Captain Picard Dies from a Hair Transplant Accident
(Here is another installment from my series TV Character Obituaries.)
THE PLANET HIRSUTIA — The galaxy was saddened yesterday at the news of the death — from a hair-transplant miscue — of its frequent savior, Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the United Federation of Planets. Other faraway galaxies were also a little distraught, since, as captain of the Starship Enterprise, he had been flung on more than one occasion to parts of the Universe so remote from our own shady little corner of the cosmos that Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity did not apply except in cases when Picard’s second in command, Lieutenant Commander Riker, let the air out of his usually puffed out chest to reveal a man with a concaved torso and low self-esteem, whereupon the Enterprise’s counselor, Deanna Troi, would expose even more of her ample cleavage as thorax compensation. There were even moments of silence from his longtime enemies, like the Romulans and the Ferengi, though the commercially wired Ferengi are now hard at work pouring over its Laws of Acquisition for loopholes on how to make a quick buck, or bars of Gold-Pressed Latinum, from a guy who twice saved their greedy asses – but, as The 453rd Law of Acquisition states, “Whoever saves your life today, just make sure to take out a life insurance policy on them tomorrow.” Meanwhile Picard’s friend AND enemy, the Klingons, forewent a moment of silence because a Klingon is incapable of silence, being that their breathing at rest is louder than a supernova going off in front of a microphone (a quaint amplifying device from the 20th century used by untalented drunks as part of an exercise in humiliation called Karaoke).
Picard was from France, which was hard to tell because he spoke in a proper British, Shakespearean elocution. He also had a retro interest in Sherlock Holmes novels – and Picard being Picard he would not only read the paperback versions of the books but would play the part of Holmes on the holodeck – and, what is more, manage to release the evil Moriarty from a fictional simulation to real, self-aware intelligence that plotted to take over the Enterprise – when, in fact, Picard should have been catching up on administration work, especially why it was that no one ever took a piss break. Another hint that he may not have been French was that he refused to wear a toupee, even the top-of-the-line hair-pieces made in a factory situated behind a surf shop on Gamma Hydra IV. The only indication that he was French was the way in which he sipped his totally British Earl Grey Tea – that is, he sat with crossed legs, and not crossed legs in the sense of flopping an ankle atop the opposite knee but rather the back of one knee pushed down hard on the other knee, as if he had a non-obstructive vagina.
What has perplexed most life forms in the Universe – and that includes the nanobots that once took control of the Enterprise so to orchestrate the revival of their oldest role model, Bill Gates — is how such a drab medical procedure like a hair transplant could kill a man who had survived some of the most harrowing adventures this side of ancient Hollywood action hero Bruce Willis in the Die Hard movies. These brushes, nay, collisions with death, included being not only captured by the Borg but becoming an actual Borg, though some detractors of Picard’s bland personality speculated that, as a Borg, he demonstrated a more fun-loving spirit; devolving into a marmoset while Troi turned into a spider, the Klingon, Warf, into a predatory beast out to kill them all, especially Picard, and Riker into a caveman, which is to say, Riker alone remained himself; being taken into the Nexus, a vast energy ribbon that helped its captives relive cherished moments of their past life along with moments of fantasy (which explained why the Borg Vixen, Seven of Nine, appeared all throughout the Nexus), and then escaping from the Nexus WITH the thought-to-be dead Captain Kirk, after which both, of course, collaborated to save a few solar systems; an eight-foot tall Nausicaan, with horrid breath, plunging a sword though Picard’s heart, and then thirty-five years later, with the aid of the omnipotent Q, having the same Nausicaan do the exact same deed at the exact same time (a paradox, yes); and, most impressive of all, Picard withstanding a long life of having a Vulcan/Kierkegaardian stick up his ass.
There has always been a lot of whispering among the Class M Planets — especially on Delta IV, where the natives all go by the nickname “Chrome-dome” — about why is it that, with all the technological accomplishments of the 24th century, no one has yet to perfect a synthetic hair-piece that does not look like the mane of Cardassian Alley Cat. It is true that science has created a machine that can transport sentient life from on board a starship to the surface of a planet, leaving the transportee with no side effects save for the urge to say annoying things like “Beam me up, Scottie;” and made possible the warp engine that can take a vessel from one galaxy to another in the same time it used to take a New York cabdriver, circa 2013, with a gun aimed at his head, to get from Wall Street to Shea Stadium, while at the same time avoiding its hull from being dented by a single stray asteroid, small rock, or floating Borg body part – yet, in the name of the Bajoran Prophets, not one metric inch of scientific progress has been made to give a bald humanoid some dignified tonsorial relief. There was such a universal conspiracy against Picard ever strutting onto the bridge fully coifed that when the Romulans created an evil Picard/Reman clone, even the clone, Shinzon, was balder than a Vadris III Prophesy Orb.
Thus Picard’s last hope was to journey to the planet Hirsutia. Logic dictated that any world named in honor of an over-abundance of hair had to be the place in which to realize one’s life-long dream of walking into any singles bar on Risa and, with a thick and carefully styled mane, pick up any chick in the galaxy, in particular those green, sexy babes from Orion. The Hirsutian surgeon was named Sbarro, Son of Qdoba, who was renowned for transforming guys more devoid of scalp-fur than the Queen Borg with whom Picard once battled when she attempted to sabotage Earth’s first warp engine test – yes the same queen who was his former step-mom and then, prequel to the battle, tried to seduce him in a galactic Oedipal twist – yes, Sbarro, Son of Qdoba, could implant so much hair on these bald guys that they could now be anchormen on the Delta Quadrant Nightly News.
Picard beamed down to the planet with only one minor concern: Which of his two trademark directives should he use when giving the green light to Sbarro, Son of Qdoba, to initiate the procedure? Should he say, in his rich baritone voice, “Make it so?” – or extend his index finger and issue the one-word command, “Engage?” He settled with nodding “Make it so” after being told the details of the operation, and then ordering Sbarro, Son of Qdoba, to “Engage” before applying the Denobulan anesthesia – and that was the last word ever uttered by the man who could talk circles around the Prime Directive itself.
Sbarro, Son of Qdoba, was just about to employ his Vulcan scalpel when a man burst into the operating room waving a iPad-3448 claiming he had proof that the good surgeon was actually Sbarro, Son of TGIF (pronounced ta-giff), which resulted in Sbarro, Son of Whatever, becoming so disoriented that he turned around too fast before realizing that he had just driven the scalpel through the brain of the great Captain Picard.
Yes, Captain Picard had hundreds of times cheated death in battle against Romulans, Cardassians, Klingons, Borg, wormholes, time travel, asteroid fields, exploding suns, Riker’s embarrassing hero worship – only to die, while in a drug-induced sleep, at the hands of a blundering bastard Hirsutian cosmetic surgeon.
(See more on my website: http://www.authorjamesfjohnson.com)
Author James Francis Johnson 