TLDR: Mastodon user painstakingly discovers that a copy of The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare appears in Picard's ready room in several TNG episodes. He tracks down the pages on screen in those episodes, and finds that in "Silicon Avatar", "True-Q" and "Descent I" it's displayed on-screen open to pages 354/355 which contain a picture of Patrick Stewart performing as the character "Touchstone" (a court jester) in the 1968 Royal Shakespeare Company production of "As You Like It".
this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2026
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Should be noted that it's not any random mastodon user
Generally great account to follow for such random tidbits on basicaly a daily basis
Jörg Hillebrand (born 2 April 1980; age 46) is a research consultant (or "research assistant" as he was officially credited) who worked on the second and third seasons of Star Trek: Picard. It did earn him his own individual Internet Movie Database entry, on top of his (second) in-universe reference as a Starfleet officer.
He worked on Star Trek: Picard but never got to meet Patrick Stewart?
As far as I know he basically assisted in keeping lore facts straight during production, which I assume is mostly a email and video call job. Not someone who runs around on set, especially when living in Germany
That's all because he started his Star Trek career taking himself far to seriously as an actor: he needed that on hand reminder to lighten the fuck up.
Star Trek was protopian, it needed to present at positive, despite all the conflict that occurs. That means having 'up' people on screen, less there's a damn good reason to be down.
I Just restarted TNG yesterday, you can tell right off that the actors haven't gotten a grasp on their characters yet. But even the second episode shows a lot of improvement.
Great story and great research ... kudos to Jörg Hillebrand for finding this amazing bit of Trek lore ... not only is Captain Jean Luc Picard famous for being part of Trek but so is Patrick Stewart ... amazing! I'm sure that someone on the production crew of the original TNG lineup was in on this hidden easter egg (maybe even Stewart himself) but it only take a dedicated Trek fan to be able to discover it
Star Trek as well as other scifi shows are great at little easter eggs like this in the background as shout outs or filler, but this is fitting.
This is incredible thanks for sharing