I can hear it now: SHUT UP JIMBO!!!!
I even get the reason for it, but hear me out here, because I'm not just a raving lunatic.
Stop laughing. I said "just".
Listen up, folks: There was a damn good reason for the Wesley character. I mean that. And this one character may have as much to do with why we still have Trek as Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Picard, whoever.
Great, now you really think I've lost it.
I want you to take a deep breath and think about it though.
C'mon. In, out, in, out...
Let's start out with a bit of Trek history from The Original Series. The first season of TOS did not feature Pavel Chekov. Why? I'm not sure why they felt that he was unnecessary the first season, but I know why they added him for the second:
They needed someone to draw in the younger crowd. Davy Jones had drawn in quite a following from the younger crowd, and they needed someone to be that guy for Star Trek. Eventually the series got cancelled so I'm not sure how that worked or what the effect on ratings was, but I know that they thought it would work at the time.
And remember, Gene Roddenberry worked on both series, at least at first. Wesley was there because Gene had learned his lesson. He needed to pull in the younger viewers. Wesley was the answer to that problem.
I'm talking from a place of experience here, because Wil Wheaton is roughly four and a half years older than me. As an adult that doesn't seem like much, but as a not quite eleven year old when ST:TNG debuted, it was a big deal. And, as weird as it sounds, I kind of considered him to be like an older brother. I mean that seriously.
You remember how it was when you were young, right? Older people got to do all the cool stuff. They could drive. They could stay out late. They didn't have to clean their room if they didn't want to. Being older was awesome. Wesley (and I didn't even know what the actor's name was at the time) was older than me. He got to fly around space in a starship. He got to do all kinds of cool science experiments. He got to wear a Starfleet uniform and hang out with Captain Picard. He was the cool one, the one with all of the experiences. He even got to have his first girlfriend before I did. Remember the time he used his science project in the mock battle between the USS Enterprise and the USS Hathaway in "Peak Performance"? Who wouldn't want to be that guy? I mean, if you were younger than him.
I couldn't have been the only one. There is an entire generation of Star Trek fans around my age. We needed someone to look up to. People talk a lot about representation nowadays. Wesley was the representative for the younger people. And that's not so say that we couldn't look up to the older people too. Who didn't want to have the brains of a Picard or the tactical acumen, and way with women, that Riker had? I can't be the only dude who thought that having Troi's Empathy (or Luw... Lw... Loo... her mother's telepathy) would be useful in trying to figure out girls and maybe get myself a date. The fact remains that Wesley was the kid. He was one of us.
And I know a lot of people who were past that age when they first saw ST:TNG find Wesley to be annoying. Guess what? A lot of adults thought I was annoying at that age, too. For that matter, a lot of my freaking classmates thought I was annoying because I was that weirdo who watched Star Trek with his dad. That just made me identify with the guy more.
And I'm sure we all remember ST:TNG episode "The First Duty." It's the one where Wesley is in Starfleet academy and one of his fellow cadets dies training as a member of Nova Squadron. That episode aired in the fall of 1992, just after I started my sophomore year of high school. I wanted to be a college student and he was one. And, let's face it, Starfleet cadets got to work in space. No way was I ever going to be able to get into a college where I could do that. And yeah, he lied. So did Ben Sisko. And yeah, he didn't go by the book. I'm not sure Kirk ever even read the damn thing. So I was, and am, still a fan.
I get the angst. I was never much of a fan of Jake Sisko or Naomi Wildman for exactly the same reason people don't like young Mr. Crusher. The thing is that I don't hate on the characters. It's weird saying that I didn't like Jake too, given the fact that he turned out to be a swriter just like I want to be and that his dad was the best captain in all of Trek. (And yes, the correct answer to "Kirk or Picard?" is always "Sisko".) He was just at that perfect age for me to find him annoying. Just a little younger, a little less mature. Seriously, if Wesley Crusher was the cool older brother that got to do all of the things, then Jake was the younger brother who always tagged along, whether you wanted him to or not. And we'll leave Alexander out of the discussion. He was never the best written character and didn't show up very much.
So leave Wesley alone. He may not be your cup of tea, but he was a hero to a lot of us growing up. Go hate on someone else. I'm sure there's someone who deserves it, like maybe Karl Marx or his ideological descendant, Adolph Hitler. But Wesley Crusher is a national treasure to those of us who loved him and even if you don't get that, I'm sure that Wil Wheaton does.
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