wesley crusher/children on the enterprise

[euphorik]

read a comment recently someplace where somebody was saying - unsurprisingly, as people have been saying this for decades - that wesley crusher was the "worst trek character ever."

OK, listen. i am not saying that wesley was the best-written trek character ever, he certainly was not. personally, i would have preferred that the writers in the early focused more on the young genius/mozart sort of thing that the traveller described in "where no one has gone before," but that was pretty much entirely dropped until (clumsily) resolved in S7's "journey's end."

anyway, getting to the point: am i the only person out there who never had a problem with wesley? it's not like he was my favorite character or anything, and there were certainly some dorky wesley-centric episodes ("the dauphin" comes to mind, which i still sort of like in a weird way, and/or "when the bough breaks" which even i have to admit is quite awful), but i found/find wesley to be a LOT less annoying than alexander rozhenko, who would be my nomination for "worst trek character ever."

it made/makes very little sense to me that the wesley character was written out of the series in S4, and as soon as he is gone - right when the character was beginning to grow up and to become a more believable part of the bridge crew - the wrirters spend the remainder of the series trying to shoehorn ANOTHER child character in, with (IMO) much less success. i had a hell of a lot less problem with wesley than i did with alexander, or any of the umpteen adorable moppet-children that populate S5. i just don't get that.

so yeah, wesley > alexander. by millions of miles. am i the only person that finds wesley far less objectionable than alexander?

 

[DonIago]

If nothing else I'd call Wesley more objectionable than Alexander by virtue of being in more episodes in which he annoys me. At least Alexander's acting his age; kids that young are supposed to be irritating.

I will agree that Wesley was more watchable once he became recurring, though they torpedoed that in his final appearance.

 

[Paradise City]

Wesley featured alot. And I don't "hate" Wesley per say. But I don't like episodes that got pulled into "Wesley and his exams" or "Wesley managing a little team" and that's half of the episode. I generally prefer when Trek deals with high issues than gets bogged down in that kind of stuff. And Wesley isn't a character with much teeth. The occasion he annoys me are when he gushes over Picard which I find cringeworthy. Although some think it's the high point of the character.

As for Alexander, he's in a much younger category and child-actors are just too difficult to handle satisfactorily. It's rare to see them handled well in anything and I'm somewhat bemused that they chose to do so many child-centric episodes. But I do think Alexander became a steady enough character by the time the Western episode came along.

 

[2takesfrakes]

I don't know what was behind all of the "child-centric" episodes, but trying to cater to the kid-viewers makes sense. A large percentage of STAR TREK fans discovered Trek, of some kind or another, as kids, regardless of what other market it was being aimed at, like College Students. Rascals seems cute to me, like it would appeal to children. But I don't feel that seeing kids in STAR TREK is what draws a kid to STAR TREK. It's the obvious things of it being so make-believe, otherwise.

All of these obviously Human actors in elaborate, Fancy Dress, regardless of age. The appeal coming not so much because of what they say, not even so much because of what they do, even ... but rather because of the simple fact of their existence. The barber is painted up blue with a bald head! You've got these guests onboard who have snake heads, like a cobra and they're trying to eat the dog-headed aliens! There's a 7 foot alien with a fish-head! This is the kind of shit that attracts a kid. The sheer over-the-topness that makes you wonder what else they're going to show you, next? What else is going to happen?

 

[euphorik]

i guess my objection to alexander was that, in addition to being an annoying child, he was supposed to be *cute*. i didn't find anything about the alexander stuff cute. i found it cloying and annoying, and a major detraction from the worf character. in S1-S4, worf was written as a proud klingon warrior, and suddenly with the arrival of alexander, he's written as witless and bufoonish, the intergalactic "mr. mom." DS9 went, IMO, a long way toward salvaging the alexander character from the total waste of the TNG years, but even on DS9, i am not a fan.

but anyway, wesley may have been annoying, but i never got the impression that the wesley character written to be "cute" in the way that alexander was. i liked the idea that children were part of the spacefaring community that was the TNG enterprise, but i seem to recall an interview with gene in the early days where he was saying something to the effect of "children will be in the background of the ship, but will never be the focus of an episode." they should have stuck to that. i can't stand alexander.

 

[Paradise City]

I actually think Worf failing to make sense of Alexander was well done. Alexander is annoying to watch early on though.

 

[φ of π]

Wesley never should have forgiven Picard after the events of Datalore.

 

[Paradise City]

I liked the Jeremy Astor episode. The kids on Disaster were amusing characters. But there's some dull episodes from a child's pov and it's overdone as a trope. And children watching it like to escape to an adult world, I'm not sure they are that bothered about running into children's antics when they turn on the TV.

 

[euphorik]

I liked the Jeremy Astor episode.

oh yeah. me too. "the bonding" was a great episode, a wonderful example of how a TNG episode could believably be centered (to an extent) around a child without the annoying "cute" factor. excellent point. i love that episode.

and i totally agree that if the writers (maybe operating under a studio directive?) were attempting to appeal to children by shoehorning child characters into the show, it was a dumb, ill-advised move, b/c kids aren't/weren't watching the show to see alexander. i was 4 or 5 when i started watching TOS reruns in the seventies - i didn't need a contrived child character on the show to appeal to me as a kid. one of the great things about trek is that, when done properly, it effortlessly appeals to all age groups.

 

[jgalley]

And children watching it like to escape to an adult world

I don't remember how old I was when TNG started (born in 1975 but not sure what year TNG started) Still even shows outside of TNG this is exactly it and why I never liked shows/movies/episodes of almost anything that featured a child (or children) as the main characters. It was unbelievable to me and took me out of the show.

 

[Tosk]

I've never understood the idea of having a child character as a way to get kids to identify with a show. When I was a kid, I imagined being Superman. I sure as hell didn't want to be Jimmy Olsen.

I was 12 when TNG started. And I was annoyed by Wesley even then. Not the character himself so much, just the way I felt I kept having to spend time with him when I didn't want to.

That's not to say movies and shows about kids don't appeal to the age group (I wanted to be a Goonie and join the Monster Squad) but putting a kid into an adult situation can suck the "truth" out of the sitch if it's not handled deftly. In my opinion, TNG didn't handle it particularly well. ...For the most part.

 

[OtherGene]

Does anybody know whether or not the Enterprise was the only ship in the fleet that had children on board or was it supposed to me a more common thing? If it was then, jeez, the battle of Wolf 359 was certainly a less than cheery footnote in their history.

 

[stardream]

Does anybody know whether or not the Enterprise was the only ship in the fleet that had children on board or was it supposed to me a more common thing? If it was then, jeez, the battle of Wolf 359 was certainly a less than cheery footnote in their history.

Jake Sisko was on board the Saratoga but beyond that I don't know.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Wesley was okay in season three. He was not as bad as Neelix.

 

[Paradise City]

Well for me, there's this subtext that the Galaxy class is a new ship with a new philosophy to herald in an new era and having kids-on ship as part of that city-in-space vibe and the Galaxy class is the first before this is is implemented in future ships. The more seasoned and perhaps practical Picard debates the worthiness of this at various points. Then there's the Odyssey in DS9 where there's this talk of kids being evacuated IIRC before their ill-fated jaunt to the Delta Quadrant. The idealistic ship-as-a-city-in space thing probably ties in with an early claim of Roddenberry for early TNG; that this was the Trek that he always wanted to do.

 

[Tosk]

Then there's the Odyssey in DS9 where there's this talk of kids being evacuated IIRC before their ill-fated jaunt to the Delta Quadrant.

There was no mention of children. Dax spoke of the Odyssey offloading non-essential personnel, that was as far as the conversation went as far as I recall.

 

[OldManDoom]

He was not as bad as Neelix.

Only Jar Jar is worse than Neelix.

 

[JoeCabby]

I actually liked Wesley, but I was around 10 years old when I was watching this show for the first time. I naturally saw the show through his eyes. Being a kid who was just as smart as the grups was very appealing to me. I remember being disappointed when he was off the show for a while.

 

[sbk1234]

I didn't hate Wesley, but I feel he was tragically misused. Rather than painting him as the Mozart genius who saves the adults, he should have been part of the engineering team, learning from the experts, and showing growth, which could have eventually put him in a uniform. It would have made a lot more sense, and also validated the skills and expertese of the other people on the ship.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

It just hit me: NuKirk is just a badder version of Wesley Crusher. *mind blown* And probably the Wes some wished we could have had.

*Pike calls NuKirk a "genius-level offender".
*His dad died when he was very young.
*He becomes a significant part of the crew of his ship before even graduating from the Academy.

Anyone agree?