The Problem of Wesley

I've come late to Star Trek. Neither the original series nor Next Gen was ever on TV when I had access to a TV; the Evil Landlord and I watched some Deep Space Nine when it trickled through to SA, but only in a desultory sort of fashion, and I don't remember much of it. I'm not sure why borrowing first_fallen's complete STNG set and proceeding to watch it in an unholy gulp over several months should have had the effect of putting me into warp drive in the direction of helpless, geeky fandom, but it has, and there we have it. I knew the die was cast when the simple action of Spock teaching Data the Vulcan nerve pinch caused me an exquisite, inexplicable, fangirly joy. It's over. I'm a Trekkie. Alas.

Of course, the whole thing was more or less sparked by my discovery, over vastly circuitous sf fandom routes (possibly via the Whatever), of Wil Wheaton's blog. I have an unholy fascination for the Wesley Crusher phenomenon: for the incredible outpouring of fan hatred which managed to pillory not only the character, but the unfortunate actor, who seems to be a likeable sort of person who really didn't deserve that. I'm a few episodes into Season 5, and of course Wesley has now left, to "go to the Academy", but really for the shattered teen actor to hie him off into the middle distance and try to regain some sort of self-esteem. It's all rather unfair: being a teenager is a poisonous enough experience without legions of geeky sf fans craning over your shoulder and insisting not only that your character's a dweeb, but that you are.

But I have to ask myself, even in strictly narrative terms - what the hell was going on here? I mean, yes, the writing in the first couple of seasons was really very clunky, and Wesley didn't exactly shine as an example of logical plot decisions, character development or emotional coherence. But then again, nor did anyone else. Honestly, I spent about the first season and a half dropping stitches in my knitting while shouting enraged instructions at the screen - for heaven's sake, beam them out of there! or use your empath! or why the hell are you putting a teenager into that situation? it makes no sense! And I have ranted elsewhere about the dialogue. Good grief. But these generalised problems don't seem to have generated the frenzy of frothing hatred that poor Wesley did. Putting an immature and inexperienced kid, however intelligent, onto the bridge is dodgy, but I think there's more going on here, and most of it is about fan identification.

See, Wesley is a geek. He's written as super-intelligent, accomplished and precocious; he solves problems adults can't. It's not realistic in many ways, but it's no more unrealistic than other aspects of the series, which really abandons all sorts of logic in the pursuit of both story and budget. (The stand-alone episodes drive me crazy: Significant Person or Moment introduced for an episode arc will vanish without a trace with the closing credits, never to be seen again despite the fact that really they should continue to affect the Enterprise and its inhabitants. Like Worf's bonded brother. Bleah). Wesley being a geek shouldn't be any more of a problem than Worf never being able to win a fight, and it particularly shouldn't be a problem given that the bulk of the viewers are themselves geeky science-fondling types. And Wes is not written as an arrogant smart-arse: he's an eager kid, probably intended as a rather endearing point of identification for geeky types whose reaction to the Enterprise would be an identical wide-eyed wonder, because all this spaceship science is just so cool.

And this, I think, is where the problem lies. However badly he's written, the root of the Wesley Crusher problem is not the fact that the character is unlikeable or unrealistic. It's actually a problem of over-identification, not failure of identification. I think too many geeky Trekkies see themselves in Wesley, and they find it excruciating to watch - oh god Wesley is where I would like to be, bumming around on the bridge with an enormous grin on his face, and he's completely dorky and has no right to be there. He both embodies and dramatises the fact of the watcher's own eternal exclusion from the bridge. The revulsion is thus because he represents the watcher too closely, at least the kind of watcher who spends a lot of time at Star Trek conventions. I think it's significant that, at least anecdotally, a lot of female Trek fans seem to really like Wesley. They don't have to watch themselves, and cringe, knowing full well that if given half a chance they'd be babbling just as excruciatingly about the ways in which matter and antimatter could be aligned even more efficiently in Dilithium crystals. (They might well so babble, but at least they're not watching themselves).

I don't like Next Gen as much without Wesley. There's a gap on the bridge, and I'm very aware that the writers partially created it by being really very bad at finding a realistic place for a teenaged geek in Star Trek - but only partially. In fact, the fans created it by being intolerant and incredibly cruel, and that intolerance is directly and slightly unforgiveably about the whole unhappy, marginal geek package - about insecurity. It's sad. I wish it had gone differently. I like Wesley, and he didn't deserve that.

And in broader terms, the whole Trek thing's bloody annoying. Now I'm going to have to re-watch the recent Star Trek movie and see if I actually like it any more than I did now that I'm all Trekkified. Phooey.