Patrick Stewart’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard beamed into a dull 1990s Ireland when nerds needed him most
If you were a geeky teenager in early 1990s Ireland, then Patrick Stewart and Star Trek: The Next Generation will have beamed into your life at precisely the right moment. How grey and dull Ireland was at that moment – and what a dash Stewart cut as The Next Generation (TNG) materialised one random Saturday evening in 1990, played on by that stirring theme tune and all ablaze with its whizz-bang special effects. These were tough times for dorks. At school you would be picked on and ridiculed – and that was just the teachers (at least it was in my case). Even if people weren’t laughing at you, they had no idea what you were banging on about when you talked about the Lord of the Rings or Ursula Le Guin. You were out there all alone in a void of nerd-dom. And then came Stewart’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard,…