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Referring to Star Trek: The Next Generation S7 E4 at the very beginning, while Troi's investigating Picard's disappearance, the alien responds, human, about two metres tall, smooth-headed.

Is Picard really two meters tall? If so, should I infer that future humans will suffer a drastic increase in height?

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    In a future peoples are taler.
    – Oni
    Jul 3, 2020 at 0:51
  • @Oni this will imply more severe budgets for cars, buildings, stellar ships and so on 😊
    – Bento
    Jul 3, 2020 at 1:05
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    2 meters is ~6'6". In real life, Patrick Stewart is 5'10" (Jonathan Franks is 6'3"). That is a "drastic increase" for Picard specifically, not for all humans in general. Although, Troi does say "about", which means she is estimating, and clearly she added several inches.
    – Remy Lebeau
    Jul 3, 2020 at 1:07
  • @RemyLebeau 👎👎 if you're looking for someone 1.75 m tall, do you give an identikit around 2 m?? If 2 m was right, the increase would be true in general: Picard is one of the lowest of the crew! However, an objection might be that in all episode and movies in which they encounter past people, moving back in time, no effectuve discrepancy is appreciable
    – Bento
    Jul 3, 2020 at 2:07
  • @Bento I'm in the US, we don't deal with meters :-)
    – Remy Lebeau
    Jul 3, 2020 at 2:34

3 Answers 3

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I don't believe Picard's exact height has ever been specified in any of the TV episodes or movies, but I think we can safely conclude that neither he, nor other humans from his era, are especially tall compared to humans from ours, based on various instances where characters from the 22nd-24th centuries have interacted with those from the 19th-21st centuries.

Notably, Picard himself appeared somewhat shorter than Mark Twain, whose height in real life is listed as approximately 1.74 metres (though the actor playing him may well have been taller).

Also, if you're rounding to the nearest metre, then the vast majority of people today (including Patrick Stewart) can be described as being "about two metres tall", since that would encompass anyone between roughly 4'11" and 8'2" in height.

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    Yes, that's true.. I had observed something similar in reply to the @RemyLebeau comment above. I've just seen the epilogue of Gambit, and another question spontaneously arises (I don't open a new discussion): Why does the separatist vulcanian lie? She even does a double (if not triple) play.. are there some sort of vulcanians able to lie? Instead, about the declared 2 meters in Gambit part1 I think a possible explication may be that the alien (or the screenwriters😊) could has been tipsy
    – Bento
    Jul 4, 2020 at 5:37
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    @ Bento There's some debate over whether Vulcans can outright lie or not, but they can certainly deceive. For example, Tuvok deceived the Maquis when he infiltrated their ranks under Captain Janeway's orders, prior to the start of the Voyager series. Personally, I think Vulcans can and have lied, but they tend not to as a rule, and where possible, they'll avoid outright lying by using misleading, but technically accurate, wording.
    – LogicDictates
    Jul 6, 2020 at 16:37
  • @ LogicDictates By definition the art of deception requires some lying ability. Probably Vulcans have the property of saying truth in general, that is, it holds as a tendency rule, and as any rule, with its exceptions which indeed confirm the rule. I've had the doubt because in TOS it seemed that it was strongly stressed that the sincerity' characteristic was something ineluctable, as e.g. the act of breathing.. however, rethinking just now at TOS it seems to me (but not sure at all) that there was an episode (don't remember which) in which Spock did something deceptive, but they then explai
    – Bento
    Jul 7, 2020 at 20:35
  • explained by some stratagem that the deception didn't represent the act of lying
    – Bento
    Jul 7, 2020 at 20:35
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We know, at least, that he is less than 2m tall. From Nemesis:

PICARD: So I'm not as tall as you expected?
SHINZON: I had always hoped I would be two metres.
PICARD: As had I.

Source

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In the TV show, Picard was 5'9", the same as Patrick Stewart. I suspect that the alien is just rounding, saying "about two meters" instead of "about 1.75 meters".

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  • In this case he could rounding also saying with a just hinted baldness... Moreover how can you argue the identity between the character height and that of the actor; I don't remember previous episodes that had stated this
    – Bento
    Jul 3, 2020 at 1:59
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    @Bento: Bones and Scotty have each appeared on both TNG and TOS, so we know the TOS characters are (around) the same height as the TNG characters. And the TOS characters traveled back to 1986 in Star Trek IV (the one with the whales), so we know they're (around) the same height as regular people were in 1986.
    – Kevin
    Jul 3, 2020 at 3:19
  • @Kevin indeed this is exactly what I had said in reply to @RemyLebeau; in addition to that movie I'd add at least the TNG episode of hibernated people from XX century (or XXI, I don't exactly remember): no appreciable discrepancy. Still I don't know why in the Gambit episode they identify him around 2 m. A good sleep will bring good advice 😊
    – Bento
    Jul 4, 2020 at 5:43

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