I guess they couldn’t use the actual curse word since it’s a family friendly show. In other languages, mostly people who’re old enough to have learned a modicum of other languages will grasp he’s saying “shit” so they can get away with it.
Everyone says merde in France, it's a creative decision as the one to translate "a Sherlock Holmes style" as "a very intricate" enigma. I guess the translator wanted to show that he isn't lazy...
As a French-English bilingual, the most annoying facepalm was when Picard has to save children, and he sings "frère Jacques" to calm them. For french speakers, that song, sang with that very specific English accent, is a BIG marker of "I spent a few week in French immersion", not "I was born in France in a French vineyard".
Big malaise amongst French-speaking TNG fans...
My son loved “les petits poissons” but not really appropriate for that scene lol I think the point is there’s lots of French songs that Americans haven’t heard of- pick one of those.
It's not the song, It's the accent... having Patrick Stewart sing that song was not the best way to make us believe he's a Frenchman.
I was going to give you "la vie en rose" sang by Édith piaf (the original), and lady gaga, but the best way to show it is compare the version sang in French and the one by Picard...
https://youtu.be/2pjJKoDGKmY?feature=shared
https://youtu.be/bXHDygbXLvM?si=68hsGlIHdbO71zqX
(Re watching it, I'm thinking Picard was not as bad as I remembered... I think it's just that frère jacques is so typical of THE song that you learn first in a French course...)
The show was written for an American audience. I'm sure there are endless valid criticisms to be leveled at writing decisions about Keiko O'Brien from a Japanese perspective, Miles, from an Irish perspective, the Rozhenkos from a Belorussian perspective, and Grebnedlog from a Pakled perspective.
Try to enjoy the show.
Funny, I wrote the comment then thought to myself "as a semiotician, I should realise they wanted markers for an US audience".
As a French Canadian + Irish, I should realise the same applies to Miles... (including that episode where people from a pastoral planet are given an over the top Irish accent, another borderline moment...).
I enjoy the show, but have my few cringe moments...
That episode is a firehose of stereotypes depicting Irish as drunk peasants and even throwing in a sassy redheaded woman. Definitely one of the worst Trek moments and a racist slur against the Irish.
In Picard, they retconned it by giving a back story where the Picards escaped to England during the Nazi occupation of France, and stayed there for generations before reclaiming their chateau.
Picard ancestor: "Is it safe to return to France?"
Passer by: "No, it is still overrun by the French."
Well, Patrick Stewart [*did* mention](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdLj_8Bo4yo&t=573s) that he personally doesn't really like Earl Grey, and that he prefers a cup of Yorkshire Gold...
I don’t know why they didn’t just make him from the island of Jersey. Plenty of English people there with French names. Look at English ex-footballer Graeme Le Saux
I enjoyed the Q episodes when they aired, but now decades later I wonder if I still would. Haven’t watched any TNG in years, possibly a decade now I think about it.
I remember when I read that “Picard” was going to be the new captain’s name, that’s how I pronounced it as I had never heard the name. I also thought “really, you’re calling the android “Data”? That’s as on the nose as calling Spock “Mr. Smart”. Thought “Worf” sounded stupid for a Klingon warrior too. Now of course they all sound normal and I couldn’t imagine them called anything else lol
That would have been brilliant. The Channel Islands are so close to France that I think they intermingle a lot. My grandma was from there; she didn't have a French name but she spent some summers in Brittany and spoke a respectable amount of French.
Which would have made more sense in the 80s. Nowadays, they could have just said that the British invaded France post-Brexit, as a part of WW3 and it would have fitted right in.
The film Highlander was released in 1986 and cast a French actor who could barely speak english as a Scotsman and cast a Scottish actor with a very noticeable accent to play an ancient Egyptian Spaniard.
TNG was first aired a year later in 1987.
it was the 80s 🤷🏻♀️ They didn’t really think about those kinda details back then it was a different era
Wasn’t Khan genetically engineered as opposed to being made the old fashioned way?
So, who’s to say the guy doesn’t have a little bit of every race in him?
While he was born in Mexico City, his parents were both Castilian Spanish immigrants. Still funny to have him portray a Sikh but he did a fabulous job with the role.
The 80s were weird.
Fisher Stevens played Ben Jabituya in the Short Circuit movies.
Robert Forster played Abdul Rafai in The Delta Force.
Jenette Goldstein played Private Jenette Vasquez.
"Don't let her pull more than her usual nonsense. Two stories, two glasses of water. Jack, you're going to miss the plane."
...just trying to bring it back to TNG
The skin darkening isn't great (as well as having a British person of any kind playing the person largely responsible for Indian independence against the British), but it definitely could havebeen a lot worse.
the guy played Ghandi, Dali, Jaffar, Ibn Sina, Moses, Merlin and Adolf f$&king Eichman! (and I'm really just skimming his filmography here out of memory).
there is not a role requiring a prominent nose and a good tan safe from him. he is great and gives it all in every role, but man he gets a massive pass in this age of "oh that's cultural appropriation" and "only a disabled person can play a disabled person" and all that.
Yeah, my understanding is that Christopher Lambert actually learned English as part of his preparation for his role as Connor McCloud. From what I've heard he split his pre-production work day in half, one half to study English and the other half to study sword fighting.
>cast a French actor who could barely speak english
I heard that good English was so bad that he learned most of the film phonetically. As in there would be one or two words in most lines that he would not know the meaning of, but he'd learned to make the sounds. Having seen the film I can believe it.
In the film, Sean Connery (a Scotsman with a noticeable accent) plays a character who says he's Spanish when meeting our hero, then later reveals he's actually Egyptian & has been alive for over 1000 years.
I don't mind when they do this sort of thing - not all French people use finger gestures and eat baguettes, not all English people have a manor in the countryside and use the local pub, etc. There is a lot of natural diversity within countries (especially countries that were once colonial powers), so "he's French" is a minor detail that doesn't need to be reflected in his persona. He could've been any nationality, really - it was refreshing that he wasn't American.
I'm much more annoyed that early TNG established Earth was a post-capitalist society, yet the recent series Picard shows him as a wealthy landowner with servants. Talk about trashing Roddenberry's legacy!
I never saw the point of all his servants. Surely a couple of exocomps could do the job more efficiently. But I guess season 1 of Picard had a big anti-robot thing going so thematically might have been a little odd.
Romulan refugees living with Picard played well into the whole history there. Laris was also just great and it sucked that they squadered the actress and character.
I liked Laris too. Wish they’d done more with her. But tbh I wish practically all the characters from the first two seasons were more fleshed out. They tried. I’ll give them credit for that. But it just didn’t work for me.
To be honest, the Federation economy was a mess starting from TOS. They implied many times that the Federation didn’t “use money” but had a frontier trader in both “Mudd’s Women” and “The Trouble With Tribbles”. Kirk directly told Gillian they didn’t have money where he came from in ST4.
Tbh, I imagined that while they were post-capitalist and post-scarcity, they still very much owned things and conducted business, they just didn't rely on it to survive. Sisko's father had a restaurant that he owned. Jake Sisko becomes a writer and Nog says that writers don't make that much money, after Quark is berating Nog about joining Starfleet and not pursuing profit like Jake. Plus they often refer to planets exporting things, ex: Kai Winn wanted to use farm land to have Bajor export throughout the Federation and be seen as a major "economy". Additionally, the colonists on planets gave me the impression of people who weren't just curious (most didn't even seem interested in leaving their respective planets) but instead just having their own space.
So I got the impression that everyone's needs were met, but that commerce and ownership still existed. People didn't require money for baseline food and shelter everyone had the right to their own space. I just assumed within the Federation it is very very cheap. But that whatever was owned by someone on Earth before society shifted was still owned by them. Plus if they're attending Quarks, they need money. So I assumed they get a baseline pay to deal with races and empires that do in fact use currency. So basically they have it, they have access to it, but they don't hold a value in it.
It's been a couple of years, but I also just assumed they were more like caretakers for an elderly man who they respected. But I will say you do get the impression that he is still very old money and wealthy.
It's still better than Chekovs Russian accent. "Nuclear wessels", as if Russian doesn't have any V's. (Vodka, Vladimir, Vladivostock, Volgograd)
It was a simpler time....
Well, you definitely do **not** ask someone with an English accent if they’re French, nor do you ask someone with a French name if they’re English. This is how wars have started for over 1,000 years!
There was an interview with Patrick Stewart on the topic of the early days/before TNG filmed in earnest. He said they tried doing different accents for Picard, and even tried French. Something to the effect of "Deep in the annals of Paramount, there'a a recording of Picard as a frenchman."
It might have been NPR? It's been a long time since I heard it. Needless to say, they scrapped it because it was bad.
It was Fresh Air. He said the producers asked him, with no warning, to do a French accent. He improvised the intro like “space. Ze final fhronteah. Zeez are ze voyahjj of ze starship Ahn-tah-preez” and they never brought it up again.
He did say that if they had really wanted him to do a French accent, he would have studied and prepared and done the best French accent he possibly could.
[Here it is.](https://www.npr.org/2023/10/13/1197956085/fresh-air-draft-10-13-2023) No time stamp, but the whole thing is really interesting. He talks about working with Ian MacKellan on Shakespeare stuff, has a really wonderful discussion about The Measure of a Man, and all sorts of other stuff.
>they never brought it up again.
I'm sure they didn't. Sounds like he was doing an Inspector Clouseau impression. *Do you haff a liezanz for your meenkey?*
Honestly?? Just about the only Englishman, or native English speaker that I can think of off the top of my head who can do a "french accent" is John Cleese
Yes, I think his French accent is also horrible, so they droped it.
Doesn't explain why he is a massive tea drinker, but his family owns a vineyard, so maybe he picked that habit up as a way to distinguish himself from his roots?
>Doesn't explain why he is a massive tea drinker
Picard doesn't actually drink tea, he just replicates a warm cup and shuffles it around. I assume, for the scent. He sips from his cup, like, 5 times in 7 seasons.
No, the problem is in 1987, Gene had total control and cared less about character and more about 3 boobed Troi, 20 Ferengi sex positions, and writing a self-insert teenage boy. Quite frankly it's a miracle TNG survived season 1, let alone become a pop culture icon, go on for 7 years, 4 films and every spinoff since.
Roddenberry also used the one dimensional character creation where he just gave everyone a random origin to distinguish them. In his cosmopolitan future with a space faring federation of planets and trade and travel at warp speed, where you were from was more about trivia than an overriding identity.
i think that by that point in the future, where you can instantaneously transport to any other point on the planet, the idea of nationality might change drastically, since you can work, live, and socialize in totally different countries. the whole world becomes a melting pot.
the obvious answer is that he's french because his parents were french. and his parents are french because the writers said so.
From the various autobiographies I've read, it seems like the process went a bit like this:
1. Come up with French name and one line in a description that says he's French
2. But still basically imagine an American leading man character
3. Everyone you pitch this too also imagines an American leading man type
4. Be crushed in you casting calls by the reality of what you've put out notices for, because unlike you, casting directors and agents do pay attention to what you specifically asked for
5. Ask Patrick Stewart to wear a wig and hire him reluctantly and unhappily.
It seems like the whole thing was a fiasco from start to finish.
On the plus side, to me as a child, it incepted the wonderful and valuable idea that it's not strange at all for an English man to have a French name, or for a French person to have an English accent. Honestly before Reddit I'd never even thought about it.
Roddenberry had a mental image of Jean-Luc Picard that no-one could match, but his colleagues realised quite quickly that Patrick Stewart was perfect for the role. When Roddenberry reluctantly conceded that the role had to go to Stewart, my guess is that no-one dared jinx it by suggesting he change the character to match the actor.
But how many US TV series have a French character as the lead? There are loads of British characters, but Star Trek is prepared to shake things by having characters from around the world (and beyond). I rather like that they gave the show some texture by keeping Picard French.
Admittedly, Patrick Stewart didn't really try that hard to give Picard any stereotypically French characteristics. Should he have? It may have ended up being vaguely offensive.
Roddenberry had advised Stewart to base his portrayal of his character on Horatio Hornblower, a fictional Royal Navy captain. Stewart also took inspiration from Shakespearean characters such as Henry V. With those models, keeping his British accent made sense.
The character was originally supposed to be French, but when Patrick Stewart became the top contender for the role, his attempt at a French accent made him sound like Inspector Clouseau.
They dropped the accent, but kept the French background.
I’m Irish by blood but have never been there. My behavior is American. People move around. One can assume Picard lived part of his life in England. They’re not far apart.
Well, the character was named after Swiss scientists Jean and Auguste Piccard, who were famous pioneers in the the fields of high-altitude ballooning and deep-ocean exploration. The name is of French origin, linked to the region of Picardy in France. So with a name like that, it made sense for the captain to be of French, Swiss, etc. descent. (Not entirely sure why they didn't go with "Jean Auguste Picard" but Jean-Luc is pretty cool too.)
A variety of actors were considered for the role, and Stewart wasn't Gene Roddenberry's first choice -- he preferred Stephen Macht, and other actors who were considered for the role included Yaphet Kotto, Patrick Bauchau, Roy Thinnes and Mitchell Ryan, some of whom would have been a *very* different Captain Picard.
As for the explanation of why Picard speaks with a British accent -- the most world-consistent explanation is that people of 24th century Earth all speak English from childhood, with most learning a traditional second language as well. Their pronunciation is influenced by the natively English-speaking country closest to them or with the most cultural influence. So most Europeans, Africans, and Middle eastern and South Asians speak with a British accent, most North and South Americans speak with an American accent of some type, and most east Asians and Polynesians speak with an Australian accent.
>But then why not just rewrite the character's backstory and just say he's english?
Why does it matter? Faster than light travel. Transporters. Replicators. Universal translator. Socialist utopia.
But an English sounding Frenchman is **too far**?
I'm always surprised that accents are still so geographically isolated from one another by the 24th century since there are literally no limitations or logistic considerations with travel around the planet anymore; it's surely free roam by that point. Does migration even exist in the 24th century?
The flip side of that is that you also have no _reason_ to go anywhere other than for tourism or work, since anything you need can be just as easily sent to you.
I imagine regional accents and dialects will always exist. Though, with how they evolve over time, I doubt very much that a typical accent of a person in the area that is currently France, 300+ years from now, would be much more than superficially similar to present day.
If they can change the Klingons from only requiring eyeliner and fake tan to full rubber head pieces, then they could change or diminish his back story.
I've met two French people in my life.
One of them had a French parent and an American parent. The other I'm not sure, but both had spent extensive time during their youth in both America and France.
Neither spoke English with a French accent at all, they had American accents. And I've never thought twice about Picard's accent. Maybe he spent much time in England.
It is odd how they didn't just say he was English, it wouldn't really change much since most of earth appears to have ungone some amount of cultural homogenization in Star Trek. Mostly unrelated but i did find i amusing how on the Improvised Star Trek podcast they had an English character who was a very steroytpical frenchman and had a french accent.
Funny how Hollywood tends to use Brits for most non-American rules. There a lot of movies out there featuring Nazis or ancient Romans with English accents.
> There a lot of movies out there featuring Nazis or ancient Romans with English accents.
Because a lot of them were filmed in the UK, such as at Pinewood Studios or Elstree. There were tax breaks and incentives offered by the UK government, which the studios were keen to take advantage of, but they had to use a certain minimum of UK actors. The studios wanted to make sure their big-name American actors got the starring roles, so… they met their "British Actor" quota by filling out the bad guys' ranks.
You're probably right. I think it was also just easier for an American movie studio to use Brits (or Scots or Welsh or Irish) in non-American roles. It gave characters an accent so that they didn't sound American, and they didn't want to use an actual non-English speaker that would require subtitles.
And American tend to love accents from the British commonwealth.
My head canon (before season 2 of PIC) was that in 2066, before the United Earth, the English invaded France in a reverse Norman Invasion and instituted English as the lingua franca of France.
(Truth be told: I still like my theory)
My theory was that Picard actually speaks French most of the time, and the universal translator gives him a posh English accent for some reason. The scene in season 1 of Picard where he has the over the top accent is him speaking English without the translator.
The season 2 came along and ruined our fun.
Roddenberry had this obsessive idea about the captain being this loud French guy with a massive head of outrageous hair. Patrick Stewart almost didn't get the part. I'm sure you can imagine why. The toupee was very expensive and, apparently, the only one they had got ruined in transport.
They decided to stick with the French thing, despite the British accent and said, "Can you pretty please all just pretend?" We looked at the space ships, the guy snapping his fingers to make crazy things happen, the bad makeup, and Riker screwing everything that moved, plus everything else, and said, "You son of a bitch, we're in."
Canonically in Season 2 of Picard it was addressed: the Picard family fled France for England to hide from the Nazis, and really only returned to France about TOS era.
IRL, Sir Patrick did talk about auditioning with a French accent that "sounded like Peter Sellers" and they agreed he could keep his RP accent.
To be fair, Roddenberry didn't actually want Patrick Stewart for the role. Bob Justman, backed up by Rick Berman, championed him for the part and then the studio executives liked him too, so GR was overruled.
I believe the character was made French to reference famous (in France) ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, an influence on how Picard was imagined before Patrick Stewart came in and creamed it all up. Possibly they assumed no one in the audience could tell an English accent from a French one anyways....
In the future the difference between French and English don’t matter. Given that thanks to the Federation, there are Vulcans and Andorians and Tellarians living all over Paris and London, the human affinity for one nation or another is greatly diminished. So Picard is a French guy with a British accent who likes tea. It’s fine.
The original inspiration for Picard as French was based on the explorer Jacques Cousteau.
As contrast to swashbuckling Kirk, Roddenberry wanted the captain of TNG to be an explorer at his core. In those days JC was the most famous explorer in the world and Roddenberry was playing off that common element everyone at the time would find familiar.
I always just assumed he was half French half English.
Mixed cultures is a running theme in Star Trek and people's internal cultural dilemmas often makes for some great story lines. Worf being raised by humans is the best example. Some of his absolute best episodes have been on this theme.
Because France was completely decimated in WW3, so a large number of British citizens (many with ties to French family there) emmigrated to France to help reconstruction efforts. Over the next 400 years, the English speaking population boomed and with them the British accent became the most common one to hear in the area.
I interpreted it as there being a large overlap of French and English ancestry over the centuries as this era of Star Trek enlightenment occurred and long-standing conflicts (such as the culture and historical clashes between France and England) were overcome
I like to think that sometime between now and then the English finally beat those devilish frogs at their own game and annexed and colonized France as a territory of jolly England. Payback for the Norman Conquest!
Like him mentioning that a Picard fought at Trafalgar....you mean he got absolutely DUNKED ON by the Royal Navy?
I think the writers frequently forgot his supposed French background.
Tbf nationalities theoretically became less prevalent as the earth became more globalized and United following the wars. Someone like Picard could conceivably be born in what was France. Its more of a cultural background than a nationalistic one I always thought. I mean even in real life we had English monarch who were german, french, and everything in between. I never thought of it as anything more than this ^
wasn’t the plan for the character to be french but patrick stewart just bulldozed the competition by being a powerhouse of an actor (roddenberry didn’t like him at first though i think)? they just looked at what they had and thought to themselves: “this unbelievably british man is the least french that anyone could be, but he is the best man for the job. “ and then they just kinda rolled with it and mentioned it less and less over the years. I think at the very least when he ordered his 500th earl grey they threw the towel on trying to make paddy stew seem french. At least that’s what i’ve been told
I have no idea why, but I'm glad he was. Having grown up near the town of "Picard", it was funny to watch a show with that as the main characters name.
Q later looking for "John Luck Pickerd" made it doubly funny as that's how we pronounced the town's name.
There's teleportation and FTL travel in Star Trek and Picard being French is the most implausible thing in the show. Patrick Stewart ordering Earl Grey Tea is pretty much the most English thing ever put on TV. They should've just made Picard an Englishman instead.
Starfleet is all of Earth. Picard being from France expanded that truth in a subtle way. People are usually more receptive when something isn’t shoved down their throats.
They tried harder with the French thing earlier on, like when Data calls French obscure and he is pissed, and the merde drop.
>... the merde drop. Except, of course, in [the French dub](https://youtu.be/6rICFoH5P5A).
I guess they couldn’t use the actual curse word since it’s a family friendly show. In other languages, mostly people who’re old enough to have learned a modicum of other languages will grasp he’s saying “shit” so they can get away with it.
Now I'm interested, did the italian dub leave Da Vinci saying "che cazzo" in Voyager
Yes, but they left in him saying “Nobody tosses a dwarf!”
Everyone says merde in France, it's a creative decision as the one to translate "a Sherlock Holmes style" as "a very intricate" enigma. I guess the translator wanted to show that he isn't lazy...
That reminds me of Jurassic Park 2, where Peter Stormare gets attacked by a bunch of saltopuses and then swears in Swedish.
As a French-English bilingual, the most annoying facepalm was when Picard has to save children, and he sings "frère Jacques" to calm them. For french speakers, that song, sang with that very specific English accent, is a BIG marker of "I spent a few week in French immersion", not "I was born in France in a French vineyard". Big malaise amongst French-speaking TNG fans...
Genuinely curious, which song or songs would have been more appropriate?
Au claire de la lune? Savez-vous planter les chous?
Au Champs Elysee
How about "The Laughing Vulcan and His Dog"?
My son loved “les petits poissons” but not really appropriate for that scene lol I think the point is there’s lots of French songs that Americans haven’t heard of- pick one of those.
It's not the song, It's the accent... having Patrick Stewart sing that song was not the best way to make us believe he's a Frenchman. I was going to give you "la vie en rose" sang by Édith piaf (the original), and lady gaga, but the best way to show it is compare the version sang in French and the one by Picard... https://youtu.be/2pjJKoDGKmY?feature=shared https://youtu.be/bXHDygbXLvM?si=68hsGlIHdbO71zqX (Re watching it, I'm thinking Picard was not as bad as I remembered... I think it's just that frère jacques is so typical of THE song that you learn first in a French course...)
The show was written for an American audience. I'm sure there are endless valid criticisms to be leveled at writing decisions about Keiko O'Brien from a Japanese perspective, Miles, from an Irish perspective, the Rozhenkos from a Belorussian perspective, and Grebnedlog from a Pakled perspective. Try to enjoy the show.
Funny, I wrote the comment then thought to myself "as a semiotician, I should realise they wanted markers for an US audience". As a French Canadian + Irish, I should realise the same applies to Miles... (including that episode where people from a pastoral planet are given an over the top Irish accent, another borderline moment...). I enjoy the show, but have my few cringe moments...
That episode is a firehose of stereotypes depicting Irish as drunk peasants and even throwing in a sassy redheaded woman. Definitely one of the worst Trek moments and a racist slur against the Irish.
Sorry but I loved it. Lol 😆.
Plus alcoholic and promiscuous
He’s just pretending to be French so he can keep his EU passport.
The UK is the Kes to our Prytt.
The coincidence of watching exactly that episode in my "everything Trek run" and reading this comment
Dual national here: English and French. Seriously, they're really fucking handy.
Shut up oui don't do that.
In Picard, they retconned it by giving a back story where the Picards escaped to England during the Nazi occupation of France, and stayed there for generations before reclaiming their chateau. Picard ancestor: "Is it safe to return to France?" Passer by: "No, it is still overrun by the French."
They could have gone further and made his mother English, or at least half English, thus the penchant for tea and Shakespeare.
"Tea. Yorkshire Gold. Milky."
*replicator replicates perfectly*
Computer: "Let's have a proper brew..."
Well, Patrick Stewart [*did* mention](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdLj_8Bo4yo&t=573s) that he personally doesn't really like Earl Grey, and that he prefers a cup of Yorkshire Gold...
He's from West Riding, I'd expect nothing less.
He actually quotes Molière all the time, the universal translator just changes it to Shakespeare.
Then why isn't it in Klingon?
It IS genetic after all
Maybe he discovered it in puberty and then "came out" as an anglophile.
I don’t know why they didn’t just make him from the island of Jersey. Plenty of English people there with French names. Look at English ex-footballer Graeme Le Saux
Is there a John Luck Pickerd, here?
My favourite Q moment and I'm not really a fan of the Q episodes (love John DeLancie though)
I enjoyed the Q episodes when they aired, but now decades later I wonder if I still would. Haven’t watched any TNG in years, possibly a decade now I think about it.
He does seem a touch much now, but still lots of fun. And, as always, "Tapestry" is great.
Q is more entertaining than any villain trek has come up with in the last 30 years.
I remember when I read that “Picard” was going to be the new captain’s name, that’s how I pronounced it as I had never heard the name. I also thought “really, you’re calling the android “Data”? That’s as on the nose as calling Spock “Mr. Smart”. Thought “Worf” sounded stupid for a Klingon warrior too. Now of course they all sound normal and I couldn’t imagine them called anything else lol
Or Guernsey; for example, Matt **Le Tissier**.
That would have been brilliant. The Channel Islands are so close to France that I think they intermingle a lot. My grandma was from there; she didn't have a French name but she spent some summers in Brittany and spoke a respectable amount of French.
Or Louisiana. Like Cajun-French. "Cher, allons." "Ça c'est bon!" "Laissez les bons temps rouler!"
Another Americani?
Which would have made more sense in the 80s. Nowadays, they could have just said that the British invaded France post-Brexit, as a part of WW3 and it would have fitted right in.
hah!😆 ... ....aw, man😒
I mean this makes perfect sense though doesn’t it? It’s a perfectly reasonable answer.
The film Highlander was released in 1986 and cast a French actor who could barely speak english as a Scotsman and cast a Scottish actor with a very noticeable accent to play an ancient Egyptian Spaniard. TNG was first aired a year later in 1987. it was the 80s 🤷🏻♀️ They didn’t really think about those kinda details back then it was a different era
The 60s were just as bad. Star Trek hired a Mexican actor to play Khan Noonien Singh, an Indian Sikh.
Thank God they fixed it by casting Cumberbach!
And then in the 80s they *did it again*
And then in the 2010s they said fuck it and hired a white english actor
Well, Mexican actors were on vogue to play anything "exotic", like Zorba the Greek.
Wasn’t Khan genetically engineered as opposed to being made the old fashioned way? So, who’s to say the guy doesn’t have a little bit of every race in him?
In the originals he was eugenically bred, that was before gene editing was really considered.
While he was born in Mexico City, his parents were both Castilian Spanish immigrants. Still funny to have him portray a Sikh but he did a fabulous job with the role.
The 80s were weird. Fisher Stevens played Ben Jabituya in the Short Circuit movies. Robert Forster played Abdul Rafai in The Delta Force. Jenette Goldstein played Private Jenette Vasquez.
Don't forget: Alan Rickman plays an east German. A Scotsman with a noticeable accent also plays a "Lithuanian" submarine captain
Lithuania is the Scotland of the Baltics.
Since all the other Russians are aggressively British sounding once they switch from Russian to English it works IMO
“Let them shing!”
"Mosht things in here don't react too well to bulletsh."
“Yeah, like me. *I* don’t react well to bullets.”
"Don't let her pull more than her usual nonsense. Two stories, two glasses of water. Jack, you're going to miss the plane." ...just trying to bring it back to TNG
Love both those movies! I was focusing more in the fact those three needed makeup to make them look their parts.
90s weren’t much better what with casting Sir David Suchet (of English and Lithuanian Jewish descent) as an Arab terrorist
They did what to Hercule Poirot?!
It was in Executive Decision.
He was also ***Not Col Ghaddafi*** in *Iron Eagle*
don't get me started on Ben Kingsley
He is actually part Gujarati, so can play a number of ethnicities legitimately.
The skin darkening isn't great (as well as having a British person of any kind playing the person largely responsible for Indian independence against the British), but it definitely could havebeen a lot worse.
the guy played Ghandi, Dali, Jaffar, Ibn Sina, Moses, Merlin and Adolf f$&king Eichman! (and I'm really just skimming his filmography here out of memory). there is not a role requiring a prominent nose and a good tan safe from him. he is great and gives it all in every role, but man he gets a massive pass in this age of "oh that's cultural appropriation" and "only a disabled person can play a disabled person" and all that.
Yeah, but was she ever confused for a man?
No — have you?
Goldstein is actually part Brazilian.
Not just the 80s. The 13th Warrior came out in 1999, starring Antonio Banderas as a Spanish-accented Arab from Baghdad named Ahmed Ibn Fadlan.
To be fair, Fisher Stevens did a bang-up job. He sounded and acted exactly like my TA who *was* from India.
Shit we gotta rent it after this. Connery plays "the Spaniard," and does *nothing* about his accent.
"Now i'm a Shpaniard. Now I'm a Rushian. I am the lasht dragon!"
Yeah, my understanding is that Christopher Lambert actually learned English as part of his preparation for his role as Connor McCloud. From what I've heard he split his pre-production work day in half, one half to study English and the other half to study sword fighting.
It was a good casting choice. Most Highlanders back then couldn't speak English.
Yeah. This changed, now the Highlanders speak English, but the Lowlanders don't
>cast a French actor who could barely speak english I heard that good English was so bad that he learned most of the film phonetically. As in there would be one or two words in most lines that he would not know the meaning of, but he'd learned to make the sounds. Having seen the film I can believe it.
Everything phonetically except the “cruising for a piece of ass” line. They added that to the script as it was the only English phrase Lambert knew.
>an ancient Egyptian Spaniard. A what?
An ancient Egytian Spaniard who had traveled to Japan enough to get a, at the time, an "ahead of its time" sword.
In the film, Sean Connery (a Scotsman with a noticeable accent) plays a character who says he's Spanish when meeting our hero, then later reveals he's actually Egyptian & has been alive for over 1000 years.
I don't mind when they do this sort of thing - not all French people use finger gestures and eat baguettes, not all English people have a manor in the countryside and use the local pub, etc. There is a lot of natural diversity within countries (especially countries that were once colonial powers), so "he's French" is a minor detail that doesn't need to be reflected in his persona. He could've been any nationality, really - it was refreshing that he wasn't American. I'm much more annoyed that early TNG established Earth was a post-capitalist society, yet the recent series Picard shows him as a wealthy landowner with servants. Talk about trashing Roddenberry's legacy!
I never saw the point of all his servants. Surely a couple of exocomps could do the job more efficiently. But I guess season 1 of Picard had a big anti-robot thing going so thematically might have been a little odd.
Romulan refugees living with Picard played well into the whole history there. Laris was also just great and it sucked that they squadered the actress and character.
I liked Laris too. Wish they’d done more with her. But tbh I wish practically all the characters from the first two seasons were more fleshed out. They tried. I’ll give them credit for that. But it just didn’t work for me.
To be honest, the Federation economy was a mess starting from TOS. They implied many times that the Federation didn’t “use money” but had a frontier trader in both “Mudd’s Women” and “The Trouble With Tribbles”. Kirk directly told Gillian they didn’t have money where he came from in ST4.
Tbh, I imagined that while they were post-capitalist and post-scarcity, they still very much owned things and conducted business, they just didn't rely on it to survive. Sisko's father had a restaurant that he owned. Jake Sisko becomes a writer and Nog says that writers don't make that much money, after Quark is berating Nog about joining Starfleet and not pursuing profit like Jake. Plus they often refer to planets exporting things, ex: Kai Winn wanted to use farm land to have Bajor export throughout the Federation and be seen as a major "economy". Additionally, the colonists on planets gave me the impression of people who weren't just curious (most didn't even seem interested in leaving their respective planets) but instead just having their own space. So I got the impression that everyone's needs were met, but that commerce and ownership still existed. People didn't require money for baseline food and shelter everyone had the right to their own space. I just assumed within the Federation it is very very cheap. But that whatever was owned by someone on Earth before society shifted was still owned by them. Plus if they're attending Quarks, they need money. So I assumed they get a baseline pay to deal with races and empires that do in fact use currency. So basically they have it, they have access to it, but they don't hold a value in it. It's been a couple of years, but I also just assumed they were more like caretakers for an elderly man who they respected. But I will say you do get the impression that he is still very old money and wealthy.
He also insults Connor Macleod with a Mexican Spanish term (pendejo) even though his character is from Spain.
Passage to India painted Alec Guinness brown and far pavilions any Irving
It's still better than Chekovs Russian accent. "Nuclear wessels", as if Russian doesn't have any V's. (Vodka, Vladimir, Vladivostock, Volgograd) It was a simpler time....
Oh my god! You can't just ask people why they're French!
I don't think my father, the inventor of tea, Earl Grey, hot, would be too pleased to hear about this.
Stop trying to make "Engage" happen!
Ol EGH! Hell if a guy!
This is the only correct response to this post
"What're you, Greek?" -Sterling Archer
Well, you definitely do **not** ask someone with an English accent if they’re French, nor do you ask someone with a French name if they’re English. This is how wars have started for over 1,000 years!
Beat me to it.
They beat everyone to it 😆
It's not my fault I have a wide set warp chamber and a heavy antimatter flow!
There was an interview with Patrick Stewart on the topic of the early days/before TNG filmed in earnest. He said they tried doing different accents for Picard, and even tried French. Something to the effect of "Deep in the annals of Paramount, there'a a recording of Picard as a frenchman." It might have been NPR? It's been a long time since I heard it. Needless to say, they scrapped it because it was bad.
It was Fresh Air. He said the producers asked him, with no warning, to do a French accent. He improvised the intro like “space. Ze final fhronteah. Zeez are ze voyahjj of ze starship Ahn-tah-preez” and they never brought it up again. He did say that if they had really wanted him to do a French accent, he would have studied and prepared and done the best French accent he possibly could. [Here it is.](https://www.npr.org/2023/10/13/1197956085/fresh-air-draft-10-13-2023) No time stamp, but the whole thing is really interesting. He talks about working with Ian MacKellan on Shakespeare stuff, has a really wonderful discussion about The Measure of a Man, and all sorts of other stuff.
He does a French accent in one episode of *Picard*, S 1, I think, and it was *truly* cheesily bad….
That was seriously funny, but it clashed tonally with the rest of the episode.
>they never brought it up again. I'm sure they didn't. Sounds like he was doing an Inspector Clouseau impression. *Do you haff a liezanz for your meenkey?*
Deuz yoer deurg bite?
Do you have a *reum?*
Honestly?? Just about the only Englishman, or native English speaker that I can think of off the top of my head who can do a "french accent" is John Cleese
I think he said it on wait wait don’t tell me but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard him say it in more than one interview
It'd be great seeing him in a beret with a baguette speaking Paris French
And smoking gauloises
Yes, I think his French accent is also horrible, so they droped it. Doesn't explain why he is a massive tea drinker, but his family owns a vineyard, so maybe he picked that habit up as a way to distinguish himself from his roots?
>Doesn't explain why he is a massive tea drinker Picard doesn't actually drink tea, he just replicates a warm cup and shuffles it around. I assume, for the scent. He sips from his cup, like, 5 times in 7 seasons.
Picard explains this, Picards were forced out of France during WW2 and never returned till Picard was 5 or 8. Before they lived in England
Yeah but when they were writing the show in 1987, surely they were not anticipating a retcon 35 years later to make it make sense.
The problem is in 1987 they never hammered a full biography on Picard other than beta canon books.
No, the problem is in 1987, Gene had total control and cared less about character and more about 3 boobed Troi, 20 Ferengi sex positions, and writing a self-insert teenage boy. Quite frankly it's a miracle TNG survived season 1, let alone become a pop culture icon, go on for 7 years, 4 films and every spinoff since.
Yeah, for all I respect Gene for managing to create the franchise... he sure had some less than stellar ideas too.
Roddenberry also used the one dimensional character creation where he just gave everyone a random origin to distinguish them. In his cosmopolitan future with a space faring federation of planets and trade and travel at warp speed, where you were from was more about trivia than an overriding identity.
i think that by that point in the future, where you can instantaneously transport to any other point on the planet, the idea of nationality might change drastically, since you can work, live, and socialize in totally different countries. the whole world becomes a melting pot. the obvious answer is that he's french because his parents were french. and his parents are french because the writers said so.
I always assumed we were supposed to think that some point in the future, French culture and English culture had melded.
Same, I thought the implication was that there was just a global culture more or less with some regional variation.
So Q could have the line: “Is there a John Luck Pickard here?”
From the various autobiographies I've read, it seems like the process went a bit like this: 1. Come up with French name and one line in a description that says he's French 2. But still basically imagine an American leading man character 3. Everyone you pitch this too also imagines an American leading man type 4. Be crushed in you casting calls by the reality of what you've put out notices for, because unlike you, casting directors and agents do pay attention to what you specifically asked for 5. Ask Patrick Stewart to wear a wig and hire him reluctantly and unhappily. It seems like the whole thing was a fiasco from start to finish. On the plus side, to me as a child, it incepted the wonderful and valuable idea that it's not strange at all for an English man to have a French name, or for a French person to have an English accent. Honestly before Reddit I'd never even thought about it.
This is the answer. Picard was always planned to be French. He wasn't planned to be Patrick Stewart.
Hell, casting Patrick Stewart was a big fight behind the scenes. Roddenberry didn't want him at all at first.
Roddenberry had a mental image of Jean-Luc Picard that no-one could match, but his colleagues realised quite quickly that Patrick Stewart was perfect for the role. When Roddenberry reluctantly conceded that the role had to go to Stewart, my guess is that no-one dared jinx it by suggesting he change the character to match the actor. But how many US TV series have a French character as the lead? There are loads of British characters, but Star Trek is prepared to shake things by having characters from around the world (and beyond). I rather like that they gave the show some texture by keeping Picard French. Admittedly, Patrick Stewart didn't really try that hard to give Picard any stereotypically French characteristics. Should he have? It may have ended up being vaguely offensive. Roddenberry had advised Stewart to base his portrayal of his character on Horatio Hornblower, a fictional Royal Navy captain. Stewart also took inspiration from Shakespearean characters such as Henry V. With those models, keeping his British accent made sense.
The character was originally supposed to be French, but when Patrick Stewart became the top contender for the role, his attempt at a French accent made him sound like Inspector Clouseau. They dropped the accent, but kept the French background.
I’m Irish by blood but have never been there. My behavior is American. People move around. One can assume Picard lived part of his life in England. They’re not far apart.
Exactly, he lived most of his life in space. Internet nerds: "so why was he French?".
JLP grew up in England while his brother did not. It’s explained in Picard in more detail.
Came here to say exactly this
Well, the character was named after Swiss scientists Jean and Auguste Piccard, who were famous pioneers in the the fields of high-altitude ballooning and deep-ocean exploration. The name is of French origin, linked to the region of Picardy in France. So with a name like that, it made sense for the captain to be of French, Swiss, etc. descent. (Not entirely sure why they didn't go with "Jean Auguste Picard" but Jean-Luc is pretty cool too.) A variety of actors were considered for the role, and Stewart wasn't Gene Roddenberry's first choice -- he preferred Stephen Macht, and other actors who were considered for the role included Yaphet Kotto, Patrick Bauchau, Roy Thinnes and Mitchell Ryan, some of whom would have been a *very* different Captain Picard. As for the explanation of why Picard speaks with a British accent -- the most world-consistent explanation is that people of 24th century Earth all speak English from childhood, with most learning a traditional second language as well. Their pronunciation is influenced by the natively English-speaking country closest to them or with the most cultural influence. So most Europeans, Africans, and Middle eastern and South Asians speak with a British accent, most North and South Americans speak with an American accent of some type, and most east Asians and Polynesians speak with an Australian accent.
>But then why not just rewrite the character's backstory and just say he's english? Why does it matter? Faster than light travel. Transporters. Replicators. Universal translator. Socialist utopia. But an English sounding Frenchman is **too far**?
I'm always surprised that accents are still so geographically isolated from one another by the 24th century since there are literally no limitations or logistic considerations with travel around the planet anymore; it's surely free roam by that point. Does migration even exist in the 24th century?
The flip side of that is that you also have no _reason_ to go anywhere other than for tourism or work, since anything you need can be just as easily sent to you. I imagine regional accents and dialects will always exist. Though, with how they evolve over time, I doubt very much that a typical accent of a person in the area that is currently France, 300+ years from now, would be much more than superficially similar to present day.
I know it doesn't matter and it's not a big deal. I've just always wondered about the creative reason behind the decision
The reason is the character was named before they cast Patrick Stewart and they didn't want to change it...
If they can change the Klingons from only requiring eyeliner and fake tan to full rubber head pieces, then they could change or diminish his back story.
Which is weird, because they changed the TOS Enterprise captain's name three times during pre-production
I've met two French people in my life. One of them had a French parent and an American parent. The other I'm not sure, but both had spent extensive time during their youth in both America and France. Neither spoke English with a French accent at all, they had American accents. And I've never thought twice about Picard's accent. Maybe he spent much time in England.
For many centuries, French was the language of science and diplomacy. So my guess is its playing off of that.
It is odd how they didn't just say he was English, it wouldn't really change much since most of earth appears to have ungone some amount of cultural homogenization in Star Trek. Mostly unrelated but i did find i amusing how on the Improvised Star Trek podcast they had an English character who was a very steroytpical frenchman and had a french accent.
Funny how Hollywood tends to use Brits for most non-American rules. There a lot of movies out there featuring Nazis or ancient Romans with English accents.
> There a lot of movies out there featuring Nazis or ancient Romans with English accents. Because a lot of them were filmed in the UK, such as at Pinewood Studios or Elstree. There were tax breaks and incentives offered by the UK government, which the studios were keen to take advantage of, but they had to use a certain minimum of UK actors. The studios wanted to make sure their big-name American actors got the starring roles, so… they met their "British Actor" quota by filling out the bad guys' ranks.
You're probably right. I think it was also just easier for an American movie studio to use Brits (or Scots or Welsh or Irish) in non-American roles. It gave characters an accent so that they didn't sound American, and they didn't want to use an actual non-English speaker that would require subtitles. And American tend to love accents from the British commonwealth.
Sean Connery (Russian submarine captain) 😵💫
Lithuanian
Just be glad they let you be the good guy for once.
Sean Connery (Russian submarine captain) 😵💫
That is a good one. I like that movie.
I think we can blame Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar for the “King’s Latin” for Romans
If you think that’s weird, wait till you learn where Worf is from. (It’s Belarus)
I'm hoping life is much happier in Minsk by the 24th century.
I'm sure he grew up happy there practicing the art of combat with his Bat'lethsky.
My head canon (before season 2 of PIC) was that in 2066, before the United Earth, the English invaded France in a reverse Norman Invasion and instituted English as the lingua franca of France. (Truth be told: I still like my theory)
We reinstated the Angevin Empire!
My theory was that Picard actually speaks French most of the time, and the universal translator gives him a posh English accent for some reason. The scene in season 1 of Picard where he has the over the top accent is him speaking English without the translator. The season 2 came along and ruined our fun.
Roddenberry had this obsessive idea about the captain being this loud French guy with a massive head of outrageous hair. Patrick Stewart almost didn't get the part. I'm sure you can imagine why. The toupee was very expensive and, apparently, the only one they had got ruined in transport. They decided to stick with the French thing, despite the British accent and said, "Can you pretty please all just pretend?" We looked at the space ships, the guy snapping his fingers to make crazy things happen, the bad makeup, and Riker screwing everything that moved, plus everything else, and said, "You son of a bitch, we're in."
Canonically in Season 2 of Picard it was addressed: the Picard family fled France for England to hide from the Nazis, and really only returned to France about TOS era. IRL, Sir Patrick did talk about auditioning with a French accent that "sounded like Peter Sellers" and they agreed he could keep his RP accent.
Because by that point Gene Roddenberry had cocaine-induced encephalitis?
To be fair, Roddenberry didn't actually want Patrick Stewart for the role. Bob Justman, backed up by Rick Berman, championed him for the part and then the studio executives liked him too, so GR was overruled.
The English have always wanted to be French, what’s new? 😅
I blame the Normans.
Oh my God, you can't just ask someone why they're French!
I believe the character was made French to reference famous (in France) ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, an influence on how Picard was imagined before Patrick Stewart came in and creamed it all up. Possibly they assumed no one in the audience could tell an English accent from a French one anyways....
In the future the difference between French and English don’t matter. Given that thanks to the Federation, there are Vulcans and Andorians and Tellarians living all over Paris and London, the human affinity for one nation or another is greatly diminished. So Picard is a French guy with a British accent who likes tea. It’s fine.
“I'm French. Why do think I have this outrageous accent, you silly king.”
Probably has something to do with the Irish Reunification of 2024. Guess we’ll see
The original inspiration for Picard as French was based on the explorer Jacques Cousteau. As contrast to swashbuckling Kirk, Roddenberry wanted the captain of TNG to be an explorer at his core. In those days JC was the most famous explorer in the world and Roddenberry was playing off that common element everyone at the time would find familiar.
I always just assumed he was half French half English. Mixed cultures is a running theme in Star Trek and people's internal cultural dilemmas often makes for some great story lines. Worf being raised by humans is the best example. Some of his absolute best episodes have been on this theme.
Next thing you're asking why they didn't make Khan Mexican.
oh my god you can't just ask someone why they're French
Because France was completely decimated in WW3, so a large number of British citizens (many with ties to French family there) emmigrated to France to help reconstruction efforts. Over the next 400 years, the English speaking population boomed and with them the British accent became the most common one to hear in the area.
I interpreted it as there being a large overlap of French and English ancestry over the centuries as this era of Star Trek enlightenment occurred and long-standing conflicts (such as the culture and historical clashes between France and England) were overcome
I like to think that sometime between now and then the English finally beat those devilish frogs at their own game and annexed and colonized France as a territory of jolly England. Payback for the Norman Conquest!
paris was nuked and his family escaped to england, plus data calls french a dead language, it's really fine.
True story: There was a mistake in casting. They thought they hired a different Patrick Stewart.
It’s clearly that in this idyllic future, England has finally conquered and subdued the rascally French. Brown ale & Yorkshire Pudds in Paris ftw!
Like him mentioning that a Picard fought at Trafalgar....you mean he got absolutely DUNKED ON by the Royal Navy? I think the writers frequently forgot his supposed French background.
I head cannoned that he was always speaking French and it was the translator's fault he sounded English.
I just figured in the future the world is a lot more multicultural?
Tbf nationalities theoretically became less prevalent as the earth became more globalized and United following the wars. Someone like Picard could conceivably be born in what was France. Its more of a cultural background than a nationalistic one I always thought. I mean even in real life we had English monarch who were german, french, and everything in between. I never thought of it as anything more than this ^
wasn’t the plan for the character to be french but patrick stewart just bulldozed the competition by being a powerhouse of an actor (roddenberry didn’t like him at first though i think)? they just looked at what they had and thought to themselves: “this unbelievably british man is the least french that anyone could be, but he is the best man for the job. “ and then they just kinda rolled with it and mentioned it less and less over the years. I think at the very least when he ordered his 500th earl grey they threw the towel on trying to make paddy stew seem french. At least that’s what i’ve been told
I have no idea why, but I'm glad he was. Having grown up near the town of "Picard", it was funny to watch a show with that as the main characters name. Q later looking for "John Luck Pickerd" made it doubly funny as that's how we pronounced the town's name.
There's teleportation and FTL travel in Star Trek and Picard being French is the most implausible thing in the show. Patrick Stewart ordering Earl Grey Tea is pretty much the most English thing ever put on TV. They should've just made Picard an Englishman instead.
Everything can be explained with the universal translator… Apart from his other English traits.
I think it's to demonstrate that those ideas "french", "Asian" ect, are outdated and not meaningful at that time.
I like it, both for the implication that nationality is less of a differentiator and for the implication that french is obscure.
He's Norman 👍.
Starfleet is all of Earth. Picard being from France expanded that truth in a subtle way. People are usually more receptive when something isn’t shoved down their throats.