this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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What's with the hate Wesley gets? I didn't find his character to be detestable. At least not as much as the ferengi ds9 kid.
The internet hating on Wil Wheaton / Wesley Crusher is such an old bit that it has its own momentum and is no longer rooted in anything. Picard yelling “shut up Wesley” is such a meme that people shout this at Mr. Wheaton in public. He’s written about it a lot.
But it is also true that his character was an odd fit: very on-again / off-again as a member of the cast, poorly costumed, and deliberately written as a kind of whiny genius-boy who gets in trouble but always saves the day. Some people found this one of the less enjoyable parts of the show.
...i liked wesley but alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die was still funny...
I don't hate Wesley, I just love to laugh at how bad Picard and Wesley's relationship is in season one.
In early episodes of any show, there's stuff that doesn't turn out to work for the characters.
But Picard/Wesley is such a bold dynamic that doesn't work for either character, never gets resolved, and goes nowhere.
Then later, it gets retroactivelymuch weirder, because the show "Picard" 100% confirms that Picard was sleeping with Wesley's mother, at some point, and by implication, even during their uncomfortable season 1.
So Picard, already an absolute picture of calm reasoned negotiation - just sometimes randomly goes off on one young cadet whose mother he happens to be banging.
It's weird. It doesn't make any sense in the broader later canon, and it makes me laugh every time I think about it.
Considering Wesley was Gene Roddenberry's self-insert character, I think the idea was to establish that as brilliant as Picard is, there's still someone who can get his goat by virtue of just being that special.
That makes sense. It could have been an interesting dynamic, if they had committed to it and followed through on growing their relationship from bad to good.
I suspect the "everything must reset in case these episodes air out of order" effect can't have helped with making it work.
And then also, it's just hilarious that Picard is that far into his career, and an enlightened 24th century man, and still occasionally just "punches down" at his girlfriend's kid who isn't even an ensign. Haha.
They wrote him to be cheap drama to give Stewart something to work with instead of just being a toned down, professional Shatner. We were all going to take the Captains side, seeing him as annoying as the Captain did. From the sounds of Wheaton's book, he really wasn't treated all that well by the show runners for being as young as he was. It's kind of shitty to write a young kid in to be the conflict in a well respected characters arc.
I honestly wouldn't have watched Star Trek TNG if I hadn't randomly scrolled through the channels and seen a boy my age on a spaceship.
So regardless of how well written or acted the character is, I'm always really grateful! (But I recognize that's probably a pretty niche situation compared to what other Trekkies feel)
Both Wesley and Nog(?) were written as a 'look kids, a cool kid to relate to' character. Which was very forced and off putting.
And many young people watching the show resented those characters for being the kid who got to live Star Trek, which was of course their own fantasy.
Both Wesley and Nog started out with rough writing. Once their characters build out, they improve. Nog moreso, being part of a serialized show.
Having watched TNG without being influenced by the community. I agree that his character starts pretty obnoxious, but I always got the sense that the point of his character was that his inclusion on the ship as a kid raised by this future world was just as "alien" as Data or Worf. Then again, it was also obvious that he occasionally got completely brain bonked for some episodes in order to make him the naive child of the group.
In early development, Dr Crusher originally had a daughter named Leslie Crusher. The point of that character wasn't very well-defined before she was turned into a brilliant male wunderkind named Wesley by a man whose full name was Eugene Wesley Roddenberry. In other words, the point of the character was that an aging egomaniac wanted a self-insert character whose traits are that he's special, he's a genius, and that he's frequently misunderstood and let down by all the dolts who surround him.
I see it this way too now. "What does this culture do with this situation?" - and all jokes aside, pretty good chance some of the answers to that snuck in subliminally, that influences how I parent. Haven't watched too much in 20+ years, but it's there.
But yeah nonetheless, I do understand the annoyance folks have with the lad.
Nog makes Wesley look like fucking'... Shaft!
That's an excellent question. I wonder if it has something to do with your age when you first saw the series, or maybe the problem that adult writers tend to not write kids very well. I bet at least part of it is that Picard himself treats Wesley pretty poorly in several episodes. Oh, and the fact that he solves the problem of the week ludicrously easily a couple of times, in a Gary Stu sort of way.
Wesley was a Mary Sue. The writers of Star Trek should've been able to avoid that trope given the original Mary Sue was a character in a Star Trek fanfic.
Why the hell is a kid at the helm Starship? Apparently because "he's a genius". Someone piloting an airliner has to have many many hours of experiencing before they're allowed to do that, but apparently in the future you just have to be a smart kid, experience doesn't matter?
And yeah he solves the problems adults can't figure out. It's this weird thing where writers think they need a kid in something so kids will like it. And even better yet, a kid that's smarter than the adults! It winds up just annoying everyone.
It is so dumb.
But later I forgave it completely when Galaxy Quest lampooned it so thoroughly, with another kid at the helm, who is allowed to just shout about how stupid it is. :)
That fanfic was a TNG fanfic based off of a character from one of the episodes. Wesley predates her by a few seasons. In fact, he may have been a partial inspiration for the fanfic version of the character.
Well the person that created Mary Sue probably shouldn't get so much flak if they were making TNG fanfic in 1973.
Huh, TIL. I honestly had somehow connected Mary Sue with the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Tbf, there are is lot's of space in space to practice driving gnihihi. I'll show myself out