My Analysis of the Problems with Ens. Wesley Crusher

[Graywand2]

Before I begin, let me point out that my problem with how they handled Wesley Crusher is not with the concept of a commissioned officer still in his teens. Personally, I believe it was designed to show that like in most of the cultures on this planet, by the 24th century society, if not the law, sees people fifteen and older basically as adults. My problem is how they handled this specific character.

1. How he got his brevet appointment in the first place.

At first when I was ten and I saw "Where No Man Has Gone Before", I thought it was cool. I'm an adult now and I think "wait a second. The Traveler has basically admitted that he was lying his way into Starfleet's confidence so he could use them as a cheap source of transportation and to indulge his curiosity, and you still grant someone a field commission to even an acting Ensign on his recommendation? No, he should've earned that rank himself. Let him prove his abilities in a situation during a crisis i.e. like he mans a station and remains cool during a battle or other crisis. Or have him foil a plot against the ship on his own initiative. That would've been a better story.

2. Ignoring His Input or opinions

If you trust someone enough to give him/her a provisional officer's rank, shouldn't you give that man or woman the respect you give the other commissioned officers in his or her grade and listen to their reports and not automatically dismiss them. They should've at least stopped to listen when he tried to warn them about Lore masquerading as Data and talking with the Crystalline Entity.

3. Make his rank official and still send him to the Academy.

What was the point of giving him a full Starfleet commission as an ensign on the command track, complete with the red uniform, and still sending him to the Academy? If he's already proven he can do the job enough to formally make him an officer, there's no point.

 

[Focus Abbey]

Meh. Wesley was a play for the teen demographic, someone youth were supposed to identify with somehow, like Chekov in TOS. If Star Trek were more like, say, Space Patrol, no one would question it. But for better or worse, TNG fans were too sophisticated and it stuck in their craws.

 

[Graywand2]

Unlike Chekov they handled him wrong.

 

[DrTaylor]

I think the thing we have to remember is that Starfleet isn't the Navy. Nog was promoted out of the Academy but that was a time of war. In general, they don't do that, and promoting Wes shouldn't preclude him getting into the Academy, which everyone knows was the best place for him.

On a personal note, while the character was badly concieved, I still like Wesley - most of the time. (I'm with Starfleet. We don't lie!) It's not Wes's fault no one could remember what it was actually like to be fifteen when they wrote his lines. Thank God they did better with Jake Sisko.

 

[RyuRoots]

I kinda like Wes ultimately (not as much as any of the not-Troi mains, but not bad)...but not in the first two seasons. The problem with Wes was this whole wunderkind schtick which they thankfully dialed down considerably as the show wore on.

 

[Rett Mikhal]

Wesley was put into TNG for the same reason every superhero has at least one child wonder sidekick: because writers forget how imagination works.

They start with a basic question. "How do we appeal to the younger audience? Case in point, the youngest person on the bridge is Troi, as if she matters. How will kids identify with an old bald guy?"

Sounds reasonable until you realize kids have imagination. If they like something, they will want to play with it. If a kid really liked a character like Data, he or she could imagine themselves being like Data. They don't CARE that Data is played by a 30 year old man or that he's a 50 year old android. We all know that this DID happen in an episode, even, which kinda baffles me (you could argue the writing had matured by that point).

This is akin to the dumbass decision to put obnoxious little kids in every single one of the Star Wars prequels.

So, the unimaginative solution is just put a character in there young enough that kids could see themselves being in a few years. I will admit, this might have even worked on me when I was... six... but only in that episode when Wesley is fighting everyone's addiction to the evil video game. Give me some credit, that's a decent episode and Wesley is used exactly as the OP wanted him to be used; saving the ship. Saving several ships, actually.

That's been my take on it since I looked back on the series as an adult.

 

[Praxius]

I personally don't see any of what you guys are mentioning above.

The only reason why he got to serve on the bridge and basically get all sorts of special treatment was simply because he was the son of the Chief Medical Officer of the Enterprise....... whom just so happens to know Jean Luc quite well and for some time..... whom Picard was best friends with her Husband..... whom Picard had a thing for Bev....... whom Picard felt responsible for the Death of his best friend, but most importantly, Wes's father.

Everybody knows how they played Picard in the beginning. A grumpy bald guy with a stuffy accent and attitude.... who Hates children.

Yet almost immediately when he discovers who Wesley is, you see the emotion change in his face and almost immediately grows an attachment to him...... perhaps due to responsibility he felt, who knows..... but over the seasons, we get to see this proven to be true over and over again.

He was so fond of him, he let him sit in the captains chair..... Picard let his guard down and Wes basically embarrassed him in front of everybody by knowing everything about the chair and what everything did, almost as if to say a child could do his job.

Picard freaked

It was a father and son relationship, eve though Picard always tried to hide it from not just the crew, but the viewer.... though they always let something slip for the viewers and sometimes the crew. But most of the time, when it came to public knowledge of how "The Captain" feels about someone, that was to remain separate.

My point is that Wesley got perks because of who he knew, which was the Captain.

Keep in mind that if it was any other child on that ship, he probably would have thrown them out the nearest airlock.... as Quark would so often put it.

And if it was Riker trying to get Wes on the Bridge due to knowing Beverly rather then Picard knowing her, you'd bet there wouldn't have been a chance in hell.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

Wesley is not unlike Jar Jar in that they both were intended to appeal to a younger audience and both were portrayed in a manner that drove the audience crazy. For the most part, I don't mind Wes, but the number of times he "saves the day at the last moment" compared to the number of times the rest of the crew says "Shut up Wesley!" kinda makes the character awkward for the audience. Otherwise, his youthfulness was a nice addition to the show and, as mentioned above, the father-son relationship between Wes and Picard improved both characters -- a dynamic used to great effect in "Final Mission" and "The First Duty" (and to a lesser extent in "Journey's End").

 

[T'Girl]

Meh. Wesley was a play for the teen demographic, someone youth were supposed to identify with somehow, like Chekov in TOS. If Star Trek were more like, say, Space Patrol, no one would question it. But for better or worse, TNG fans were too sophisticated and it stuck in their craws.

I thought it might hsve been interesting, if TPTB really wanted the tie into a teen demographic, to show Wesley (stop, first change the name Wesley) as tied into the other teens on the ship. There was one, only one scene in ten forward with Wesley interacting with other ships people his own age. Most of the time I received the feeling that Wesley was semi-estranged from his peer group. Teens like to identify with people on TV who are popular. Not a teen who only want to hang out with people in their thirties through their sixties. You couldn't really Identify with Wesley the way he was.

I'm in no way suggesting that this would have been made the prime focus of the show in any way, maybe a occasional B or C story.

On the other hand, Enterprise first season premiered when I was fourteen, all the geeks in my school could identify with Trip, he seemed somehow like he was in his mid teens, he was cool, laid back and he was Mr. Popular aboard the ship. Everything Wesley wasn't.

Wesley didn't even have any angst. I mean come on!

 

[DonIago]

Alternately, if Wesley is alienated from his peer group -because- he's a wunderkind, actually show that once in awhile. And simply not showing him interacting with that peer group doesn't count as being alienated from it.

 

[Graywand2]

Wesley is not unlike Jar Jar in that they both were intended to appeal to a younger audience and both were portrayed in a manner that drove the audience crazy. For the most part, I don't mind Wes, but the number of times he "saves the day at the last moment" compared to the number of times the rest of the crew says "Shut up Wesley!" kinda makes the character awkward for the audience. Otherwise, his youthfulness was a nice addition to the show and, as mentioned above, the father-son relationship between Wes and Picard improved both characters -- a dynamic used to great effect in "Final Mission" and "The First Duty" (and to a lesser extent in "Journey's End").

My point is, if you're going to give someone the uniform and an officer's commission to go with it, you don't tell them to shut up when he's trying to do his legally appointed job of informing his superior officer.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

My point is, if you're going to give someone the uniform and an officer's commission to go with it, you don't tell them to shut up when he's trying to do his legally appointed job of informing his superior officer.

Oh I agree. The number of times the main cast is annoyed with him and tells him to shut up just makes his character all the more awkward for viewers. It's as if the presence of Wesley inexplicably made everyone less mature.

That being said, there was still plenty to like about his character and, even now, I don't find him especially annoying -- particularly after he gets rid of that rainbow shirt.

 

[Joshua Howard]

When I got my first job, I was awesome at it. I was a little bit like Wesley, actually... so over-ambitious and cocky that I was a pain in the rear... and I was eventually told to shut up and get out. Having my bubble popped helped me in the long run.

Wesley, on the other hand, never got his late-teens-confidence-bubble popped. Instead, time and time again his ego got fed as he saved the ship... and it didn't help that he got a golden ticket out right after a blatant case of insubordination. The problem wasn't his character. He played the part of a genius teen pretty well. The problem was with the fact that his oversized ego ran a bit too rampant.

 

[DonIago]

In the end I thought he was rather good as a recurring character, but the writers handled him poorly as a regular. Really liked him in The Game, thought he was alright (though I didn't agree with him) in The First Duty. Although his final episode, where his obnoxious behavior is just Traveler growing pains, really sabotaged all of the progress I thought had been made with his character.

 

[RyuRoots]

In the end I thought he was rather good as a recurring character, but the writers handled him poorly as a regular. Really liked him in The Game, thought he was alright (though I didn't agree with him) in The First Duty. Although his final episode, where his obnoxious behavior is just Traveler growing pains, really sabotaged all of the progress I thought had been made with his character.

I couldn't agree more. I still maintain that Journey's End was a terrible character assassination for Wes, who had grown to be a pretty good and generally well-used character by that point.

 

[FormerLurker]

I agree with the above two posters. Wesley was first overused, then underused, overexposed, under-characterized, over-analyzed and underappreciated. He shouldn't have been written out of the show that way, especially since the Traveler had never characterized him as someone on the cusp of such radical personal evolution, only that he was destined to advance humanity into the next step.

DrTaylor, Wesley was not poorly conceived, he was poorly utilized and developed. And Horror Club, he was named Wesley because that was the most blatant expression of ego GR ever put into ST. GR's middle name was Wesley.

 

[Gary7]

Meh. Wesley was a play for the teen demographic, someone youth were supposed to identify with somehow, like Chekov in TOS. If Star Trek were more like, say, Space Patrol, no one would question it. But for better or worse, TNG fans were too sophisticated and it stuck in their craws.

Definitely a demographic plug. And I don't think Will Wheaton was a good choice. Someone with more acting talent would've shored up the role pretty well. Although, I think once Wheaton got older he became better... experience is always a teacher, I guess. In any case, there was perhaps a bit too much attention paid to him as a boy. It would have been better to balance it out with more attention later on, work up to it. But again, hard to really put a finger on it, without seeing someone else fill his shoes.

 

[DonIago]

Hm. I don't remember thinking that Wheaton's acting was the issue, but I also haven't watched -any- episode of TNG, much less an earlier episode, in years now.

 

[Pauln6]

The thing that annoyed me about Wesley in the early episodes was just that everybody else was portrayed as so dumb compared to him. When Geordi is trapped on the planet with that romulan he knows instantly that it's Wesley's beacon because everybody else is so dumb and strait-laced. If they had portrayed him more as very smart but still clearly an immature child and promoted him by season 3, I think we would have felt that he had earned his position.

The Game was a very good episode for him. It's a shame that Ashley Judd declined to return because they could have got a decent double-act going there.

Wheaton left to make some movies rather than because the writers were unhappy with his character but I agree that Journey's End didn't feel right as a swan song for the character unlike, say, the final Ro episode.

 

[Gary7]

The Game was a very good episode for him. It's a shame that Ashley Judd declined to return because they could have got a decent double-act going there.

I agree--that was my favorite Wesley episode. He played his part well and it was believable. Ashley Judd was terrific... she'd had a small role in engineering working for Laforge, but for only a couple of episodes. I didn't know they'd wanted her to reprise a more prominent role but she declined. Maybe she had a compelling movie role instead? Her career sure took off since.

Wheaton left to make some movies rather than because the writers were unhappy with his character but I agree that Journey's End didn't feel right as a swan song for the character unlike, say, the final Ro episode.

I'd heard that as well. Wheaton didn't want to get pegged as "Wesley" for the rest of his career... but it looks like it was too late. His acting career really didn't go anywhere. I wonder if he made out OK with residuals.