Summary
- Todd Stashwick, breakout star of Star Trek: Picard season 3, discussed how ad-libbing dialogue was allowed, leading to the creation of Captain Shaw's best line.
- Captain Shaw's character initially faced backlash from fans for showing no respect to Picard and Riker, but his tragic backstory and witty dialogue won fans over.
- If Star Trek: Picard's proposed spinoff, Star Trek: Legacy, is approved, there is a plan for Captain Shaw to return, as confirmed by Todd Stashwick on The Shuttlepod Show.
Star Trek: Picard season 3 breakout star Todd Stashwick explains the origin of Captain Liam Shaw's best line. Shaw was initially hated by Star Trek fans for showing Admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Captain William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) no respect when they came aboard the USS Titan-A. In Shaw's defense, however, Riker and Picard were planning to hijack the Titan to rescue Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden). Then a funny thing happened as Picard season 3 continued: Fans began to love Captain Shaw, especially after he revealed his tragic backstory in the Battle of Wolf 359 against the Borg.
Appearing on The Shuttlepod Show before the SAG-AFTRA strike, Todd Stashwick and hosts Dominic Keating, Connor Trinneer, Erica LaRose, and Mark Cartier discussed how ad-libbing dialogue was allowed on Star Trek: Picard season 3. This led to Stashwick explaining how Captain Shaw's best one-liner came to be. Read his quote and watch The Shuttlepod Show video (time stamp 31:11) below:
There was a big moment where my character is fanboying out over Geordi. The only character that he was any respect for is Geordi because he’s a hero engineer [and] my character is a grease monkey. So Geordi just basically reads me a laundry list of everything wrong with the ship after I’ve completely gushed over him.
I think the original line written for Shaw was “Touché.” And I’m like, “Well that doesn’t track because ‘touché’ usually means ‘I insulted you, but then you insulted me back, and you parried’.” But I wasn’t insulting him. I was praising him and he sort of appeared to be insulting me… And so, I just said, “What if I said ‘It’s been a weird week.’” To describe why the ship was falling apart. So Terry’s like, “Yes. Do that.” And that made it in the final cut.
