Wesley Crusher... am I the only one not annoyed by him?

[Hippocrates Noah]

I wasn't really annoyed by him. But by the time I got around to watching TNG the character's reputation was so bad that I was expecting something truly terrible and almost unwatchable. Plus I grew up on several of Wheaton's movies so I wasn't going in looking to hate him. I was bracing myself for the worst and it turned out not to be all that bad. I rolled my eyes a few times, but it wasn't as bad as I'd been led to believe. The character got better as he got older, but as Henry Jones once said, he left just as he was becoming interesting. Though he'd still pop up from time to time, and I liked those episodes. Except his last episode, I thought he was a bit of a tool in that one.

 

[Hutchy01]

Sheldon liked him. I think the character gets too much scorn as he was only in the show really for the first three sub-par seasons (unlike Sisko who got 7 full seasons to improve and just kept getting worse)

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I feel like such an outcast... I thought take Jake from DS9 was kind of annoying and stood up to adults, but that's his character.

you are not alone; I've never had a problem with Wesley, and always thought some ST fans needed to seek professional help for their irrational hatred of a child character who happens to be intelligent beyond his years, and can function among trained adults. He was no Will Robinson--his place on the 1701-D was handled in a sensible manner.

 

[Hippocrates Noah]

Sheldon liked him. I think the character gets too much scorn as he was only in the show really for the first three sub-par seasons (unlike Sisko who got 7 full seasons to improve and just kept getting worse)

Really? I haven't watched the show in several years, though I've been planning on going back and catching up on it. I just got too busy and fell behind, then lost all the recordings on my DVR and never got around to getting back up to date. When I watched it Wheaton was like his nemesis. The last episode I remember with him was the one where they went to the Indiana Jones screening and Sheldon stole the print just to keep Wheaton from getting to watch it.

 

[JCDaly]

I'm not gonna lie, I had forgotten about Wesley when I started rewatching the series a few years ago, for the first time since, probably the mid 90's at least. But I never had a problem with him (once I began rewatching, that is). He's not my favorite character (though I find myself having a hard time picking one). But I didn't find him as bad/annoying/etc as he was being made out to be

 

[The Old Mixer]

Really? I haven't watched the show in several years, though I've been planning on going back and catching up on it. I just got too busy and fell behind, then lost all the recordings on my DVR and never got around to getting back up to date. When I watched it Wheaton was like his nemesis. The last episode I remember with him was the one where they went to the Indiana Jones screening and Sheldon stole the print just to keep Wheaton from getting to watch it.

Sheldon only developed his hatred for Wheaton because Wesley was his favorite character and he felt scorned when Wheaton didn't make a convention. And they later patched things up and became friends.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Now he hates Spiner

 

[Hippocrates Noah]

Sheldon only developed his hatred for Wheaton because Wesley was his favorite character and he felt scorned when Wheaton didn't make a convention. And they later patched things up and became friends.

Ah, it's been a while so I'd forgotten what exactly happened for the hatred to develop, just remembered he hated him. Love the avatar by the way. Listened to that on the way to and from work yesterday.

 

[woodstock]

I had absolutely no problem with Wesley Crusher, until his big reveal as The Next Step in Human Evolution. At least this aspect of the character took its sweet time to present itself to an unsuspecting public.

Yeah, that seemed to be a "the series is wrapping up and we need to resolve this storyline and character" situation. Like they threw something together without really thinking about it.

 

[JoeCabby]

I was a teen as well when watching this so I liked the guy, he was one of my favourite characters growing up. Even now watching as I'm older I have no issue with him.

 

[CaptainStoner]

As a kid the same age as Wesley, and of course a genius in my own right, I had some identification with the character. And I think that was the intent. I applaud GR for including a character going through adolescent transition into adulthood, and for his vision of TNG as NOT being Star Wars with bigger ships!

How one feels about Wesley probably falls along a couple of axis
1. If you dislike GR's humanism, and especially dislike his peaceful exploration vision that had children on the ship, you're much more likely to dislike Wesley.
2. If you were at, or slightly older, than Wil Wheaton in 1987, the character reminded you of a lot of awkwardness. Teenagers work very hard to be cool and distance themselves from their awkward years, so for many, the Wesley-hate must have been related to that. die.wesleycrusher.die.die.die was probably started by someone Wheaton's age, not an older TOS fan that hated TNG.

I no longer find Wesley as annoying as he seemed then. Certain criticisms remain - they should have allowed Wesley to be wrong from time to time - have Geordi or whomever correct him. There was never the lesson of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing", the lesson of perspective of years that no young person, no matter how talented, can easily see.
Allow Wesley to use the helm does not bother me. I believe there is some old-school tradition there. My father made it a point to let me drive vehicles whenever possible, always showing great confidence in me. No, I didn't drive on the road illegally, but he let me drive a scrapper car at an airfield, and he gave me the helm of the family boat almost exclusively. I also took flight lessons in gliders at the same age as Wesley, and indeed, you can't learn if they don't let you fly the thing.
By the time I got a driver's license, I had considerable piloting experience of both planes and boats.

* also, it's not hard to imagine the Enterprise having some failsafe subroutine, training wheels as it were, when Wesley first flew it. We can also surmise that Wesley only flew the Enterprise a few hours/week, given his course load.

 

[Vandervecken]

I didn't much like Wesley, but he was not my least favorite. That was screentime-waster Troi. At least when she was in Counselor mode. Ugh.

 

[maneth]

I never really minded Wesley. He's never going to be my favorite character, but I think he's not nearly as bad as some people make him out to be. That said, my gripe is rather with the writers who made the adults into idiots to let Wesley shine. This is IMO particularly notable in Datalore and The Game.

 

[Patrick Picard]

Wesley is ok. He kills it in Final Mission. One of the best episodes IMO.

I'll admit, the writing in the early seasons makes him too much of a Mary Sue, but as the show matures...so does Wesley.

 

[stardream]

He didn't particularly bother me one way or the other although I did think it was silly to have a teen-ager on the bridge but then again I liked The Final Mission and the First Duty.

The extra special Traveler thing I could have done without. I would have liked it better if he had just left Star Fleet for a while to go exploring on his own and 'find himself' so to speak.

 

[Mutai Sho-Rin]

When TNG was on, our older daughter was only a few years younger than Wesley and an extremely bright, multi-talented kid. (She is a pretty great adult too.) I sometimes envisioned bits of her future in Wesley except she had more of the temperament of a Vulcan. All that said, I liked Wesley just fine and think he adds a lot to the show.

 

[jaime]

At the time, I had no problem with Wesley. In fact the anti Wesley stuff that I later became aware of actually felt like bullying. But then, at the time I was about half Wesley age, or within a few years of it after the big gap in BBC transmissions. In that sense, and given my background, Wesley seemed perfectly normal, even similar to myself.

Now, watching those episodes as an adult, I can see how annoying he was, largely due to writing in the first few seasons, and man the poor sod got a raw deal in the uniform stakes. Some of the acting is also a bit shakey, as rebel Wesley in his later guest appearances often seems to have something unpleasant under his nose, going by facial expression. I think middle Wesley is actual the better version at this point, and the less said about adults being amazed that he can use a tractor beam to be a shield (on a ship full of bloody energy Shields) the better. I can only hope they were humoured him in that episode, but then season one was wobbly and having serious Tos hangovers.

 

[dregj]

he didnt annoy me when i watched the show originally and was about his age
the dumbass adults would never listen to the smart kid(i identified with that)
now ive grown up(allegedly)
i do find him incredibly annoying and not well acted
never thought he and his screen mom had a good rapport either

 

[jaime]

he didnt annoy me when i watched the show originally and was about his age
the dumbass adults would never listen to the smart kid(i identified with that)
now ive grown up(allegedly)
i do find him incredibly annoying and not well acted
never thought he and his screen mom had a good rapport either

I never thought it was that bad, but then I saw Ben and Jake over on ds9, and the crushers suddenly seemed much more clinical. Maybe that's an aspect of both their characters.

 

[dregj]

jake had the benefit of being a normal kid
not isolated from others by his genius
maybe his mother was the same
she really didnt get many charter epsiodes
apart from the brigadoon ghost rape ep in season 7