"Is Picard a better character than Kirk ?" Topic

Picard always seemed like the sort of person who might actually get promoted to being in charge of one of humanity's few multi-billion credit starships with its 800 people onboard…

Kirk would fail the psych assessment.

Kirk was the only one to ever beat the psych assessment.

From a story writing point of view, Kirk was the better character. He changed and grew, albeit slightly, over time. But he remained consistent unto himself.

Picard was written with whatever personality the current scriptwriter wanted. The man was darn near psychotic his personality shifted so much, and in such short time spans.

Not taking into account the TNG movies of course. The "action hero" role was written by absurd fanboy writers and producers looking for a buck, not people telling stories. From a story point of view, the movies are only slightly related to the show.

Well, when they met , was Kirk who give Picard some advices.
Picard accepted that and followed some of them exactly as Kirk said, for example that never give up the captaincy of the Enterprise for grade promotion.

Amicalement
Armand

PS Imho the worst thing with Picard is that he never shows as a french character. Take note the huge differencies when he met his brother in earth.
The brother WAS a french in his actitudes.

I got the impression that Picard was born in France but spent his life else where whereas his brother stayed on the family farm. Kind of like me! I'm the only one in my family who doesn't have a strong southern accent because I spent most of my life up north. So while I'm of southern decent I'm culturally more of a yankee.

Granted though… there is a WORLD of difference between being French and English! The gap between north and south isn't that huge here in the states.

Agree with you Tgunner.
Picard didn't show ANYTHING as a french.
He even don't drink wine!.

Amicalement
Armand

To some extent, the global nuclear war in the late 20th century hit the reset button of a number of Earth cultures. Picard's brother was likely a reconstructed Frenchman in the same way Chekov (in TOS) had been an reconstructed Russian. They live the archetypes as those archetypes survived the war. Jean Luc Picard moved away from the reconstructed French and moved to being reconstructed English at some point before we first meet him.

Compare this to Kirk, who as a native of North America was not in a position to embrace the Old World cultures of Europe, had a bad case of hero worship for a veteran of Star Fleet (his father), and was, in both continuities, a Federation cosmopolitan from an early age.