I do not hate Wesley Crusher, he’s a fictional character. I do however extremely dislike what the writers of TNG did with his character. They had a freaking android, a walking computer, and they tried to make this kid smarter than him. They made him into a deus ex machina and they had to keep making him even more special all the time by introducing that Traveler stuff. Heck even the actor who played the character is embarrassed by some of the stuff they had him do.
I am female, I do not consider myself successful because I am extremely critical of myself and I’m not really where I wanted to be at this point in my life but I do have a job, my own home and a new car so some people may consider that successful enough.
1. Do you hate Wesley Crusher?
Hate? No. I reserve the word hate for things like genocide, female genital mutilation and my fifth grade teacher. I find (found) Wesley Crusher irritating and bizarrely out of place (he never seemed THAT smart) and Wil Wheaton’s characterization of him annoyingly whiny, but I also think the writers gave him absolutely nothing worthwhile to work with, so I didn’t really blame him all that much.
2. Are you male or female ?
female
3. Do you consider yourself to be a successful person? (Successful based purely on your own standards, not anyone else’s)
no
I hate the *concept * of Westly Crusher - the wrongheaded belief on behalf of the ST producers that the starship Enterprise needs a teenage boy onboard. I have nothing against the character itself. He’s the symptom, not the disease.
My idea was people found Wesley annoying because he seemed to be successful just by being smart. And we know it doesn’t work that way in the real world. I felt people hated Wesley because they resent his success and then find justifications for it, after observing this behaviour among my own friends. The people who don’t hate him are more likely to shrug their shoulders at his more annoying traits. The traits people have already mentioned.
The reason I asked for Gender was to explore if he was only threatened male egos due to him being a male character.
With the exception of Aesiron my theory held!
So, what do you think of my idea? And anyone else, please continue to offer your replies in an honest fashion without fear of Wesley.
I dunno about this; Wesley’s successes aren’t because he’s smart; they’re because the writing was contrived to bias things in his favour. Even his presence in many of the episodes was a contrivance, undercutting the plausibility of the show. Then the whole “Traveller” thing… oy.
Actually, in that episode where he, Picard and some grizzled guy had to walk through the desert, I thought Wesley was dumb, ignoring at least one promising solution to the problem. But, again, this is a contrivance of writing.
Male, success pending.
The problem with your theory is that if people hate Wesley because he’s successful, then they should hate everyone else on the show too. I mean these people are the command crew of one of the Federation’s most advanced starships. Also, they’re constantly being praised and told their performance is “exemplary.”
Wesley was just badly written, and the idea of a teen on the bridge, no matter how gifted, is just dumb.
What Alessan said–a wrongheaded notion, but I don’t hate Wesley per se. I do think he was among the weakest characters because of the ways he was used in the plots, which kept the character from developing naturally.
Female.
Yes.
I would say that my success is in large part based on my intelligence, and I readily identify with other smart and capable characters. I actually identified more with Wesley when he was a young teen than later, because later his situation was unrealistic. If the universe of Star Trek were more like Ender’s Game, sure. As the hierarchy stood, no. Thus, the artifice made it seem like a ploy to get teens to watch.
