A couple of days ago, the Google alert I set up for  news about the new Patrick Stewart Star Trek series  cropped  up this Slashfilm.com intriguing article.  Like many others, it explains  how the new series is  going to be quite different from TNG in both content and format. For one, it’s going to be serialised rather than episodic. But the detail which most caught my  attention was Stewart saying it will resonate with the present:  “…it references the present day at times, and that’s all I can say, really. I’m not saying we are in the present day. We’re not. But the world that we find Jean-Luc Picard in is not quite the world that we left him in….” I find that intriguing and tantalising.  Could the references stewart alludes  to be political in nature? Might he  and the producers of this series intend to use it to say something about the contemporary political world?  We know Stewart is a Labour supporter who opposes brexit; is it possible that the new series could  be about a member of the  Federation trying to split away from it? That’s  pure  speculation, of course, but  based on what Sir Patrick has said, I think it is quite a  tantalising possibility. The article notes how Stewart was intending to turn the  proposal down until he saw what the producers had in mind; that implies that it was artistically significant, or resonated with him enough  to make him change his mind. He is as upset as any thinking person at what is  currently going on, so if I was him, the  temptation to use the role for which I’m most famous to say something about the contemporary political climate would be too much.