There are no secrets at The Lodestar. This week’s newsletter was “in the can” already, and featured a prominent salute to Walter Koenig, who died earlier this week at the age of 90. Then my phone started blowing up. Patrick Stewart, Sir Patrick Stewart, had passed away, too, at age 86.

Stewart’s death is not anything I’m ready to process on such short notice. I am old enough to have watched “Encounter at Farpoint,” the first Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, as an already dedicated Trek fan. Captain Picard — the most formidable leader in Starfleet — has been with me ever since.

I can hardly remember a time before I was doing the voice. I don’t know about you, but pretty much anytime I have to perform a task I say (or at least think to myself) “Engage!” And on the rare occasions it’s up to me to tell someone else to do something? “Make it so!” These are four words of the English language absolutely owned by Patrick Stewart, forever and ever amen.

Stewart was born in Yorkshire, the youngest of three boys, in a troubled household. His father, a World War II veteran, suffered from PTSD and regularly acted out violently against Stewart’s mother. Witnessing this led to years of work for domestic violence charities. Following the lead of a slightly older local lad, his friend Brian Blessed, Stewart studied at the Bristol Old Vic, one of Britain’s most respected theatre conservatories. Then came the Royal Shakespeare Company and work on some of British television’s most exemplary productions, like I, Clavdivs and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

When he got the call to audition for a Star Trek sequel, he barely took the opportunity seriously. Surely something like that won’t last long, right? Of course it changed his life, and for many of us, our lives, too.

I don’t know if TNG is my favorite Trek series. It might be. It might also be TOS or DS9. (When I am watching “Tuvix” it is VOY.) But I can say outright that Captain Picard is not just my favorite captain, he is my favorite role model from popular fiction. He was cerebral but unafraid of a fight. He looked for input from everyone on his team, but did not work toward consensus when it was time to take action. (Put your phaser down, Worf.) Moreover, he was bald, and still sexy as hell. I can’t imagine anyone playing the part of Jean-Luc Picard other than Patrick Stewart.

Of course, he used this gravitas toward his other great sci-fi role, Professor X in X-Men. We’ll see him once again later this year in Avengers: Doomsday. That’s going to end up being quite an emotional journey, I’m sure.

Walter Koenig, Star Trek’s Ensign Commander Chekov, was born in Chicago to two Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants, and was raised in Inwood, the very northern tip of Manhattan in New York City. He acted in high school plays, but attended college in Iowa on a pre-med track before transferring to UCLA to study psychology. Luckily for us all, he took an acting class, which sent him on a path back to New York to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse alongside other future stars like James Caan, Dabney Coleman, and fellow Star Trek alum Christopher Lloyd.

In the early 1960s he got his first TV gigs, including appearing in the first episodes of General Hospital. Other important early jobs included a guest appearance on The Lieutenant, created by Gene Roddenberry, and an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour written by Harlan Ellison and directed by Joseph Pevney. So when Star Trek decided to add some new blood in its second season, Roddenberry already knew a guy, and when that guy auditioned for director Pevney, it was like a big reunion. (Ellison by then was already out of the Trek picture; that’s just an added coincidence.)

The character’s primary aim, from a producer’s standpoint, was to appeal specifically to pre- and early-teens. They wanted a cuddly Davy Jones from The Monkees type, and with Koenig’s smile (and the shaggy wig), they got it. If fan mail is any measurement, Chekov was an immediate success.

Rarely was he at the center of any specific episode, but he usually got a few zings in. More importantly, the fact that his character was a Russian — America’s sworn Cold War enemy — represented a great deal in the late 1960s, and is one of the most important progressive elements of Trek.

When the gang got back together for The Animated Series, Chekov got bounced for two new characters, M’Ress and Arex, whose wild alien physiognomy exploited the animated form. But as a make good, he found work on the production as a writer. It led to other writing credits and a publishing deal for Chekov’s Enterprise, a very funny behind-the-scenes look at the making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which is often frank about how little he had to do on that one.

Chekov became more of a scene-stealer in later films — who can forget the Ceti Eel in his ear in The Wrath of Khan, looking for “nuclear wessels” in The Voyage Home, or dealing with Crewman Dax’s alien feet in The Undiscovered Country? Chekov’s affable character was drawn greatly from the man who played him. If you ever saw an interview with Koenig, you saw a good-spirited gent who cracked jokes in a thick Noo Yawk accent and collected all action figures and merch of himself. (Wouldn’t you?)

His other great sci-fi role was the recurring character Bester, the darkly charming telepathic antagonist on Babylon 5. He was also ubiquitous in the fan community, attending conventions and chatting with fans in a friendly and upbeat manner. He really was a mensch.

Both Patrick Stewart and Walter Koenig will be missed.

Jordan Hoffman, Communications Officer

My favorite, though, is the very short note from a fella who was certain that deep in the mix of a somewhat esoteric Pink Floyd song you could hear someone shout out “STARLOG!”

The idea that the legendary psychedelic British rock band would be STARLOG readers isn’t too far-fetched. Their breakthrough album was called Dark Side of the Moon after all. But, alas, this was a classic case of mishearing something. Funnily enough, I knew exactly what this guy from over 40 years was talking about, and used it as an opportunity to serenade Dave.

You can listen by clicking the “listen” button below.

We’ve had some outstanding authors on The STARLOG Podcast: Andrea Hairston, Daniel Kraus, Annalee Newitz, Daniel Noah, and now there’s another to add to this impressive list.

Mahmud El Sayed is an Egyptian-British novelist and translator whose recent work, The Republic of Memory, is one of the juiciest and most thought-provoking books I’ve read in quite some time. It concerns a generation ship midway through their 400-year journey to a distant planet, leaving a destroyed Earth behind them. Their enormous on-board society is one separated not so much by race or religion or even class, but by language, making for a truly fascinating landscape.

What’s more, after 200 years the aims of the initial adventurers (all snug and cared for in their cryogenic chambers) don’t really jibe with the reality of the ship today. This comes to a head when an incident forces a generation gap meetup.

Dave and I yap to Mahmud about all the scenes we thought were coolest in the story, but don’t worry, we don’t spoil too much.

Also — and this is key — Mahmud is the author of a great piece about the Dune universe in the upcoming issue of STARLOG magazine. We dig into Arab and Islamic representation in Frank Herbert’s original novels, the David Lynch and Denis Villeneuve films, and also the 2000 SyFy Network series. I found the conversation to be quite eye-opening.

The new episode of The STARLOG Podcast, like the ones before it, is on whatever podcasting platform you prefer. Or you can just click the little “listen” button below.

SCI-FI

One of the great quasi-legal projects that makes the internet still feel like the World Weird Web is Spelunkr, a simulator of an old cable TV interface yoinking feeds from the Internet Archive. They recently launched Channel 50, “Final Frontier,” and I think you can guess what’s on there, grainy VHS tracking and all. Everything about this is wonderful.

SCIENCE

Scientists at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile believe they have found a new dwarf planet in our solar system. For now they are calling it ED138, but hopefully it gets something more catchy like its celestial brethren Ceres or Pluto soon. What’s extra cool is its unusual orbit — it seems to be out there doing its own thing unbothered by everyone else going around the Sun. (It is thought this is due to a previous gravitational interaction with Neptune.) Read more, much more, at Space.com.

CULTURE

John Williams and Jonathan Cain were not the collab I was anticipating when I woke up today, but you need to listen to this.

ETHICS

It’s been a while since I rode a roller coaster, as they tend to make me ill at my age. But I recognize both their nostalgia factor and how exciting they can be for kids. As the technology gets more advanced, so does the need for regulation, as some recent accidents have shown. Science News has more.