Jean-Luc Picard

After years commanding the Stargazer, Picard takes the Enterprise-D with William Riker as first officer, the android Data, the Klingon Worf, Geordi La Forge, Counselor Deanna Troi and Dr. Beverly Crusher, widow of an old friend. On the very first mission, the all-powerful Q puts humanity on trial, and keeps dropping in to torment Picard from then on.

He defends Data's right not to be taken apart, faces Romulans and Cardassians and, in "The Inner Light," an alien probe makes him live a whole lifetime in a few minutes, as Kamin, on a planet that no longer exists. He comes out of it playing the flute he learned in that life.

The Borg, a cyborg race that assimilates other species, abduct Picard and turn him into Locutus, their voice. Riker takes over the ship and orders fire on his own captain. The Federation fleet is wiped out at Wolf 359. Data links up with Picard and, through what's left of him inside, the crew takes down the Borg cube.

To recover, Picard visits his brother Robert at the family vineyard in France and breaks down. Later, captured by the Cardassian Gul Madred, he's tortured to say he sees five lights where there are four, and refuses to the end.

Picard learns that his brother Robert and nephew René died in a fire, and realizes the Picard family line ends with him. Meanwhile, the scientist Soran wants to destroy stars to get back into the Nexus, a place outside time.

Picard enters the Nexus, where he lives the family life he never had, and finds James T. Kirk, missing for 78 years. He convinces Kirk to come back with him. Together they stop Soran on Veridian III, but Kirk dies. The Enterprise-D crashes on the planet.

On the new Enterprise-E, Picard still has Borg nightmares, and Starfleet keeps him away from the fight. He disobeys, helps destroy a cube and chases a Borg sphere back to 2063 to stop Zefram Cochrane's flight, humanity's first contact with the Vulcans. On board, Picard becomes obsessed with fighting the Borg, until Lily Sloane compares him to Captain Ahab.

Later he discovers the Federation wants to secretly remove the Ba'ku, a peaceful people, from a planet that makes its inhabitants younger. Picard disobeys again and takes their side.

After Riker and Troi's wedding, Picard finds B-4, an android that looks like Data. Romulus's new praetor, Shinzon, calls the Enterprise in to talk peace. He's a clone of Picard, made by the Romulans to replace him and abandoned in the mines of Remus.

Shinzon is dying and needs Picard's blood, and he plans to attack Earth with a radiation weapon. In the final battle, Picard rams the Enterprise into the Scimitar and kills Shinzon. Data sacrifices himself to save the captain, leaving his memories in B-4.

In 2399, Picard lives at the family vineyard. He quit Starfleet when it gave up on rescuing the Romulans from the supernova after synthetics attacked Mars. Dahj, a young woman who doesn't know she's Data's synthetic daughter, asks for help and is killed. Picard puts a crew together to find her twin, Soji, and ends up dying from a brain condition. His mind is moved into a synthetic body.

Later, Q traps Picard in an alternate reality, and he goes back to 2024 to fix history and face his mother's trauma. Finally, Beverly Crusher calls him back: he learns he has a son, Jack, and reunites the old Enterprise-D crew against the Changelings and the Borg.

Gene Roddenberry named Picard after Swiss scientists Auguste and Jean Piccard and modeled him on C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower. He pictured a virile captain with a full head of hair, but producer Robert Justman saw Patrick Stewart at a Shakespeare lecture in 1986 and pushed for him. Stewart played Picard for seven seasons, four movies and three seasons of Star Trek: Picard.