He's a Mary Sue. I know that term gets misused by misogynists for, "female character I don't like," but it was originally a term for Trekkies' self-insert fan-fic characters, and Wesley fits the trope perfectly: the youngest, smartest person to graduate Starfleet Academy/serve on a Starship, with unusual skills or special talents, who the ingratiates himself with the main cast, and finds himself at the center of major events despite his young age and low rank.
this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2024
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There is nothing wrong with the character—it’s just generational hatred of the idea that there could be new star trek content and latching on to weird shit to complain about. Lots of “fans” complained about TNG when it first started airing.
He honestly has a pretty interesting character arc for the era and show he was a part of— being a young princeling, fucking up in school and ultimately realizing that he needed to go his own way and become a The Traveller (over the course of 7 seasons of episodic story telling admittedly so it’s a little woobly).
The only thing I really hate about the character of Wesley Crusher has nothing to do with the character himself, but the whole "chosen one" bullshit surrounding him.
Because it awakens the bullies who don’t like smart kids. During that era it was common to pick on ‘the nerdy kid’ and it was considered the right of passage to be ‘cool’. Wesley embodies the type of victim a bully goes for.
The hate you refer to is more the issue with the bully rather than their targets. Wil Wheaton did a great speech about bullying.
Wesley Crusher was a wish fulfillment character for Gene Wesley Roddenberry (yes, that’s his real middle name). We don’t have a problem with smart kids, they just gotta stay in their lane: focus on school and hobbies, having fun, and chipping in the occasional good idea. When the “smart kid” gets written to be the ship’s last hope and miraculous saviour (on more than one occasion) it turns the show into a farce.
We don’t have a problem with smart kids
Who’s this ‘we’ you speak of?
You sound like an adult baby with a bruised ego. Bullying kids who you perceive smarter than you especially as an adult is just a shitty look no matter how you’re trying to cut it here.
“We” being the Trek fans who are not Wesley fans. He was written very poorly and it reflected badly on the show. I don’t have a problem with Wil Wheaton’s acting and Stand By Me was one of my favourite movies as a kid.
The only bully here is you.
You invited yourself here over hurt feelings of the mere threat of someone not joining your little toxic bandwagon to hate on a kid. You’re not a victim here, snowflake.
Some of the "hate" might be overblown (and played up). But he's still a poorly written character. He's boring and one dimensional. There's conflict right there, his dad died under Picard's command, and Picard now wants to boink his mom. But he's just normal teenage asshole + nerd trying to get into Starfleet Academy. He swoops in to solve a problem like a deus ex machina device one moment, then is a stupid angsty teen the next.
Also, he's kind of written as a nerd in a bad way; not bookish or introverted, or almost autistically passionate about one or two topics, but a sort of do-gooder ass-kisser. The kind of guy who'd rat you out for hacking the holodeck to have a booze-fueled orgy with a bunch of simulated women designed from an adolescent's ideal of unrealistic expectations.
Enterprise crew are supposed to be the best of Starfleet, having worked their way to the top of the lists to get there. Wesley's there because his mom made it on the list; there's no reason to expect he'd be any different from other teens: hormonally driven, prone to bad judgment and still figuring out life as a young adult. But that's not how he's written.
Put the Wesley character into any high school, and he'd be bullied. Even nerds wouldn't like him.
I mean, what you said: he's written as if by someone who's forgotten what it's like to be a teenager.
The kind of guy who’d rat you out for hacking the holodeck to have a booze-fueled orgy with a bunch of simulated women designed from an adolescent’s ideal of unrealistic expectations.
"There are some games I'm not ready for yet."
Bullshit, you'd be going to pound town the minute you got down to that planet and you would have broken their law by fucking your way onto that greenhouse.
He's very much a Mary Sue-type character.
And an important one in the History of the term Mary sue
There is no interpersonal conflict allowed in Gene's vision of Starfleet. Oh they might but heads occasionally, but every episode resolves with everyone putting their differences aside to work as a team. It's practically a cult mentality. Gene would not have let them write episodes telling those kinds of Dead-parent/Step-Parent/Oedipal stories. That doesn't exactly excuse the bad writing of the Wesley episodes, but it does explain why the writing did not go to those places.
Well, at the time the main complaint people had was more about him being shoehorned into things in a way that didn't make sense combined with him being "superkid".
But yeah, I always thought the character was more of a positive than a negative, even when he was badly written. If nothing else, it gave younger viewers/fans a bit of a viewpoint character that was pretty rare in sci-fi that wasn't kid oriented to begin with.
Plus, Wheaton did damn fine job considering the scripts were sometimes not really good dialogue for him. Stilted, a bit too "I'm an adult trying to write a teenager, but can't actually remember what it was like"; and often not really about his character as much as they needed someone to do the things he was doing, and Wesley's turn came up. Hell, if you factor in the shit the guy was going through at home, he was amazing.
The whole show, including his character, dramatically improved as it went on. Wesley was awesome in that later episode with pre-Tom Paris.
Did you see the episode of lower decks that brought back "not tom paris"? Great episode they even put a lamp shade of him looking like tom.
I was disappointed in that move solely because it conflicts with my head canon that both characters were the same person going by a different name.
Obviously that’s a super nerdy complaint, though, and the writers did a great job using him as a foil for Mariner.
"The First Duty" which is also arguably one of Picard's best speeches.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UHlXzddaM8&t=120s
Had to look it up. That’s just good goddamn television.
I remember this one. I was like man, Wesley messed up.
I’m unfamiliar with his home life. I know he’s publicly discussed mental health issues, has he been open about whatever happened at home?
Oh yeah, he went into it on his blog, and in more detail in an autobiography rerelease back in 2022. Plus a good bit of it in interviews after that.
Physical and mental abuse from his parents is the short version. Which is the root of his PTSD and related issues.
Damn. That sucks. I'm glad he's got himself together, even if it is a lot of work some days. He's always come across as a genuine and good dude.
It's the perky brilliant kid mascot trope. It is a tired and fucked-out trope since about 1971. That's why the hate.
can you give any references to this “trope” and it being “tired” by the time TNG first aired? Just curious what other shows had young brainiacs that so angered audiences to the point that they were fed up with the whole idea by TNG’s premiere.
I can smell him right through the screen. What's it from?
Shut up Wesley.
He was a child prodigy on board a pretty cool starship, and he got away being annoying to the Captain. We all wanted to be in his shoes... but it was just a bloody fantasy. So we began to hate him.
I wanted to be Riker but ok
I wanted to be Data.
I wanted to be Barclay.
I wanted to be LaForge. Maybe a big part of me becoming an engineer.
Weird maneuver, but ok
I didn't hate him because I wanted to be him, I hated him because he was a gary stu, fellow-kids sort of character.
I liked him that episode where he almost got mauled to death by Kai Winn.
Shut up, Wesley.
He came across as the Scrappy Doo of Star Trek. Small and annoying.
For one thing, he grows up to be a dick.
He was such a turd in Eureka. It was great.
He was my favorite part of later seasons.
I would always laugh when he was being a dick. Just from every interview I've seen with the guy he comes across as a good one, and then here he was acting like he was. I kept imagining the director yelling "CUT!" and Wil immediately apologizing for the bullying.
Agreed. There were a couple of scenes where he was kinda whiney, but overall i think he's a very compelling character who i enjoyed watching