All Hail Jean-Luc on Captain Picard Day

Happy Captain Picard Day, everyone! StarTrek.com has forever found this particular holiday amusing, in large part because we know Star Trek, real as it seems, is a fictional universe, but also because, going with the flow and pretending it's real, Jean-Luc never seemed particularly comfortable in the company of children. And yet, for the annual Captain Picard Day -- an event for the school kids aboard the Enterprise -- he judged a contest in which the kids crafted models and created paintings of him.

Riker mocked him for it, of course, and we know that Troi was quite humored, too, but the man did very much deserve his day. After all, by this time on the show he’d heroically led his crew for several years, taken on the Borg, defended Data’s sentience, and, well, drawn a smiley face in a gas cloud.