That Time William Shatner Advised Patrick Stewart To Wear Silk Stockings While Filming Star Trek Generations

Patrick Stewart and William Shatner in Star Trek: Generations
(Image credit: (Paramount))

Remember when Patrick Stewart and William Shatner shared the screen for Star Trek Generations? The two iconic Enterprise captains joined forces for the 1994 release a few months following the finale of Picard’s seven-year TV run on The Next Generation – before CBS’ Star Trek: Picard kicked off this year that is. As Stewart reaches his 80th year this week, his Starfleet brother reminisced on a funny moment on the set of the film. Check out what Shatner had to say:

He’s a love and he is an intellectual in an athlete’s body. We had a long horse scene to do together once, and I recommended him wearing women’s silk stockings to avoid chafing and he nodded his head as a thank you. When he came out of his dressing room, he was wearing the lace stockings outside of his costume. ‘No, no, Patrick, underneath your costume!’ We laughed, as we ordinarily did. I didn’t know he was so old.

Welp, now I’m never looking at that movie quite the same again. Actors have to do a lot of improvising behind the scenes in order to get through their scenes comfortably, and Captain Kirk’s advice to Jean-Luc was to don some stockings during their long hours on horseback to film a scene together. But Stewart heard him wrong and came to set with the stockings visible over his clothing. And lace too. Where are those photos, Shatner? I need to see that!

Anyway, let’s go down memory lane for a moment and watch this scene between Captain Kirk and Picard in Star Trek: Generations:

The movie is not exactly the most celebrated entry in Star Trek canon, but watching the pair of captains interact with one another makes it worth it for any OG fan of the franchise. It also served as a way to close the chapter on Captain Kirk’s tenure and pass along the torch at the same time. In Generations, Picard enters a place called the “Nexus” where he is surrounded by an illusion of an ideal life and family where he finds Kirk residing as well. The pair then work together to get the bad guy -- Soran.

The stockings talk came via The Guardian ahead of Patrick Stewart’s birthday this Monday. Stewart is coming off high praise for Star Trek: Picard’s debut season which is currently in talks to be under Emmy Award consideration. William Shatner, on the other hand, has been vocal about his disinterest in reprising his Star Trek role, though he has been posting Captain Logs on Twitter during quarantine and showed his interest in joining NASA.

You can stream Star Trek Generations on CBS All Access. Picard has already been picked up for a second season by the streamer, and CBS is currently working on an animated Star Trek series called Lower Decks. Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more Star Trek updates.

Sarah El-Mahmoud
Staff Writer

Sarah El-Mahmoud has been with CinemaBlend since 2018 after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Journalism. In college, she was the Managing Editor of the award-winning college paper, The Daily Titan, where she specialized in writing/editing long-form features, profiles and arts & entertainment coverage, including her first run-in with movie reporting, with a phone interview with Guillermo del Toro for Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Now she's into covering YA television and movies, and plenty of horror. Word webslinger. All her writing should be read in Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2 voice over.