Star Trek: Picard's Patrick Stewart Reveals Story Behind Jean-Luc's New Number One

Star Trek fans were greeted with a Number One surprise in the latest series, Star Trek: Picard, when it premiered. In the series, since Sir Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc is no longer the Captain of the Enterprise and doesn't have a right-hand man, the new Number One his someone just as close to him in the series, his dog. Speaking with StarTrek.com, Stewart opened up about the dramatic reason they added the dog to the series, which was anchored into the show's new depiction of Picard.

"I wanted a dog because I have, only in the last four years, renewed my acquaintance with dogs," Stewart said. "I had a dog, a border collie, when I was little and nothing since then. I thought all we need to do is to have a dog at Picard's side. And that, without any dialogue or any dramatic reference, will say a lot about this man, that he now has a dog always at his side."

The actor went on to detail how they came to decide on the breed and why it was so important to Stewart as a whole.

"And then the question was what kind of dog? Well, I am obsessed with pitbulls. What a dog, and how ill used they have been, appalling used. In England they're a banned breed. I adopted my first pit bull and we already were excited about the thought of taking her back to England, and we couldn't do it. They won't be let in the country. I even talked to the British Embassy in Washington about it and they said, 'There's nothing we can do.` I'm now part of a campaign working in the UK to get this legislation changed because they are the most sensitive, the most loving, the most giving, the most affectionate creatures that you could ever possibly hope to meet."

Like the franchise's most recent hit, Star Trek: Discovery, Picard will be streaming exclusively on the CBS All Access service here in the United States, a subscription to which has become a must-have for Star Trek fans over the past couple of years. CBS All Access has a free trial for users that have yet to give the service a go. You can stream whatever you want on All Access, including the Picard premiere, for a full week before being charged for it. Simply go to CBS.com and sign up for your free trial, and you'll have no issue watching the new Star Trek series.

If you don't want to pay for CBS All Access after your trial, be sure to go into your setting and cancel within that seven day window. If you're content with what you're paying for, however, just let the subscription kick in after a week and keep watching.

For those in Canada, new episodes of Star Trek: Picard will first arrive on television every Thursday at 9 pm ET. The episodes will be available on the Crave streaming service the following day. For fans in other countries around the world. new episodes of Picard will be released on Amazon Prime Video every Friday morning.

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