‘Star Trek’, Swear Words and TV Characters’ Changing Mores

This image released by Paramount+ shows Patrick Stewart as Picard, left, and Ed Speleers as Jack Crusher in the "No Win Scenario" episode of "Star Trek: Picard." (Trae Patton/Paramount+ via AP)
This image released by Paramount+ shows Patrick Stewart as Picard, left, and Ed Speleers as Jack Crusher in the "No Win Scenario" episode of "Star Trek: Picard." (Trae Patton/Paramount+ via AP)
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‘Star Trek’, Swear Words and TV Characters’ Changing Mores

This image released by Paramount+ shows Patrick Stewart as Picard, left, and Ed Speleers as Jack Crusher in the "No Win Scenario" episode of "Star Trek: Picard." (Trae Patton/Paramount+ via AP)
This image released by Paramount+ shows Patrick Stewart as Picard, left, and Ed Speleers as Jack Crusher in the "No Win Scenario" episode of "Star Trek: Picard." (Trae Patton/Paramount+ via AP)

For nearly four decades, Jean-Luc Picard of “Star Trek” has largely been presented as genteel, erudite and — at times — quite buttoned up. Yes, he loses his temper. Yes, he was reckless as a callow cadet many years ago. Yes, he occasionally gets his hands dirty or falls apart.

But the Enterprise captain-turned-admiral stepped into a different place in last week’s episode of the streaming drama “Star Trek: Picard.” Now, he’s someone who — to the shock of some and the delight of others — has uttered a profanity that never would have come from his mouth in the 1990s: “Ten f—-ing grueling hours,” Patrick Stewart's character says at one point during an intense conversation in which he expects everyone will die shortly.

The whole thing was in keeping with the more complex, nuanced aesthetic of this decade’s “Star Trek” installments. And the online conversation that ensued illustrates the journey undertaken when a fictional character voyages from the strictures of network and syndicated television to high-end streaming TV, The Associated Press said.

“'Star Trek’ was G-rated when it first came out. 'The Next Generation’ was clean-cut and optimistic. What we’re seeing now with ‘Picard’ is a little bit more of the grit,” says Shilpa Davé, a media studies scholar at the University of Virginia and a longtime “Trek” fan.

Over the weekend, “Star Trek” Twitter reflected that tension.

“Totally out of character,” said one post, reflecting many others. Some complained that it cheapened the utopia that Gene Roddenberry envisioned, that humans wouldn’t be swearing like that four centuries from now, that someone as polished as Picard wouldn’t need such language.

“Part of Star Trek’s appeal is the articulate way characters speak. Resorting to gutter language feels like a step backward since Star Trek’s characters are meant to be better than this,” John Orquiola wrote for the website Screen Rant on Sunday.

The backlash to the backlash followed. Christopher Monfette, the Paramount+ show’s co-executive producer, wrote an extensive and persuasive thread about the moment and why he believed it worked.

“It’s easy to hear that elevated British tone escaping the mouth of a gentlemanly Shakespearean actor and assume some elevated intellectualism,” he said, while acknowledging: “Criticism of its use is fair even if it just strikes a personal nerve — or if you’ve equated 'Trek' with more broader, family-friendly storytelling. But regardless, cursing in the show is carefully debated & discussed in the room or on set. We don’t take it lightly.”

The showrunner for “ Star Trek: Picard ” this season, Terry Matalas, said the F-word from Picard wasn’t scripted but was a choice by Stewart in the moment. The result, Matalas said, was “so real.”

“Everything you do as artists, as writers and actors, even as editors, is authenticity. That’s the thing you want to feel,” he told Collider. “I was really torn because hearing that word come from your childhood hero, Captain Picard, it throws you. But wow, is it powerful.”

“Star Trek” has a long history of pushing boundaries, linguistic and otherwise.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Capt. James T. Kirk said on network TV in 1967, when that word was edgy. He’d just lost someone dear to him in the most trying of circumstances. Dr. McCoy, the ship’s irascible physician, would often say, “Dammit, Jim.” And in the larger realm, the original series delicately danced with NBC censors over everything from women’s costumes to racial, sexual and war references.

But the crossing of last week's linguistic frontier is an interesting case. It highlights the turbulence generated when a beloved character born during the “family-friendly” TV era evolves against the streaming landscape, where constraints are fewer and opportunities for unflinching authenticity greater.

"This isn't just a rethinking of a fictional world. This is the same actor and the same character in the same setting that we had before. And all these years, he has been speaking and behaving in a certain way," says Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.

Sometimes this transition unfolds erratically. Velma, a member of the Gen-X-era Saturday morning cartoon “Scooby Doo,” recently appeared in a more multicultural cartoon reboot on HBO Max that featured a high-school shower scene and overt sexual references. It has been roundly panned. Several years ago, when “Riverdale” premiered, the attempts to push Archie, Jughead, Betty and Veronica from the sunny world of comics into the darker realm of teen drama produced uneven, sometimes jarring results.

“Star Trek” is in a whole different universe, so to speak.

Roddenberry famously framed it as a utopian future where the main characters generally avoided conflict with each other, their society wasn't motivated by greed and humanity was seen as inexorably moving forward. Purists have criticized the recent years of what they call “new Trek” as a darker, more fragmented universe.

Nonsense, say many others: Both allegory and word usage evolve with the times. After all, it was only seven decades ago that Lucille Ball (and her character) was expecting a baby on “I Love Lucy” and the word “pregnant” couldn't be uttered on national television — except, oddly, in French.

And for years before and after that, Hollywood's production code prescribed the ways morality and amorality could be depicted in film, with strict regulation of everything from sexual innuendo to whether criminals were portrayed sympathetically to whether the good guys won. Hence the term “Hollywood ending," which remains with us today in many parts of life.

All of which raises the question: Could it also be the boundaries themselves that help create memorable film and television, rather than merely the breaking of them?

“Star Trek had a certain kind of sincerity — almost like 'the 23rd century will be a family-friendly kind of thing,'” Thompson says. “The question is, what happens when your characters outlive the media industry standards? How do you accommodate the fact that you’re no longer limited without completely betraying the world that you’ve created?”

In this case, Stewart has said he returned to the character because he was persuaded there were new stories to tell. Just as he had aged two decades since his last "Star Trek” appearance, so, too, had Picard — with all the evolution that went along with it.

The kind of evolution, perhaps, that might make a man facing his own end choose a word that still carries a lot of power — even in today's swearing, streaming world. When Jean-Luc Picard says that word, you can be absolutely sure he means it.



Lady Gaga to Rock Copacabana Beach with a Free Concert for More than 1 Million Fans

American singer and songwriter Lady Gaga (L) performs during a rehearsal before her concert in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 02 May 2025. (EPA)
American singer and songwriter Lady Gaga (L) performs during a rehearsal before her concert in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 02 May 2025. (EPA)
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Lady Gaga to Rock Copacabana Beach with a Free Concert for More than 1 Million Fans

American singer and songwriter Lady Gaga (L) performs during a rehearsal before her concert in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 02 May 2025. (EPA)
American singer and songwriter Lady Gaga (L) performs during a rehearsal before her concert in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 02 May 2025. (EPA)

Lady Gaga will give a free concert on Copacabana Beach Saturday night, the second such show in as many years organized by Rio de Janeiro's City Hall.

The show will be the biggest of the pop star’s career, as it was for Madonna who also turned the expansive stretch of sand into a massive dance floor last year.

The large-scale performances are part of an effort led by City Hall to boost economic activity after Carnival and New Years’ Eve festivities and the upcoming month-long Saint John’s Day celebrations in June.

“It brings activity to the city during what was previously considered the low season – filling hotels and increasing spending in bars, restaurants, and retail, generating jobs and income for the population,” said Osmar Lima, the city’s secretary of economic development, in a statement released by Rio City Hall’s tourism department last month.

Similar concerts are scheduled to take place every year in May at least until 2028.

Lady Gaga arrived in Rio in the early hours of Tuesday. The city has been alive with Gaga-mania since, as it geared up to welcome the Mother Monster for her first show in the country since 2012.

Rio’s metro employees danced to Lady Gaga’s 2008 hit song “LoveGame” and gave instructions for Saturday in a video. A free exhibition celebrating her career sold out. And “Little Monsters,” as her fans are known, sang and danced in front of Copacabana Palace where the pop star is staying, in the hope of catching a glimpse of her.

Rio’s City Hall said in a recent report that around 1.6 million people are expected to attend and that the show should inject at least 600 million reais (some $106 million) into Rio’s economy, nearly 30% more than Madonna’s show.

While the vast majority of attendees will be from Rio, the event is expected to attract Brazilians from across the country and international visitors.

Ingrid Serrano, a 30-year-old engineer, made a cross-continent trip from Colombia to Brazil to attend the show.

“I’ve been a 100% fan of Lady Gaga my whole life,” said Serrano, who was wearing a T-shirt featuring Lady Gaga’s outlandish costumes over the years.

For her, the mega-star represents “total freedom of expression - being who one wants without shame.”

Lady Gaga's more than 2-hour performance is scheduled to start at 9:45 p.m. local time. Sixteen sound towers have been spread along the beach to ensure the hits resonate across the vast space.

Rio state’s security plan includes the presence of 3,300 military and 1,500 police officers, and 400 military firefighters.

Rio officials have a history of organizing huge concerts on Copacabana Beach.

Madonna's show drew an estimated 1.6 million fans last year, while 4 million people flooded onto the beach for a 1994 New Year’s Eve show by Rod Stewart in 1994. According to Guinness World Records, that was the biggest free rock concert in history.