Recent Polls: Will Weaton Agro

[GandalfTG]

Ok, *Dons Asbestos Fire suit* with the recent spate of polls, I've gotta ask a question of the boards... I registered just so that I could do so.

Given:

A: We all love the various series so damned much, we, at the very least, frequent the DITL web site.
B: Acknowledge that Gene Roddenberry was a hell of a writer that we love the things that he's created.
C: Gene stated that the character was essentially a Mary Sue.

Why does everyone seem to hate the character so much? Will Wheaton wasn't that bad an actor, and was taking his cues on how to act the part straight from Roddenberry himself!

Roddenberry has said that Westley did the things that he himself would have done in those situations, so if Westley is annoying, so is Roddenberry.

Which brings me to my second point. You all (56%) didn't like the character, but claim the actor was quite bad at his job. Just as Alan Rickman isn't Serverus Snape, Will Weaton isn't Westley Crusher, even though they do play those characters. I may hate some of the characters that Rickman has played, Hans Gruber (Die Hard), The Sherif of Nottingham (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves), and Snape (Harry Potter) but I think he played the characters marvelously. I've seen a good deal of that on the polls, the actors of the least favorite characters get raked over the coals for the agro their characters draw. I mean, seriously, if the next spate of polls are "Least Favorite Characters" (followed by most favorite), I'd predict that the poll results would be nearly the same.

The Dweeb acted like a Dweeb. The Neurotic one acted neurotic. The Egotists acted Egotistical, until the character managed to pull their heads out. There really were very few bad actors on the various shows. So, why does everyone think that Will Weaton is the worst of the worst?

[Sionnach Glic]

Welcome to the forums.

For the record, I didn't vote for Wheaton. I felt he did a good job with a crappy role, though I can see why a lot of people would vote for him. Most likely, it was out of sheer hatred for the character.

[Granitehewer]

i abstained from voting but despised the alarmingly sexually ambiguous lycra outfits that poor ole will wheaton had to wear.......

[Mikey]

Welcome. I avoided voting for Wheaton, because he played the character well - it was the character itself which I thought was crap. The character of Wesley Crusher was merely an excuse on which to hang plot events, rather than elaborating an actual useful storyline. The idea of having him serve on the bridge of a Starfleet vessel - flagship, no less - was so patently ridiculous that I couldn't even accept it from TNG-era Starfleet. When the character was used to show a side of humanity or drama, it was the worst kind - the whiny, obnoxious, pretentious side of humanity that, if I were a neutral alien, would have made me want to side with the Dominion.

As far as acting like Roddenberry, here goes:
*dons own asbestos suit*

I LOVE Roddenberry's vision, and what he created in large part from the force of his own will. That said, Gene Roddenberry was a big jerk. The way he treated his wife was unconscionable; re-writing his own work just to screw Franz Joseph was low-down; and using the excuse of his "artist's soul" to justify it all was the worst of the lot. If someone told me that I had vision and poesy like Gene Roddenberry, I would take it as the highest compliment. If they told me that I ACTED like Gene Roddenberry, I would punch them in the mouth.

[Enkidu]

I occasionally see fans make similar comments about Roddenberry and various hints of dark scandals. Unfortunately, I don't know what happened. You don't have a link to some internet gossip shop with the gory details?

[Mikey]

I will try to find one. The Franz Joseph thing is well known, as that is the reason Roddenberry invented the concept of canon and his rules of starship design, which he subsequently violated himself later on. I honestly can't remember the original source I had for his infidelity to Majel, but it is certainly alluded to in the awful slobbering apologist book entitled Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation by Yvonne Fern.

[Graham Kennedy]

It's a problem when you do almost any poll on best/worst, people almost invariably vote for whoever or whatever they like most or least, regardless of whether it's relevant to the actual question.

What I mean is, ask who is the worst actor; people vote for whichever character they hate. Ask who was most overpaid; they vote for whichever character they hate. Ask who had the silliest hairstyle; they vote for whichever character they hate. Ask who was the most poorly written; they vote for whichever character they hate.

People tend to see a list of names and if it's a negative question they just hit the one they don't like.

Personally I did hate Wesley as a character. I had a couple of problems with him

1) He solved problems better than the adults around him. I get that Wesley was meant to be a special super-genius, and I can live with that in a character, but raw intelligence only counts for so much. Wesley had no training, no experience, yet he consistently outperformed a group of people who were basically a handpicked group of the best officers in the whole of Starfleet.

I would just love to have seen Wesley come up with some very, very smart way of doing something, only to have it just flat out not work, and then Geordi or Riker patiently explain why that was a good try, but see in the real world it works THIS way instead...

2) He acted absolutely nothing like a real person. He was a teenaged kid for god's sake, his main concern should have been noticing that girls have all these lumpy bits now that give him funny feelings in his trousers.

Take "Justice". A beautiful teenaged girl from a planet of scantily clad sex maniacs says she wants to "play a game" with Wesley. He thinks she is offering him sex. And he turns her down, saying he's "not old enough for some games."

Good god, is there a teenage boy in the whole of existence who would do that? He should have had his uniform half off before she finished asking!

3) Really a corollary of the above; they pretty much ran out of ideas for what to do with him. So they took the whole "really intelligent" thing to the ultimate extreme and turned Wes into a god. Oh boy. Yeah, right. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Now. All that said; I don't pretend to know Wil Wheaton, but from the interviews I have seen with him, and from the stuff I've read on his website, he seems like a perfectly nice, very well grounded and very sensible guy. He really "gets" that people hated Wes, and he gets that he's going to carry that around with him for the rest of his life to some degree. And he sucks it up, goes out there and lives his life anyway. I have a good deal of respect for him.

Also, I didn't really have much bad to say about his acting. Yeah, he was a kid, and he didn't have the skills of Stewart, say. But I thought his acting was about as good as Frakes or Crosby, given what he had to work with.

[Mikey]

Well said. And your take on "Justice" was dead on. It would have been far more believable to have the girl say, "What are you doing? You don't need to take your pants off to play catch!"

[Graham Kennedy]

I occasionally see fans make similar comments about Roddenberry and various hints of dark scandals. Unfortunately, I don't know what happened. You don't have a link to some internet gossip shop with the gory details?

Stories I've heard...

Remember the whole story about how the network execs rejected a female first officer in the pilot episode? Nonsense. They loved a strong female character, what they rejected was Majel Barret in the role. Gene cast her, and kept her on in another role later, because he was having an affair with her.

On one occasion his secretary had to hustle a woman out of his office so that Majel didn't catch him with her. Yes, not only cheating on his wife but cheating on the woman he was cheating with.

Oh, he was doing Nichelle Nichols at the same time, too.

Gene made a habit of attending costume fittings for the female actresses; he was fond of pushing to make the costumes as skimpy as they could get away with, and was very "hands on" in the fitting.

For that matter, casting couch stuff for the female guest stars was pretty standard practice for him.

He wrote lyrics for the TOS theme, knowing they would never be used, specifically because it meant that Gene got half the royalty payments which would otherwise have gone to Alexander Courage. Courage was absolutely incensed by this, and refused to ever work with Roddenberry again.

I got those from "Inside Star Trek: The Real Story" by Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman; I don't know if it's true or not, but those gents were in a position to know from their own experiences.

[DarkOmen]

i abstained from voting but despised the alarmingly sexually ambiguous lycra outfits that poor ole will wheaton had to wear.......

I love you 8)

[Sionnach Glic]

Jeez, I knew Roddenberry wasn't exactly a great guy. But still...

[Enkidu]

Ah, thanks, Mikey, Mr Kennedy.
Sexual predator, control freak and inclined to get a kick back on all possible aspects of his franchise, including other peoples work.
Thinking about it, I remember reading how he fell out with Nimoy over the introduction of the Vulcan symbol, as Nimoy felt it was purely to sell replicas to fans. It also seemed odd to me that the "Roddenberry principle" rendered FJ's Saladin and Federation Class non-canon, and then the Freedom and Niagara appeared on his watch. I suppose that it is part of it.
He must have had a hell of a time on the Helen Of Troyius episode. I saw that ep again a few months back, and was surprised at the costume was skimpy even by modern standards.
I've also read that the reason Gates Mcfadden left was due to sexual harassment and returned because the person had left. It seemed to be hinting at someone else but was GR involved in that?
Oh, and Wesley, I disliked the the character, but it wasn't Wheatons fault.
He shared the thankless exposition monkey duty with Data, and there was also all those deus ex machina moments where the boy wonder saves the day, pandering to the whiny teen "I know what's best, if only the grownups will listen" demographic. And all those teenager problem sub plot episodes, a common feature of family oriented shows. Ugh.

[Teaos]

OK he was a bit of a jerk in some areas.

But when it comes to his franchise I can see were he is coming from.

Creators and writers are very protective of their works.

[Mikey]

Ah, I had almost forgotten about the "Beyond Antares" scam he worked against Courage. Well done, GK.

...pandering to the whiny teen "I know what's best, if only the grownups will listen" demographic. And all those teenager problem sub plot episodes, a common feature of family oriented shows. Ugh.

Know what? I was a teenager when TNG first aired, and I didn't like him then, either.

[Tsukiyumi]

I think I was seven, and my dad wouldn't let me watch it because he was on one of his psychotic rants (the same guy who took me to see ST3 and 4 in the theatre).

Wil Wheaton seems like a cool guy in reality, and I found the character to be on-par annoying with Dr. Pulaski or Janeway's self-inflated egos; not enough to detract from the quality, except during episodes focused on the character.