Star Trek fans never doubted how much love the community had for Patrick Stewart, who died Wednesday at the age of 86. But I experienced that love firsthand. Back in 2021, my husband, Rob, dressed as Captain Jean-Luc Picard for Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, and the adulation he received simply for cosplaying Stewart’s beloved character was overwhelming.
Our planning was not complicated. Looking for a suit that would go with his shaved head and being a big fan of the show, it made sense for him to wear a red and black Star Trek uniform shirt, put on a combadge and four pips to denote the Starfleet rank of captain, and step into some black shoes. Except for his glasses (and mask since this was 2021, the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic), it was a terribly accurate look.
Read more: Patrick Stewart, who gracefully steered Star Trek into its next generation, has died at the age of 86
Once we got to the Seattle Convention Center for the con, it was as if the real Patrick Stewart had shown up. The respect that Stewart built up for Picard transferred seamlessly to his lookalike. Just walking around with Rob made me feel like a celebrity escort. We could not travel more than a few feet without someone noticing and calling out to him, always with joy, always with respect.
“Hey, Captain! Captain!”
“Jean-Luc!”
“Make it so, sir!”
“Dedication!”
“Darmok and Jalad in Tanagra!”
Rob isn’t even wearing costume-authentic black pants. In a hurry to get out the door and not expecting this level of attention, he just pulled on his jeans. That led to some of the funnier comments.
“Hey Captain! Was it everyday on the bridge?”
Comic Con attendees go all out. There were incredibly realistic characters from Star Wars, Pokemon creatures, groups of friends dressed as The Incredibles, at least five Spider-Men, the Doctor from Doctor Who and exquisite, elaborate characters from anime. Many, many people have put more time, money and sweat equity into their costumes than we have, but few have received such a universally impressive reception.
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Other Star Trek characters were also portrayed, sure. Two separate Will Rikers, Picard’s trusted “Number One”, drove up to us at different times to take pictures with their captain. A woman cosplaying as Kathryn Janeway, captain of the USS Voyager from Star Trek: Voyager, also poses with Rob for a two-captain photo.
And then they saw us. A group of Comic Con attendees disguised as the Borg, the evil cyborgs who take Picard hostage to assimilate him and temporarily turn him into the Locutus of the Borg.
These Borg didn’t throw their costumes together at the last minute. They could walk off a Hollywood set. They had built-in working lights on their outfits, ocular and cranial “implants”, corpse-like facial makeup, weapons and cybernetic tools. Of the Borgs, there were three Turkish men and one woman. The woman played the Borg Queen, her bald head covered in white make-up, elegant and frightening.
The minute the Borg saw Rob’s Picard in the convention center audience, they came after him. Resistance, as they say in the show, was futile.
Fortunately, they were a funnier sort than the TV Borg, and after a joke about his casual-day jeans, they whisked him away to walk around as a group and snap photos.
These Borg were so realistic that I felt a little unnerved the whole time he was gone – and relieved when they returned him unharmed, thanked us, waved and went on their way. I’m sure there were other serendipitous meetups between cosplayers at the convention, but this was amazing to see and even more so to be a small part of.
We have been to Emerald City Comic Con other times. Our daughter has cosplayed a variety of characters, and Rob once acted as Dr. Stone went, a science prodigy with green-tipped white hair (which required a wig). Famous people also enjoyed this cosplay, and he was also asked to pose for photos.
But the pure love we felt when he was dressed as Captain Picard was like nothing I had ever felt before. Since his death, I have seen Stewart called a generation space father, and it is true. People at the convention were happy to see their space dad, even if only a doppelgänger. It took us to an unexpected peak on that cold December day in 2021.
In the famous Star Trek: Next Generation episode Darmok, Picard is trapped on a planet with the Tamarian captain Dathon. They cannot understand each other. The entire Tamarian language is constructed of mythological and historical metaphors, none of which Picard knows
Little by little, Picard begins to understand. He finds that one of the most common phrases, “Darmok and Jalad in Tanagra!” References Darmok and Jalad, warriors who united on the island of Tanagra and eventually became friends, just like him and Dathon.
But there’s another phrase I’ve been thinking about lately. “The Kiazi children, their faces wet.” An online Tamarian dictionary translates it as “to lower the severity of a perceived injury.”
There is no downplay this loss. Today we are all Kiazi’s children, our faces wet.
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