Wil Wheaton Proves That People Liked Wesley Crusher

[Regiment]

Wesley was only annoying when he figured out things that multiple people with ten ranks and 30 years on him couldn't. Otherwise, he was a fine character.

 

[Wakefield]

Wesley was only annoying when he figured out things that multiple people with ten ranks and 30 years on him couldn't. Otherwise, he was a fine character.

Couldn't that just be it though? A new perspective?

 

[theSovietConnection]

Wesley was only annoying when he figured out things that multiple people with ten ranks and 30 years on him couldn't. Otherwise, he was a fine character.

I have to agree with this. He never really bothered me, even watching the episodes again recently Wesley never really annoys me. He's still a far superior character (in my opinion) to most of the drek my brother watches anyways.

 

[samsonguy920]

And then the writers turned him into a bitter rebel just to appease the minority and help make his leaving an easy way out.
I, for one, liked the idea of Wesley being more involved with the Enterprise crew. He had his teen moments as anyone did but he also helped pull things through a few times. More kids are getting smarter earlier these days, but what they lack most which causes them to fail in a lot of situations is experience. It would be nice to see a little more open-mindedness in giving youth a chance to really stretch their potential when they have proven they know enough.
There is basis for comparison, though. About the same time TNG was on there was also SeaQuest, which had its own teen on the ship, who wasn't even related to anybody there. He pulled his weight quite a few times, but to be honest in his case any of the other crew could have done the same thing.
Either way, Wil has shown himself to be quite the go-getter in the things he does these days. What was perceived as a failure in his time on TNG didn't stop him from pursuing his goals. That counts for a lot of kudos from me.

 

[tehroc]

I disliked Wesley because he was the perfect son who could do wrong, parents disliked him because their children weren't as proficient. Jake Sisko was a better teenage character who developed over the course of DS9, Jake had flaws and despite being a future literary genius he still struggled with mastering the skills needed.

On that note, I was surprised Wesley never made another Star Trek appearance. He could have shown up in the Gamma Quadrant in Voyager, it could have made for a decent episode.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I never really understood the hate either. I didn't care much for the character of Wesley Crusher, but that was primarily due to Wil Wheaton's acting- and to be fair to Mr. Wheaton, that seemed to be primarily the fault of the writers not really having a clue as to what to do with him and making him sort of a geek-zeist Gary Stu ("I could so totally be that smart if I was on the bridge of the Enterprise").

When they put him in a believable situation (a good example: The First Duty [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Duty]) and let him just act, it often resulted in some of the best moments the show had in its entire run.

 

[Cody211282]

God Wesley Crusher was anoying all he did was whine. And how is having a teenager on the command bridge of a top of the line military vessel a smart idea, hell he wasn't even in starfleet when it started.

 

[Eleima]

I never hated Wesley Crusher; in fact, I kinda admired and envied him. Of course, I was 8 or 9 at the time. But I'm glad that Will Wheaton had the initiative to actually ask the audience what their opinion was. Too often, the silent majority's view of things gets crushed by the vocal minority.

 

[TheSchaef]

I think what people disliked was not the character of Wesley, but the fact that he was essentially a plot device in most of the episodes. You've got a thousand people on board the Federation flagship, and none of these engineers and scientists and eggheads can get the ship out of peril, but then the fifteen-year-old with no formal training comes along and says, well here's the problem, you've got your grognard coupler crossed up in reverse polarity with your magnetic flux junkler, turns a knob, and the ship miraculously escapes danger.

Spock's heritage often became a plot device (third eyelids and what-not), and of course R2-D2 is the ultimate plot device for the entire Star Wars saga (well, he apparently can hack any door on any planet, and oh yeah, he has rocket boots now), but Wesley as a plot device just seemed kinda janky.

 

[cerealnmuffin]

What made me dislike his character was that they made him too perfect. He always had the solution to every problem and could do no wrong. During the first season, it seemed almost every episode was about how he saved the day. I wished he got executed for falling on the flowers in the Forbidden Zone. Mary Sues and Gary Stus are always bad. Also I think kids would rather pretend to be Whorf, Data or Riker over Wesley. Picard tolerated him, because he was Dr. Beverly Crusher's son and Picard had a thing for her. That is why I think he was on the bridge really to begin with.

I think the fact that he was a keynote speaker swayed the crowd. I hated the character, but I would be too nice of a person to raise my hand to the first question and i might do polite clapping for the second.

 

[Maibus]

Well I don't hate him, but every time I saw that character on screen it was very... awkward for some reason >.>

 

[Therumancer]

The character didn't fit in with the show to be entirely honest.

I don't think the issue was ever ENSIGN Wesley Crusher, it was the time he was running around the ship as a civilian doing all kinds of stupid junk. Even with his mother being the chief medical officer, I do not think that would translate into him being given as much leeway as he was given to begin with, and at that point he should not have been on the bridge.

The biggest problem with him later on was the fact that the show is supposed to be set in a military enviroment. The idea of people bringing their families on board a warship is ridiculous to begin with, even with a detachable saucer section, but the idea that your going to see crew posts assigned over this is even worse. When he went into the military they last place he ever would have been assigned was The Enterprise, exactly because of the nepotism that you saw with the concept when he was around.

See, one thing to understand is that as a matter of nessecity military organizations work on something referred to as a "seniority system", or "god's plan for the universe". While who you know, and your personal capabilities DO enter into the equasion (big time), there are limits when your looking at heavily desired assignments like being assigned to a fleet flagship. There are probably like four thousand people at any given time wanting a berth on a ship like that/transfer, all of whom are going to be the golden boys for some admiral or higher up, and all with very decent records. Sadly the captain of a ship does not wind up having complete control over who gets assigned to him, especially when your dealing with what amounts to a political post as much as anything (ie The Enterprise is sent out to act as a diplomatic envoy as much as anything else).

I think the problem was that the character just didn't work as a civilian, and the attempts to bring the character around as an Ensign fated to serve on the Enterprise, just flew in the face of any and all common sense. I'm not sure if it's the character people hated as much as the fact that it just didn't fit with the concept.

What they should have done was remove the entire aspect of "it's the doctor's son" and had some teenage ensign brought in from the beginning, since there are going to be ensigns around. The Captain having an ensign assigned to be a personal gofer is not all that unreasonable, I mean Kirk had Yeoman Rand. The character's prescence and his getting into all kinds of wierd things in the course of doing his job in exceptional situations could be made to work.

Okay, you gotta remember (and I know, I am showing my nerd roots here) that Wesley was the son of Picard's first officer on the Stargazer. Jack Crusher got killed under Picard, and Picard felt responsible for that. I think he was trying to be a surrogate father to Wesley, in some small way, because he felt responsible for causing Wesley's real father to die.

As for kids on the ship, Picard objected to that- early and often. But by the middle seasons, I think he'd become resigned to the whole thing. He didn't like it, didn't agree, but obviously, whatever protests he was making were going nowhere. Yes, the character was the author insertion fantasy of Gene Roddenberry. Wesley got away with a ton of stuff that he shouldn't have gotten away with, but after Gene passed, I think the writers acted to tone down Wesley "can do no wrong" Crusher. He was involved in that death at the academy, and he was clearly in the wrong and he got punished for it. I saw that and it was like "so much for the old Wesley Crusher".

As for assigning Wesley to the Enterprise, why not? There may have been some element of nepotism, but he was established as being very intelligent, and as far as I can remember, he was one of those at the top of his class- I think that came out in the "death at the academy" episode. I don't see any reason why his superiors at Starfleet wouldn't have assigned him to the Enterprise. Yes, he did a stupid thing, and caused the death of another cadet. But based on his intelligence, they might have thought that some experience could aid him in not making those stupid kind of mistakes in the future. And who better to learn from than Picard?

I'm not saying it is completely logical, but it isn't completely illogical to assign Ensign Wesley Crusher to the Enterprise, the flagship of Starfleet, either.

The only other thing I can see that is not true to your comments is that Starfleet is not entirely a military organization. It's a scientific and diplomatic organization with some military aspects. In later series, the military aspects definitely got played up, especially in the Dominion war. But it didn't start out that way. In fact, the voiceover from TNG says it best: "Our continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out strange new life and new civilizations- to boldly go where no one has gone before!"

Actually Star Fleet *IS* entirely a military organization. It's just more old school military harkening back towards the days of the British Empire in style. See, today the world is pretty much explored, there are no "Dark Continents" or truely mysterious areas of the sea (or at least not like they once were) pretty much all the islands are charted and claimed by various nations if there is anything worthwhile on them, and things like the Navy have become entirely about controlling territory and dealing with other nations.

The idea is that in space there are unexplored areas to send the military into, and you never know what your going to find around the next star at the edge of the map. Thus it tends to be far more prepared than it used to be. What's more the nature of space travel means that much like the old days, your going to send military ships to carry the dignitaries, or even make desicians. Sort of like the Carribean and it's colonies being more or less under military rule despite the prescence of governors or whatever on the various islands (yes this is a very simplistic view).

At any rate, when it comes to Wesley Crusher, I think the episodes you mention are a good part of what drove the final nail into the character's coffin, as opposed to a return. To tell the stories they had to delve into the purely idiotic. For example Wesley Crusher is supposed to be like the Davinci of time, space, and energy. The guy ascendes to an energy form because the moral plane cannot contain his pure levels of intellectual awesome. A concept worked with from the early days since he was a kid I might add and part of why "this does not fit in with this show". At any rate we find out that Wesley Crusher *fails* the Academy the first time because it's so competitive that only a handfull of cantidates can graduate. He loses in a competition to some amphibious-type alien who is also supposed to be a genius, but still sparks the "WTF are they thinking" questions given the fact that Wesley is supposed to be like the galactic uber-mind itself.

I could say that Wesley and those episodes gutted the entire foundation of Star Trek. If we are to take this literally, as opposed to trying very hard to forget these episodes and that characteer ever existed, Star Fleet is so selective that pretty much only the most perfect individuals of each generation even get a shot, and of them only a handfull graduate. A selection process so brutal that a guy Reed Richards would bow down and call master fails his first time. Yet, we wind up with capable, but relatively normal people through most of the series, not to mention deeply damaged individuals like Engineer Barclay.

See, the thing isn't just how his involvement flies in the face of any kind of military protocol or logic, though that is a contributing factor. It's the fact that this kid is basically an ultra-campy comic book character being written in a universe of more down to earth science fiction. As a result anything the character comes into contact with has to be re-defined accordingly and turns to a festering ball of puss as a result. The "profound and humanizing" experiences at Star Fleet instead come accross as being ridiculous. In the end the only way they could really deal with this guy is to literally have him ascend into energy and float away (or however you want to view it).

They could have come up with a young, clever, ensign for people to project onto and had it work, but that's not what this was. I think a lot of people reading this are forgetting what a borked character he was. None of this is Wil Wheaton's fault of course, he didn't create the character, he just played it.

I think part of the problem is that while you can argue that any one of the problems with the character could be glossed over (suspension of disbelief) but the fact that there are so many problems concurrently is why a lot of people didn't like him.

In more campy series like "Andromeda" (where one of the characters is a borderline omniscient avatar of a sentinent sun) and half the time they don't even bother to be consistant, a character like "Wesley Crusher" could work. It did not however fit in with Star Trek. It's the differance between high camp, or "Yahoo" (as in the exclaimation) science fiction, and more series attempts.

 

[Gindil]

... Dammit, now I gotta watch Star Trek to see what's up with Wesley...

 

[Yeager942]

I'm a pretty late bloomer when it comes to the Star Trek and I've just started watching TNG thanks to re-runs. Speaking as a teenager, I reaaaaally hate Wesley. He just bugs the hell out of me.

 

[snugglesgold]

Now im old enough to remember the next gen the first time around, it's difficult to relate how exciting it was to have Star trek back. There was virtually no decent sci-fi on tv, we were limited (especially in the uk) to very few channels and most of us still had to get about by horse and carriage. How gutting do you think it was to us all that the show sucked harder than a twenty dollar hooker. Terrible plots, dreadful dialogue, Denise Crosby, the outfits (oh god the outfits), the Ferengi who were at the time supposed to be the new big villain (snigger). Amongst all these problems everyone i knew hated one thing over all the rest Wesley bloody Crusher! Why? Unless very well handled no one likes precocious child geniuses and he was very badly handled wandering round the ship, poking his nose in, bothering all the grown ups with his zany antics, oh and that unitard thing they made him wear.....poor Will Wheaton.

 

[Antiparticle]

SHUT UP WESLEY!
(Still one of my favorite scenes in the entire series.)

 

[Hurion]

I was a kid when they were first airing and I disliked the character even then.

I can't think of a single Wesley centered episode that can be considered good, except maybe the one with the actor who went on to play Tom Paris.

 

[Radelaide]

he Tricked Sheldon. Enough said, he must die.

Poor Mee-Maw.

I don't actually know who Wesley Crusher is. But Wil Wheaton is kinda cute ^_^

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Indeed, I was also young and liked Wesley Crusher a lot.
Inspiring that the Federation recognised talent, even if still too young to drive a car