancy as Q was epically ‘hammy’.

2

u/Worried-Pick4848 15h ago

The lion's share of the top scenes in TNG involved giving Sir Pat a room and letting him own it.

6

u/Gregorygregory888888 17h ago edited 17h ago

And has this been shown to be fact? EDIT. Had I waited 30 more seconds I would have seen this added. I did think he was an odd character for the show but he turned out to be a great lead.

25

u/No-Community- 17h ago

“I remember people telling me not to worry about signing a six-year contract. They said, ‘You’ll be lucky to make it through the first season,’” recalled Stewart, who was initially reluctant to sign himself up to the iconic series.

“You cannot revive an iconic series, that’s what they told us,” he continued. “I was told, ‘Get a plane ticket, come over here, do the show, make some money for the first time in your life”

11

u/Gregorygregory888888 17h ago

I guess he proved them wrong.