Guys guys I had a THOUGHT. Do you think they cast Yelchin as Chekov in part because his hair is curly so they knew they would never ever be stuck with prime Chekov's MONKEES style hair? As in people would either be whining where is my MONKEES hair or they would be whining why do we have this lameass MONKEES hair. And if they did use the MONKEES hair people would whine why don't the women have the 60's do's why is it only Chekov who looks this dated. But since his hair cannot actually go MONKEES because it is curly we will never ever face this. I'm thinking this was a plan.
His hair was not that much different than Spock's, just thicker. Monkees (who were marketing clones of the Beatles who had the same hair also), that style is dated for sure but it never bothered me. Walter Koenig was in the cast to make the show relateable to young people, I am just so grateful he was not obnoxious like Wesley.
^ Heh. Not sure whether there might have been an age factor involved, but I suspect that most people didn't find Wesley particularly obnoxious, either. I never did. (Okay, there's "Justice," but there are a lot of things in line ahead of Wesley on the list of problems I had with that ep.)
^ I never understood the dislike for Wesley, either. For me, he had no more groan-inducing behaviors or scenes than most of the other characters, especially once we get past the first season. Picard acting so uncomfortable & annoyed with children seems odd, since he is in command of a ship full of families. I do like Data, but I groaned quite a bit how we kept getting hit over the head with: "I am an android so I can not whistle, nor can I use contractions, nor can I set up a lawn chair," despite the fact he had lived with humans for decades!
According to Richard Arnold, Wil Wheaton received more fan mail than any of the other actors on TNG. Both Koenig and Wheaton were regular feature and pin-up fodder in teen magazines such as "Fifteen" in their days.
Wesley wasn't anywhere near as obnoxious as people like Mike Seaver or most other male teenage characters on TV in the 1980s. I wanted to be like him, a young man who was smart in school and had a future; I never wanted to be anything like J.J. Evans, Theo Huxtable, Dobie Gillis, Maynard G. Krebs, or any of the other teens shown on TV.
You could have stopped at obnoxious. And added "is and" before "was". The only thing I particularly hated about Wesley was that stupid rainbow outfit. Which there honestly seemed to be a similar problem with almost ALL of the "civilian" clothes on the show - we just saw him in it more than anyone else.