Making it so: Shakespeare, Star Trek and Saying The Thing – in honour of Sir Patrick Stewart

Image: Shutterstock

The only words I said to him were ‘Thank you’. But they were the right words.

I’ve never been much of an autograph hunter. Socially and professionally I love meeting artists I’ve admired, but if it’s not as a colleague or collaborator, not in the spirit of creating something, perhaps it’s my ego that resists. There are exceptions though, and what I mainly remember from the Waiting For Godot stage door is how he looked back at me, how I felt him recognising how much was behind those two words, and how he looked at me as he said them back. I felt him knowing what they contained. Why wouldn’t he? They’re not just mine.

Since last night’s announcement of the death of Sir Patrick Stewart, the tributes have been as varied as they are consistent. Among all I’ve read and watched so far this from his friend and co-star Sir Ian McKellan:

“Before everything else, Patrick was defined by being born and bred in Yorkshire… you could hear it in his accented voice and in the stern honesty with which he told you what he thought and felt. Yorkshiremen have no truck with half-truths or avoidance of big issues. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to admire and, in my case, love.”

Perhaps this one reaches deepest because, for so long, those central virtues I admired in him I hadn’t learnt to admire in myself.

I took as naivety and intolerance or lack of resilience my wish to speak what I felt in order to solve problems through understanding and acknowledging them.

Luckily, I had Shakespeare and Star Trek.

As did he. Patrick Stewart talked about how growing up in a home environment with a physically violent father was part of feeling safe onstage, finding your power in communicating humanity’s deepest truths to the best of your abilities. Whatever the art in which we find our power, the good we do there is what allows us to do even more good offstage. Shakespeare and Star Trek give us words and faces for human potential; remind us however far we travel physically is only as meaningful as how far we’re prepared to travel inward.

Five years ago I presented a mini-series for Starburst called The E.I. of Sci-fi and my first stop was Star Trek: Insurrection. The film, like 2020 itself on which the episode reflected, confronted us with our relationship with time: how and why to resist only counting only what has gone; how we do the most good when we believe the time we have ahead of us is as real and meaningful as the time that’s behind us. Normally I call this ‘Say The Thing’, but perhaps I felt it first when I heard ‘Make it so’:

From Sir Patrick Stewart’s instagram:

‘In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Fund and Alzheimer’s Foundation of America Caregiver Resources:

alzresearch.org/giving

alzfdn.org/donate