Patrick Stewart managed to be lots of different things at once. He was a towering figure on stage. He was a literal superhero onscreen.
And, at times, he wasn’t above sending himself up. It also needs to be said that he was a bald man. And a pioneering one at that.
Nowhere was this more clear than during his stint on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Previously, Star Trek had been a kind of space-set action show, where the relentlessly virile Captain Kirk would beam down to new planets to either punch or get off with all the aliens there. But then came its successor, and Kirk was replaced by a nonviolent intellectual called Jean-Luc.
Worse still, he didn’t have any hair. But Patrick Stewart made it work. Not only was his cool temperament a nice change of pace from the 1960s take, but his sex appeal was undeniable.
Indeed, in 1992 TV Guide readers voted him television’s “most bodacious” man. Stewart received 54% of the vote, putting him ahead of much hairier contenders including Luke Perry and Burt Reynolds. Not that he didn’t have his critics.
When Picard’s casting was announced to the world, it is said that a reporter complained to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry that it didn’t make any sense. After all, the show was set in a future where space travel and teleportation were accepted as the norm, so wouldn’t it stand to reason that humanity would have created a cure for male pattern baldness? According to Stewart, Roddenberry’s response was that, by the 24th century, humanity will have evolved to the point where it no longer cares about baldness.
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