5 ms·

Hey, when I was 12, Wesley was pretty awesome.

by nkohari 12y ago

LandoCalrissian 12y ago
I think there are two good Wesley episodes: Final Mission http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Final_Mission_(episode) http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Final_Mission_(episode) The First Duty http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_First_Duty_(episode) http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_First_Duty_(episode) Other than that he is pretty terrible.
- cmdrfred 12y ago
  It's a trap!
zingermc 12y ago
Shut up, Wesley!
jonnathanson 12y ago
Was he? I mean, in theory, he was definitely there to provide the pre/adolescent entry point into the show. So I get that. But I always hated him. When I was 12, he was kind of a minor annoyance. Data was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Riker completely puzzled me; I kept hearing about how cool he was supposed to be, and to me, he just seemed like kind of a dick. Worf was pretty cool. Geordi was ok, and he got a lot of good will for having been on Reading Rainbow. Troi was annoying, but 12-year-old me really appreciated her taste in spandex. Beverly Crusher was kind of boring. Picard was pretty cool. As an adult, I still find Wesley annoying (if, ironically enough, less so). Data is still pretty awesome. Riker has grown on me in a way that I don't think I would have been capable of appreciating as an inexperienced kid. He is a nuanced character that you kind of have to have lived a little in order to get. My opinion on Worf is largely unchanged, though his stock benefitted retrospectively from his appearances on DS9. Geordi got better with the benefit of time. Troi still bugs me; I find her one-dimensional with only occasional chances to shine. (Probably not her fault. It seems that the writers just didn't know what to do with her, other than consign her to stereotypical, damsel-in-distress and love-interest tropes. Her mother, by contrast, is a fantastic character, if a bit of a lightning rod amongst fans.) Beverly Crusher grew on me a bit -- especially in contrast to Dr. Pulaski, whose odd, technophobic Data-bashing felt really out of place in the 24th Century. Picard went from being "pretty cool" to being, unquestionably, the best thing about the show.
- jerf 12y ago
  Your post sums up why I'm interested in going back and seeing it again. As I said, I've only sampled a couple of episodes, and even in my brief dalliance there I can see what you're talking about in my second paragraph. Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. It seems to me that it is a general problem that a multi-writer show like Star Trek can only carry along certain types of nuance. I suspect there's a lot of writers that, given six or seven episodes to play with, could have done fantastic things with Worf or Troi... but that's not how it works. They also have problems with change... especially in the movies (which I do more clearly remember), they had a real problem with Data. By the time of the movies he'd made a lot of progress and grown a lot as a character, but in a couple of the movies (particularly Insurrection) it's like he's regressed almost all the way back to the first episode of TNG. The "Pinocchio" aspect of the story carried along, but the already-existing nuance had disappeared. Multi-writer stories are hard.
  - jonnathanson 12y ago
    There are benefits and drawbacks to multi-writer teams. I say this as someone who spent the first half of his career in TV development and production. (In fact, I briefly interned on a Trek series back in college.) One of the benefits is, for lack of a better word, scalability. A single writer would take forever to write 100+ cogent, consistently great, full-length episodes of a TV show. Since TV series' fates are always in flux, you can't afford a primetime series with only one writer, who becomes a crushing bottleneck if any changes in volume need to be made. Writing a great TV episode is hard, hard work and takes time. Now imagine writing 12, or even 22 of them on an insane production deadline! On the other hand, some shows and formats work really well with a single writer/auteur. True Detective is famous for having been entirely written and entirely directed by just one writer and one director. Now, True Detective was a miniseries of only 8 episodes, and at that scale, a single writer is more realistic. I doubt you could have produced a primetime Star Trek series with only one writer and one director. An interesting hybrid approach is what I'd call a staff structure with a clear "visionary" at the helm. This is sort of like what we saw on Battlestar Galactica: a show with a full writing staff, but one or two writers who basically dominated the process and authored the bulk of the series. MASH is another good example; Larry Gelbart clearly exercised strong, authorial control over the show, even though he didn't write every episode. This latter approach tends to work the best, in my experience as a fan and as a former TV person. But it can have its difficulties and drawbacks, all the same. Sometimes there are limits to the imagination of even the most creative individuals. If you're relying too much on a strong auteur type, and he or she gets writer's block, or gets sick, or becomes extremely difficult, you're SOL.

Hey, when I was 12, Wesley was pretty awesome.

by nkohari 12y ago

Hey, when I was 12, Wesley was pretty awesome.

I think there are two good Wesley episodes: Final Mission http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Final_Mission_(episode) http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Final_Mission_(episode) The First Duty http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_First_Duty_(episode) http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_First_Duty_(episode) Other than that he is pretty terrible.

cmdrfred 12y ago
It's a trap!

zingermc 12y ago

Shut up, Wesley!

jonnathanson 12y ago

Was he? I mean, in theory, he was definitely there to provide the pre/adolescent entry point into the show. So I get that. But I always hated him. When I was 12, he was kind of a minor annoyance. Data was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Riker completely puzzled me; I kept hearing about how cool he was supposed to be, and to me, he just seemed like kind of a dick. Worf was pretty cool. Geordi was ok, and he got a lot of good will for having been on Reading Rainbow. Troi was annoying, but 12-year-old me really appreciated her taste in spandex. Beverly Crusher was kind of boring. Picard was pretty cool. As an adult, I still find Wesley annoying (if, ironically enough, less so). Data is still pretty awesome. Riker has grown on me in a way that I don't think I would have been capable of appreciating as an inexperienced kid. He is a nuanced character that you kind of have to have lived a little in order to get. My opinion on Worf is largely unchanged, though his stock benefitted retrospectively from his appearances on DS9. Geordi got better with the benefit of time. Troi still bugs me; I find her one-dimensional with only occasional chances to shine. (Probably not her fault. It seems that the writers just didn't know what to do with her, other than consign her to stereotypical, damsel-in-distress and love-interest tropes. Her mother, by contrast, is a fantastic character, if a bit of a lightning rod amongst fans.) Beverly Crusher grew on me a bit -- especially in contrast to Dr. Pulaski, whose odd, technophobic Data-bashing felt really out of place in the 24th Century. Picard went from being "pretty cool" to being, unquestionably, the best thing about the show.

jerf 12y ago
Your post sums up why I'm interested in going back and seeing it again. As I said, I've only sampled a couple of episodes, and even in my brief dalliance there I can see what you're talking about in my second paragraph. Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. It seems to me that it is a general problem that a multi-writer show like Star Trek can only carry along certain types of nuance. I suspect there's a lot of writers that, given six or seven episodes to play with, could have done fantastic things with Worf or Troi... but that's not how it works. They also have problems with change... especially in the movies (which I do more clearly remember), they had a real problem with Data. By the time of the movies he'd made a lot of progress and grown a lot as a character, but in a couple of the movies (particularly Insurrection) it's like he's regressed almost all the way back to the first episode of TNG. The "Pinocchio" aspect of the story carried along, but the already-existing nuance had disappeared. Multi-writer stories are hard.
- jonnathanson 12y ago
  There are benefits and drawbacks to multi-writer teams. I say this as someone who spent the first half of his career in TV development and production. (In fact, I briefly interned on a Trek series back in college.) One of the benefits is, for lack of a better word, scalability. A single writer would take forever to write 100+ cogent, consistently great, full-length episodes of a TV show. Since TV series' fates are always in flux, you can't afford a primetime series with only one writer, who becomes a crushing bottleneck if any changes in volume need to be made. Writing a great TV episode is hard, hard work and takes time. Now imagine writing 12, or even 22 of them on an insane production deadline! On the other hand, some shows and formats work really well with a single writer/auteur. True Detective is famous for having been entirely written and entirely directed by just one writer and one director. Now, True Detective was a miniseries of only 8 episodes, and at that scale, a single writer is more realistic. I doubt you could have produced a primetime Star Trek series with only one writer and one director. An interesting hybrid approach is what I'd call a staff structure with a clear "visionary" at the helm. This is sort of like what we saw on Battlestar Galactica: a show with a full writing staff, but one or two writers who basically dominated the process and authored the bulk of the series. MASH is another good example; Larry Gelbart clearly exercised strong, authorial control over the show, even though he didn't write every episode. This latter approach tends to work the best, in my experience as a fan and as a former TV person. But it can have its difficulties and drawbacks, all the same. Sometimes there are limits to the imagination of even the most creative individuals. If you're relying too much on a strong auteur type, and he or she gets writer's block, or gets sick, or becomes extremely difficult, you're SOL.