Yesterday, I declared that I'm a "Wesley-hater" but that I wanted to clarify this statement.
My first reaction was that he was a bad actor and the
character sucked. I held to that
conclusion for a long time until I grew up a little and my own ability to
critically think developed and now I realize that this isn't the case. Wil Wheaton was not the problem. He played the part exactly as and the only way anyone could've ever played
that part. It wasn't even the character
of Wesley Crusher that was the main problem.
In fact, I've come to be much more forgiving of "Wesley
episodes" and I even like most of them too. I blame the writers and directors entirely
now.
Firstly, I think they wanted a kid on the Enterprise to show
a different aspect of family in this version of Star Trek. It's an avenue they couldn't really explore
in TOS even though it was indicated that families were aboard. However, as I was pointing out yesterday,
their eyes appeared to be bigger than their stomachs when it came to a lot of
ideas. They wanted a kid so they got a
kid and then they just didn't know what to do with him. I think they wrote him to behave in a younger
manner than he was. The last time I felt
like I was seeing this was in the movie The Labyrinth. The Sarah character was much more innocent
and naive than the age of the actress they chose. The way her lines where whined with
exaggerated expressions and motions put me in the mind of a child as opposed to
a teenager and gave me the first impression that the puppets were better actors
than she was. The story was a sort of
fairy tale and should've utilized a younger character like fairy tales of old
did. But obviously people would've been freaked
out by Jareth wanting to seduce a girl that was more like 12 than someone who
at least looked 18. Anyway, that's the
first wrong turn I noticed with Wesley.
He was 14 or 15 when the show started.
And I understand that they wanted him to be a "good boy" and a
proper role model but they went too far by giving him no viable teenage
flaws. He always knew what the right
thing to do was and he always did it with little or no prodding. He had no bad attitude or mischievous
tendencies whatsoever. He was at genius
level intelligence and even though his outlook was innocent like Sarah from
Labyrinth, he was also somehow mature for his age and never conflicted with the
other characters. I've read testimony
from people my age who said he was definitely an inspiration to study and go
into scientific fields and that's truly and awesome thing. But I'm kind of thinking there were more average
teenagers out there like me who were math-stupid, had serious self-esteem
issues, and went through the phase where we hated our parents and Wesley was
someone that I know I just couldn't personally relate to. (I'm 3 years younger than him, btw, for a
reference point.)
The
thing is, this didn't really start until after the episode, "Where No One
Has Gone Before." He seemed pretty
average in the pilot, though he's a smarty pants who gets run off by the captain. That was a sensible thing to do with
him. In The Naked Now, he was behaving
just as expected of an intoxicated, immature
teenager, taking into account that he was a brainiac as well. Okay, no problem there. And then we have the episode with the Traveler. The enigmatic alien who has special powers
that can't be explained and sees something special in Wesley.
The
main quote I refer to is:
And such musical genius as I saw in one of your ship's libraries, one called Mozart, who as a small child wrote astonishing symphonies, a genius who made music not only to be heard, but seen and felt beyond the understanding, the ability of others? Wesley is such a person, not with music, but with the equally lovely intricacies of time, energy, propulsion, and the instruments of this vessel, which allow all that to be played.
This set Wesley up to be a unique type of character. What a build-up. He's going to be something amazing. He's going to be a "chosen one." He's going to be... going to be... ... ...
A straight "A" student? (Sigh.) He'll be highly intelligent, but we
can't really send his character away to the Academy too soon, so we have to
find ways to keep him on the ship and make him the little super hero. He became
a cliche for coming to the rescue when the grown-ups were botching it. A sci-fi Hardy Boy. I don't think this is what the Traveler had
in mind. His character shouldn't have
just been growing throughout the run of the series - he should've been
evolving. But the writers weren't
thinking like that yet. That sort of
transformative story went to Sisko in DS9.
Which was cool too, don't get me wrong.
But Wesley got hung out to dry just by being in the wrong place at the
wrong time. He was nearly a kind of a
throw-away character.
I also have to mention that I hated his different youth
uniforms. There's no excuse for this,
they just sucked.
What's really aggravating to me is that there was a lot of
good material all around and I don't think anyone noticed it until closer to
the end. But they were so busy moving
the bigger stories along to help DS9 gain traction and wrapping up the main
characters (and I imagine Wheaton probably had other commitments because he
wasn't in it steadily anymore) that Wesley was almost forgotten about.
Consider that all of the characters were kind of paired
off. Data and Geordi. Beverly and Deanna. Picard and Riker. These characters worked off of each other,
filling gaps in one another. I wonder if
anyone but me noticed that some of the best Wesley material was when he was
with Picard?
Picard could draw things out of Wesley that made him at
least more interesting and at most could have really developed that character
in earnest.
But it was such a late start. The show was in its twilight and they didn't
have time to start another pair-off like that.
Also, someone had a brainwave and brought the Traveler
back.
He and Wesley saved his mother. Wesley did the phasing thing too. So, someone was thinking that more could be
done with Wesley. But, again, it was too
little too late.
 | ||
| Wesley at Tactical in an alternate timeline. Just another one of so many wasted opportunities to utilize him differently | . |
Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, from Wesley: the model
child and student comes Wesley with a huge chip on his shoulder for no apparent
reason in his final episode.
They wrote him out with the Traveler, which was the right
thing to do, but it was so shallow and done with such sloppy haste in one
episode. One bad episode, as well. The whole thing was an eye-roller from beginning to end.
And only at the end do they start touch upon the themes for
his evolvement that they should've been starting to delve into back in season
three at least. They could've taken at
least two episodes to build up an audience connection with both Wesley and the Traveler
again. To maybe attempt to do a little
transformative work with him. They wrote
a better and more meaningful ending for Ensign Ro, for crying out loud! Who I loved, don't misunderstand, but what
about Wesley? He was there from the
beginning. Wheaton put in a lot of time
and his youth and his career since it's hard to find work after Star Trek
unless you're a captain. And all the
Wesley character gets in the end is the standing of - he was either admired or
hated with no middle ground. And the
misdirected hate of Wesley and Wil comes from the character being mishandled
from the beginning. It frustrates
me. He was a sacrifice to the process of
honing and perfecting the story-telling abilities of the writers. So maybe I both hate and love Wesley
Crusher. Or at least I pity him. And I completely understand Wheaton's
frustration with the Wesley haters. And have a lot of respect for him.
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