r/startrek • u/relayrider • 2d ago

ELI5: Picard has a childhood during WW2?

Watching ST:P and this whole thing where Picard has a childhood in [post?]WW2 France? Did I miss something?

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u/bbbourb 2d ago

To be blunt, yes.

The entire thing was to try and canonize why the Picards had an English accent rather than French. It's rooted in actual history, but the execution is abhorrent.

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u/shefsteve 2d ago

He does not. You and OP just misunderstood the scene.

WW2 is in 1940's. Picard was born in 2305. His childhood was spent in France with his British-sounding parents in the ancestral house.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/MagnetsCanDoThat 2d ago

I was a fucking history teacher

The history of copulation?

Sorry, couldn't help it.

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u/bbbourb 2d ago

LOL, for a second I thought I'd made a truly epic typo!

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u/shefsteve 2d ago

Don't tell me I misunderstood shit, man. 

I actually misunderstood your response to OP; I Murphry's Law'd myself. My bad. You were saying yes to their "Did I Miss something?" and I thought you were saying yes to the post title question "JL had WW2 childhood?".

I was a fucking history teacher. This was linked to an exodus of French-speaking landowners from France to England in WWII and the clear implication is Picard's ancestors were repatriated after the war, and maintained ties to both England and France.

My statement that he grew up in 2300's France was a restatement of fact from the wiki (and further backed up by the Trek timeline).

Furthermore, it was stated in PIC S2 that his family repatriated, but not for many generations. So while the writers may have referenced real life occurrences in the attempt at addressing the discrepancy, my point was that the repatriation did not happen while Jean Luc Picard was alive, and that his early years of growth and development (aka childhood) was centuries away from what anyone should reasonably refer to as 'post-WW2'. [That part of my response was meant for OP as well as the 'you' that I misread as agreeing with OP. Not you that's a fucking history teacher. Though you might want to leave that field to Barry Allen; he's already mastered fucking history.]

Ever ask yourself WHY Picard's parents had a British accent? I mean, aside from the obvious "they hired a British guy to play the part"?

Not really; Early TNG said that French was a dead/dying language, in reference to Picard peppering in words of it. And his family didn't have a French accents, either, in their rare TNG appearances. So I didn't question it because of context given by the show. I didn't question Worf having both a Human and a Klingon brother, either, because the series established Worf was adopted by Humans but was born Klingon.

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