Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s famous for his wisdom, patience and diplomatic instincts. Yet, when push came to shove, he was also a fine warrior. For example, he invented what became known as ‘The Picard Maneuver’ where, prior to his Captaincy of the Enterprise, he would use a quirk of warp speed to make his ship appear to be in two places at once. Thus, the enemy vessel would fire upon the ‘wrong’ ship, giving Picard the opportunity to blast them with phasers and photon torpedoes.
The Federation was so impressed they even named the tactic after Picard, placing it in Starfleet Academy textbooks. But given that the adventures of Stewart’s Captain take place many years after Star Trek: Discovery, how is the show going to use the Picard maneuver?
Well, it probably won’t, but it’ll use a completely different (and much more amusing) Picard maneuver instead. You see, the costumes in The Next Generation were made out of a spandex material called Jumbo. One property of this fabric is that it tends to bunch up and so, to keep his suit from creasing, Patrick Stewart began tugging it down during filming in order to get the right look. This became a tic of Picard himself, resulting in it becoming the alternative Picard maneuver.
According to star Jason Isaacs, who played Gabriel Lorca in the first season of Discovery, CBS was adamant that the costumes look perfect at all times, with the actor saying:
“Although the future is all-inclusive when it comes races and sexuality and physical types, but there can be no creases, apparently,” said the actor. “It was very, very important from CBS that the clothes should never have a crease in them.”
Their fears were realized in the first official photo of Lorca, in which his uniform was tragically creased to hell and back. Clearly, Discovery needed its own Picard Maneuver. They tried buttoning the jacket to the pants, but that just resulted in a “front wedgie” according to Isaacs. Finally, they just created two jackets, one for sitting and one for standing that were swapped between takes.
So, there you go – movie (TV) magic. And you’ll be able to see it in action again when Star Trek: Discovery returns to CBS in January 2019.
