So I recently re-watched the "The Naked Now" and I came across a scene that I had completely forgotten about. Wesley proudly shows Geordi how he has obsessively recorded words that Picard has spoken over the ship's intercom and pieced them together to from commands addressed to him, so that he can pretend Picard is giving him commands on the bridge. Geordi just smiles and pats him on the back and the episode plays it off like we should be impressed with him. I laughed out loud at first but then I began thinking about how creepy and weird this scene is. I mean it sounds like testimony given at a restraining order hearing. A teenage boy making recordings of a grown man giving him orders? It really takes to a new level the whole bizarre father figure attachment and/or borderline homoerotic fascination Wesley seems to have regarding Picard in the early episodes.
The Most Funny and Creepy Wesley Scene
- Thread starter The Colonel
- Start date
That's reading too much into it. There's nothing bizarre or homoerotic about a young man hero-worshipping an older man who's both a father figure and the person in the highest position of authority where he lives.
There's nothing weird about a whiz-kid showing off. If anything it reveals our current culture as weird for associating any affection between a teenager and an older man to pedophilia.
Is there ANYTHING about Wesley that isn't creepy, belabored, irritating and in general poorly conceived and implemented? A character so flawed, even the actor hired to play the character has spent 20+ years openly mocking it.
Agreed... looking way too far into it.
He was a kid who dreamed of being on a Starship, specifically working on a Starship. He was amazed by the bridge and studied everything about the ship's operations, which control panels do what, etc. He wanted to be a part of the crew (which eventually happens)
I don't see a difference between what he (a kid at the time) did and what other kids do with tv shows, movies or games where they have an adult "hero" pretending to communicate with them.
Thunderbirds are GO!
Mocking mostly because fans already mocked his character for a long time.
I found him annoying in some earlier episodes, but never thought of him as poorly conceived or poorly implemented.
All kids around that age get annoying, especially the knowitalls.
It's been tossed around for a while now, but Wes was designed to be a representation of a younger Gene and Gene had lashed out and defended Wil's Character openly because he took criticism of Wesley Crusher personally.
Was he flawed?
All the characters were flawed in one way or another. That's what made them possible to be related to. Wes's flaw was that he was a try-hard and always wanted to show how good he was in order to over compensate for his age and lack of maturity.
This later unfolded into the character that we saw evolve as Wesley was cut out of the show..... a kid who grew up in the shadows of other people in his life and expected to fill the shoes others put in front of him. To the point where he didn't even figure out what he really wanted for himself. He was too busy trying to prove himself to those he looked up to.
... something many of us have gone through while growing up.
At face value, his character annoyed many. He irritated many because of all of the above.
People I have seen complain about Wesley complain that he was a knowitall who saved the ship and crew on a number of occasions because the show made him seem like he was smarter than everybody else on the ship. This kid could do something productive and think of things some of the adults couldn't think of.
It's like these people get PO'd that "The Nerd Kid" gets attention from time to time and "The Nerd Kid" can actually do something productive. Heaven forbid "The Nerd Kid" ends up showing he has some use in society other than being a punching bag for bullies.
Why are there nerd kids in the world anyways?
They're considered nerds and are unpopular because they're smart and annoying because they lack any social skills....
.... why do they lack social skills to the point of being annoying?
Because they're smart and others in society don't like being made to look dumb.... so they don't want to hear from them.
And in TNG, they shove "The Nerd Kid" right in your face and you just have to deal with it.
I will admit though. The Traveler is pretty fricking creepy.
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I dunno...I'll never understand exactly why people see the Traveler through suspicious eyes. He had identified Wes as understanding the 'time and space aren't the separate things they appear to be' stuff, and his intrigue was based on this quality.
I had an art teacher in high school who took notice of my artistic abilities, and he sort of took me under his wing, to the point of becoming sort of a co-instructor in classes at times (I had a knack for explaining graphics concepts that some kids didn't instinctively 'get'). We even went to a few art events and such on our own time. It was purely a mentor/mentee (or whatever you'd call it) relationship. Looking back on it, you could say that he was my version of the Traveler.
I don't really see it as anything unusual.
So, who was your Traveler?
I had an art teacher in high school who took notice of my artistic abilities, and he sort of took me under his wing, to the point of becoming sort of a co-instructor in classes at times (I had a knack for explaining graphics concepts that some kids didn't instinctively 'get'). We even went to a few art events and such on our own time. It was purely a mentor/mentee (or whatever you'd call it) relationship. Looking back on it, you could say that he was my version of the Traveler.
I don't really see it as anything unusual. So, who was your Traveler?
I dunno...I'll never understand exactly why people see the Traveler through suspicious eyes. He had identified Wes as understanding the 'time and space aren't the separate things they appear to be' stuff, and his intrigue was based on this quality.
I had an art teacher in high school who took notice of my artistic abilities, and he sort of took me under his wing, to the point of becoming sort of a co-instructor in classes at times (I had a knack for explaining graphics concepts that some kids didn't instinctively 'get'). We even went to a few art events and such on our own time. It was purely a mentor/mentee (or whatever you'd call it) relationship. Looking back on it, you could say that he was my version of the Traveler.
So, who was your Traveler?
I never had one personally.....
But my issue with the Traveler isn't so much what you described above, but more towards how he talked and his mannerisms toward Wes.
I'm not homophobic or anything like that, but his, well.... "Atmosphere" towards Wesley seemed a bit on the gay side.
Typically, if it was an adult to adult thing, sure, but it was an adult to minor thing.
And I've encountered a few people strictly professional in a tutoring role and the Traveler does cover that aspect in some regard.... but it's just got a bit more of a creepy tone to it.
When Q was teaching the young lady that had Q powers how to do Q things.... that had your tutoring atmosphere to it.
To each their own anyways.... it doesn't phase me that much, but the Traveler did have an odd "feel" towards how he approached Wesley in certain things.
I think they were trying to show the Traveler as having an unusual connection with people and what we know as reality. It was serene, unconnected yet bonded on a different level. I had a professor in college from Calcutta who taught Hinduism who had an almost identical way of behaving with people.
Perhaps you should stop reading Fifty Shades of Grey if you can't avoid to see a sexual subtext when someone gives order to another person.
What's really creepy is this:
WESLEY: But he still won't let me on the Bridge. And there's nothing there I don't understand.
LAFORGE: I wish I understood myself that well.
So Wesley's persuaded the Captain should give him a job on the bridge, despite he's 15, and Geordi says him he's right to think that instead of saying him to wait to be older.
Absolutely. Because if I'm on that ship, I have complete faith that in a time of crisis, a 15 year old will know exactly what to do, and I won't have to worry about him at ALL.
*eyeroll*
It's funny. Starfleet freaked out about giving Data a command position, but put a 15 year old boy on the bridge? No problem!
Just to clarify my original post... I was joking about the homoerotic part, I'm not the sort of person who sees sexual undertones in everything and the episode certainly never intended this. The scene is still funny to me because of its unintended creepiness. If I had obsessively pieced together recordings of a teacher or coach when I was 15 and played them at home, my parents would have been a little concerned.
As for the character in general. Wesley was a cloying, effete, uptight, Mary Sue know-it-all; who existed only as an object of affection from all of the crew and someone every guest character took an immediate and implausible liking to. He would suddenly swoop in to save to the day when all of the best officers in Starfleet were clueless, because "kids know best" or some such nonsense. He was capable of speaking only in short, corny, wide eyed declarations or in whiny parodies of teen angst.
As for the character in general. Wesley was a cloying, effete, uptight, Mary Sue know-it-all; who existed only as an object of affection from all of the crew and someone every guest character took an immediate and implausible liking to. He would suddenly swoop in to save to the day when all of the best officers in Starfleet were clueless, because "kids know best" or some such nonsense. He was capable of speaking only in short, corny, wide eyed declarations or in whiny parodies of teen angst.
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Wesley wasn't Gene as a kid, he was an idealized version of Gene as a kid, cleansed of real feelings real teenagers generally possess.
I didn't mind he was smart, so much as they had to write the adults as dumber to make him appear smart. Like being the only one on the ship to consider just maybe Data is actually Lore. They made other characters fail at basic job competence so Wesley would have the opportunity to be the hero.
There was also blatant nepotism going on, with Wesley being given special privileges not because he earned them, but because his Mom was friends with the Captain.
If they had found a way to make him have to work harder to earn his spot on the bridge, and had shown him as having more recognizably teenage emotions, and shown him working with the adults toward a solution instead of doing everything on his own, everything else would have been fine.
I didn't mind he was smart, so much as they had to write the adults as dumber to make him appear smart. Like being the only one on the ship to consider just maybe Data is actually Lore. They made other characters fail at basic job competence so Wesley would have the opportunity to be the hero.
There was also blatant nepotism going on, with Wesley being given special privileges not because he earned them, but because his Mom was friends with the Captain.
If they had found a way to make him have to work harder to earn his spot on the bridge, and had shown him as having more recognizably teenage emotions, and shown him working with the adults toward a solution instead of doing everything on his own, everything else would have been fine.
Goofy ass kids are amused by the dumbest things.
When you put it that way, it sounds like he was stalking the ship--The Enterprise should've gotten a restraining order!
I wonder if Troi ever had the computer give her motherly approval.
"You're hot. Wanna play baseball?"
That's a different context, though. The amount of effort it would take for you to obtain that many recordings of a random person today and then splice them all together would be huge - a fairly clear sign of a potentially unhealthy obsession. Wesley was a computer savvy kid playing with advanced 24th technology. What he did was probably more comparable to a kid now drawing some pictures or writing bad fanfic (or maybe, borderline good fanfic, since he was such a whizzkid) about his heroes. Nobody blinks an eye at that stuff.
Huh. I like Wesley. Guess I'm in the minority on this one.
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