Star Trek fans never doubted the amount of love the community had for Patrick Stewart, who died Wednesday at age 86. But I experienced that love firsthand. Back in 2021, my husband, Rob, dressed as Captain Jean-Luc Picard for Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, and the adoration he received, simply for cosplaying Stewart’s beloved character, was overwhelming.

Our planning wasn’t complicated. Looking for a costume that would go with his shaved head and being a big fan of the show, it made sense for him to put on a red and black Star Trek uniform shirt, pin on a combadge and four pips to denote the Starfleet rank of captain, and step into some black shoes. Except for his glasses (and mask since this was 2021, the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic), it was an eerily accurate look.

Read more: Patrick Stewart, Who Gracefully Steered Star Trek Into Its Next Generation, Dies at 86

Once we walked into the Seattle Convention Center for the con, it was as if the real Patrick Stewart had shown up. The respect Stewart had built up for Picard transferred seamlessly to his lookalike. Just walking around with Rob made me feel like a celebrity escort. We couldn’t travel more than a few feet without someone noticing and calling out to him, always with glee, always with respect.

“Hey, Captain! Captain!”
“Jean-Luc!”
“Make it so, sir!”
“Engage!”
“Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra!”

Rob didn’t even wear costume-authentic black pants. In a hurry to get out the door and not expecting this level of attention, he had just pulled on his jeans. That led to a few of the funnier comments.

“Hey Captain! Was it casual day on the bridge?”

Comic Con attendees go all out. There were eerily realistic characters from Star Wars, Pokemon creatures, groups of friends dressed as The Incredibles, at least five Spider-Men, the Doctor from Doctor Who and exquisite, elaborate characters from anime. Many, many people had put more time, money and sweat equity into their costumes than we did, but few received such a universally awed reception.

Read more: Remember Patrick Stewart by Streaming Star Trek, X-Men and Other Genre-Defining Roles

Other Star Trek characters were also portrayed, for sure. Two separate Will Rikers, Picard’s trusted “Number One,” raced up to us at different times to take photos with their captain. One woman cosplaying as Kathryn Janeway, captain of the USS Voyager from Star Trek: Voyager, also posed with Rob for a two-captain photo.

And then, they saw us. A group of Comic Con attendees dressed as the Borg, the villainous cyborgs who take Picard hostage to assimilate him and temporarily turn him into Locutus of Borg. 

These Borg did not throw their costumes together last-minute. They could have walked off a Hollywood set. They had working lights on their outfits, ocular and cranial “implants,” corpse-like face makeup, arms built into cybernetic tools. Of the Borgs, three were towering men and one was a woman. The woman played the Borg Queen, her bald head covered in white makeup, elegant and terrifying.

The minute the Borg saw Rob’s Picard in the convention center crowd, they came after him. Resistance, as they say in the show, was futile.

Thankfully, they were a jollier sort than the television Borg, and after one joke about his casual-day jeans, they whisked him away to stroll around as a group and snap photos. 

These Borg were so realistic that I felt a bit unnerved the entire time he was gone — and relieved when they returned him unharmed, thanked us, waved and headed on their way. I’m sure there were other serendipitous meetups between cosplayers at the convention, but this one was amazing to see and even more so to be even a small part of.

Rob poses in front of a number of Star Trek posters, including Picard and his famed “Make it so!” command.Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

We’ve been to Emerald City Comic Con other times. Our daughter has cosplayed a variety of characters, and Rob once went as Dr. Stone, a science prodigy with green-tipped white hair (which required a wig). People in the know enjoyed that cosplay, too, and he was similarly asked to pose for photos.

But the sheer love we felt when he dressed as Captain Picard was like nothing I’ve ever felt. Since his death, I’ve seen Stewart called a generation’s space dad, and there’s truth in that. People at the convention were delighted to see their space dad, even if just a doppelganger. It buoyed us along on an unexpected high on that cold December day in 2021.

In the famous Star Trek: Next Generation episode Darmok, Picard is trapped on a planet with the Tamarian captain, Dathon. They can’t understand each other. The entire Tamarian language is constructed out of mythological and historical metaphors, none of which Picard knows

Slowly, Picard begins to comprehend. He figures out that one of the most frequent phrases, “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra!” references Darmok and Jalad, warriors who united on the island of Tanagra and eventually became friends, just like he and Dathon. 

But there’s another phrase I’ve been thinking of lately. “Kiazi’s children, their faces wet.” An online Tamarian dictionary translates it as “downplaying the severity of a perceived injury.” 

There’s no downplaying this loss. We’re all Kiazi’s children today, our faces wet.

CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line. See full bio