Picard is Wesley's father?

[T'Cal]

I don't if this has been discussed before or if so, how often, but I throw it out.

Back in late 1992, I was in training for my job when I struck up a conversation with another trainee about TNG. He told me how he and some of his coworkers who were Trek fans believed that Wes was Picard's son. He explained that in a couple of episodes in which Beverly and Jean-Luc were likely about to die together (The High Ground and Darmok, IIRC) Beverly states, "Jean-Luc, I have something important to tell you..." Then they get rescued and we never learn what she had to say. Certainly, Picard takes on the role of father-figure for the boy and we know that Jean-Luc knew Beverly very well back to the days when she was dating Jack.

What brings this up today is that I just took out my TNG collection and decided to watch an episode from S2 for a change, and I chose Samaritan Snare. While not a 4-star episode, among other things, it sets up the entire plot for a great later episode, Tapestry. Picard is en route a star base to get his artificial heart replaced, with Wes joining him, and the teen tells Picard that he knows the captain is uncomfortable around him because he doesn't like children, but that Picard would have made a great father. With the other two lines, Picard's discomfort with Bev and Wes when they first come onboard the ship, plus the apparent attraction magnified in The Naked Now, Picard being Wes's father would've been a plausible and entertaining reveal in one of the final episodes.

Thoughts??

 

[Unicron]

Well, they weren't about to die together in Darmok. Beverly was on the ship and Picard was fighting for his life alongside Dathon.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I always took the "I have something to tell you" moments as a tease of Crusher almost revealing her true feelings for him...not a deep, dark secret.

 

[Christopher]

I don't buy that Picard could be Wesley's father. As he made clear in "Attached," he never revealed his feelings to Beverly because she was his best friend's wife. The onscreen information we have suggests that the Crushers were already married when Picard met them (although in the novels, Picard met Beverly about four years before she and Jack married, but after they'd been engaged -- which works out to a pretty long engagement). In any case, Picard wouldn't have pursued his best friend's girl, and if they had slept together, she wouldn't have been so surprised by the discovery of his past feelings for her in "Attached." So there's no bloody way Wes could be Picard's son.

Besides, there's a pretty clear resemblance between Jack and Wes.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

And besides, Picard doesn't particularly care for children, so he would have used protection if he'd nailed Beverly. He wouldn't have risked getting her pregnant.

 

[GalaxyX]

^^ LMAO!!!

 

[Christopher]

DS9 established that men take contraceptive injections in the 24th century, and probably women do too. So unplanned pregnancies would be very rare; a couple would have to choose to get their contraceptive shots neutralized.

 

[Angel4576]

^^ Or you're artificially inseminated by a luminous alien entity like Troi in The Child!

 

[propita]

I thought Picard had introduced the two of them?

Likely that Picard already liked her but was too shy to speak up (even to his best friend Jack). When Jack had the guts to speak up and ask Bev out, she accepted, and no one but Picard knew of his loss due to his cowardice/shyness.

 

[WillsBabe]

There was some fan speculation and fanfic around this as far back as season one. I know nothing about genetics but someone somewhere wrote a bit of a piece refuting the idea based on Wsley's eye colour and the eye colour of all the other prospective parents involved. While I'm usually all for these "subtext" ideas I don't really think this one flies.

 

[The Old Mixer]

propita said:
I thought Picard had introduced the two of them?

They were introduced by Walker Keel, the starship captain who was killed in "Conspiracy". IIRC, he tried to test Picard to see if he was the genuine article by asking a question about how Picard had supposedly introduced them, and Picard corrected him.

 

[Whoa Nellie]

The Old Mixer said:

propita said:
I thought Picard had introduced the two of them?

They were introduced by Walker Keel, the starship captain who was killed in "Conspiracy". IIRC, he tried to test Picard to see if he was the genuine article by asking a question about how Picard had supposedly introduced them, and Picard corrected him.

:thumbsup: Ding, Ding, Ding! We have a winner. TNG canon establishes in the episode "Conspiracy" that it was Walker Keel who introduced Beverly to Jack. Beverly and Jack were already together when Picard met her.

For some reason many P/C shippers seem to be enamored with the idea of Wesley being the result of an adulterous tryst between Picard and Beverly. Let's look at just a few of the ramifications of Wesley being Jean-Luc Picard's and Beverly Crusher's love child.

This means characterizing Picard as a man willing to bed his best friend and fellow officer's wife. No way around it. I know P/C is a favorite shipper pairing to a lot of people so take it out of that context. This is the equivalent of Picard sleeping with Deanna Troi after her marriage to Will Riker in Nemesis.

This would also be characterizing Beverly Crusher as a woman willing to betray her husband with his best friend and commanding officer. (Again, think how it would change Deanna's character if you have her bed Jean-Luc Picard while married to Will Riker.) Beverly would also have to be willing to lie to her husband passing the child of an adulterous tryst off as his. (We won't even discuss the abject stupidity it would take for a grown woman, a doctor, to accidentally get knocked up in the twenty-fourth century. )

As far as Crusher revealing her true feeling for Picard with the "I have something to tell you," we are never told that she was ever in love with Picard. In the episode "Attached" when Picard revealed that in the past he had been in love with her (Picard "And then, little by little, I realized that I didn't have those feelings anymore . . . twenty years is, after all, a long time."), she bolts like a spooked deer with the line, "Or perhaps we should be afraid." Maybe Crusher saw what happened to Daren in "Lessons" and decided it would be better not to go there. Which brings up the point that the first time the good captain decided to dip his pen in the company inkwell it wasn't with Beverly Crusher.

Edited to add: I have to agree with WillsBabe, the "Wesley is Picard's lovechild" idea just doesn't fly.

Warmest Wishes,
Whoa Nellie

 

[Kegek]

Whoa Nellie said:
This means characterizing Picard as a man willing to bed his best friend and fellow officer's wife. No way around it. I know P/C is a favorite shipper pairing to a lot of people so take it out of that context. This is the equivalent of Picard sleeping with Deanna Troi after her marriage to Will Riker in Nemesis.

Droit de signeur.

Ahem...

 

[WillsBabe]

Kegek said:
Droit de signeur.

Ahem...

Yuk. This is the 24th century not feudal Normandy!

Whoa Nellie said:
Which brings up the point that the first time the good captain decided to dip his pen in the company inkwell it wasn't with Beverly Crusher.

Company ink well??? Nice turn of phrase. You should be a writer. Or something.

 

[Whoa Nellie]

Kegek said:
Droit de signeur.

Ahem...

It's good to be the king.

WillsBabe said:

Company ink well??? Nice turn of phrase. You should be a writer. Or something.

I must give credit where it is due. That is one of Mr. Whoa Nellie's phrases. I just stole it. Well, I didn't steal it because what's mine is mine and what is his is mine.

Warmest Wishes,
Whoa Nellie

 

[The Old Mixer]

Whoa Nellie said:
:thumbsup: Ding, Ding, Ding! We have a winner.

I must confess, I had my Trek Encyclopedia handy to check my facts, including the guest captain's name.

I haven't seen "Attached" in some time, but IIRC, it made it pretty clear that any feelings between Picard and Beverly back when Jack was alive were never expressed, never mind acted upon.

In the first couple of seasons, I actually had a theory that Picard was so uncomfortable with children and never had a family because he was secretly gay...then Vash came along and blew that theory.

 

[WillsBabe]

Whoa Nellie said:
Well, I didn't steal it because what's mine is mine and what is his is mine.

This sounds like something your Vash would say!

 

[Whoa Nellie]

The Old Mixer said:
I must confess, I had my Trek Encyclopedia handy to check my facts, including the guest captain's name.

You still get the point. Because of my fanfiction writing, my copy is perpetually on my desk.

The Old Mixer said:
In the first couple of seasons, I actually had a theory that Picard was so uncomfortable with children and never had a family because he was secretly gay...then Vash came along and blew that theory.

WillsBabe said:
This sounds like something your Vash would say!

That's only because I did have Vash say it during a poker game in the story "In the Line of Duty." Sometimes I think you know my stories better than I do. It took me a few moments to remember which story I used it in.

Some time later, Picard was holding his best poker face in a vain attempt to win a pot from his wife. "Take it," he finally sighed to Vash. It was the second time that night that she had called his bluff. Dryly, he added, "You have everything else anyway."


"Now, Jean-Luc, you know the definition of ownership in this marriage," Vash teased as she added the chips to her pile. "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine. It's an archaic and sexist double standard and I intend to milk it for all it's worth."

My hubby would tell you I also use that saying all the time when I want to appropriate something cool he has for myself.

Warmest Wishes,
Whoa Nellie

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Christopher said:
DS9 established that men take contraceptive injections in the 24th century, and probably women do too.

Which episode?

(These things must have been invented *in* the 24th century, otherwise how could David Marcus have been born? Somehow I doubt Kirk planned to have children. Then again, I suppose Carol could have wanted them and thus 'tricked' Jim into fathering David for her.)

 

[WillsBabe]

^ They could have had male contraceptives in Kirk's time. Maybe he forgot to take it, or it expired, or the heat of the moment got the better of them both, or for some reason it didn't work. (Or all the same things applied to Carol's contraceptive.) Carol doesn't necessarily have to have tricked him, I don't think.