Star Trek: TNG: Patrick Stewart’s Agent Thought It Would Only Last 12 Episodes – Looper

As any “Star Trek” fan knows, “The Next Generation” went on to run for seven full seasons during its late-’80s, early-’90s heyday, with Patrick Stewart logging a whopping 176 episodes in the Captain’s chair of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Just for point of reference, that’s almost 100 episodes more than William Shatner racked up on the original “Star Trek” series. Stewart would, of course, also reprise the role of Jean-Luc Picard in four feature length “The Next Generation” movies, appearing in an episode of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” and voice the character in numerous video games.

To the surprise of many, Stewart even returned to his old Starfleet stomping grounds in 2020 when Paramount was prepping their streaming hit “Star Trek: Picard.” As Stewart admitted on The Graham Norton Show that same year, he was as surprised as anyone about the return as he’d been quite vocal about not going back to play Picard again. That was precisely the line Stewart claims he was prepared to take when he agreed to a meeting about “Picard,” telling Norton the fateful encounter was booked largely out of respect, “I took the meeting with four very, very distinguished people, and I didn’t want to just say, ‘No, pass.'”

Stewart’s feelings were somehow swayed, with “Picard” eventually running for three seasons on Paramount+ itself. But with the “Picard” series finale now in the books, it seems Stewart’s near 4 decade journey as the titular shot-caller is finally at an end. And we can only imagine his agent has been laughing along every step of the way.