Paramount/CBSHow many people have played Jean-Luc Picard across various incarnations of Star Trek? More than you think. While Patrick Stewart originated the role, it was never recast through the seven-year run of The Next Generation, nor in the four TNG films, nor in Picard — but a few other actors have played younger versions of the iconic character. IN TNG, David Tristan Birkin played Picard when he was turned into a child in the episode “Rascals,” while the TNG episode “Tapestry” saw Marcus Nash play Picard in flashbacks. In Picard Season 2, Dylan Von Halle played a very young Jean-Luc in several flashbacks, and Tom Hardy (yes, that Tom Hardy) played a younger Picard clone in Star Trek: Nemesis. But one actor who played a younger version of a different Patrick Stewart character was James McAvoy, starred as the younger Professor Charles Xavier in four X-Men movies from 2011 to 2019. And, it turns out that in the very recent past, McAvoy wanted to expand his young Patrick Stewart character repertoire to include Jean-Luc Picard, and star in a series that explored Picard’s captaincy of the USS Stargazer.In a new interview with Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, McAvoy reveals that the series, which he called Mutiny on the Stargazer, had a much more fully developed pitch than fans ever knew. And, had it happened, it would have totally filled in a fascinating missing piece of Star Trek history.James McAvoy’s Mutiny on the Stargazer pitchSpeaking to Horowitz in an interview published on October 15, McAvoy jokes that “all I really want to do in my career is play young versions of Patrick [Stewart],” but also makes it clear that this pitch was pretty much his idea, and it was taken to Paramount and seriously considered. Here’s what McAvoy says the series would have been about:“It pitched...like a one-off standalone season...when he took over as captain of the Stargazer. And what actually happened. And the secret he’s been holding his entire career.”McAvoy said that though this was pitched to the powers-that-be at Paramount (possibly to Alex Kurtzman at Secret Hideout), the project didn’t happen because “we had logistical issues.”Mutiny on the Stargazer would have created a cool Trek canon twistPatrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard in 1987. | Aaron Rapoport/Corbis Historical/Getty ImagesMcAvoy’s concept is fantastic, and sounds like the work of a true fan, thinking through the breadcrumbs of details we have from this lost era of Trek lore. Canon tells us that Picard commanded the Stargazer starting in 2333 and ending in 2355, a whopping 22 years. And we also know Picard assumed command after the first captain was slain on the bridge. What we don’t know is exactly why he took command, and what McAvoy’s pitch presupposes is that maybe Picard took command because the crew mutinied against the first Stargazer captain. This notion is very cool, for many reasons. First, this series would naturally have become a kind of period piece, in which McAvoy and others would almost certainly be rocking the “monster maroon” Starfleet uniform style from the classic TOS films. And, because the Stargazer bridge was also from the TOS movie timeline, it’s possible this show could have (hypothetically) had a Wrath of Khan aesthetic. (As it stands, Strange New Worlds recreated a version of the monster maroon uniform for an alternate Captain Pike in 2022’s “A Quality of Mercy.”) Picard, wearing the classic “monster maroon” uniform in TNG’s “Tapestry,:; Pike in a reimagined version of this uniform in SNW’s “A Quality of Mercy.” | Paramount/CBS/Paramount+The time period is also very interesting, because it’s not clear if this would have been at a point when Jack Crusher Sr. was part of the Stargazer crew. Presumably, McAvoy would have thought about those details in his pitch, but there’s a 20-year gap between when Picard assumes command of the Stargazer in 2333 and when Jack perishes under Picard’s command in 2353.On top of all of this, this pitch is also wonderful because it speaks to the literary foundation of what Star Trek is based upon: Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s interest in the nautical novels by C.S. Forester focused on the character of Horatio Hornblower, a British naval officer serving during the Napoleonic era. As Patrick Stewart once recalled, Roddenberry gave him several Hornblower novels before TNG began filming, saying “that’s your man,” indicating that Hornblower was the basis for Picard. This was also true of Roddenberry’s creation of Kirk, but intentionally or not, McAvoy’s Mutiny on the Stargazer pitch dovetails with a Hornblower novel called Lieutenant Hornblower (1952), in which Hornblower is forced to mutiny against a brutal and unhinged captain named James Sawyer aboard the HMS Renown.In a sense, McAvoy’s pitch could have brought the story of Jean-Luc Picard full circle in a very Roddenberry-esque fashion: the story of an epic hero’s first test of bravery, which also included a massive risk. Hopefully, as Star Trek’s TV future remains in flux, someone will open up communications with McAvoy again and make Mutiny on the Stargazer a reality.Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Picard stream on Paramount+.Phasers on Stun!: How the Making — and Remaking — of Star Trek Changed the WorldAmazon -