Recent Polls: Will Weaton Agro

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

I though Wil was a good actor, too. He did what he could with the role.

And da-yum, but Gene was a bastard! Was the Franz Joseph thing about the old TOS fleet manual? I love that thing!

[Teaos]

I voted against him. Something about the guy annoyed me. Not that character although that was annoying to but the Will himself.

[Mikey]

Was the Franz Joseph thing about the old TOS fleet manual? I love that thing!

Basically. After Joseph and Roddenberry had a falling out, Roddenberry came up with his rules of starship design specifically to invalidate Joseph's designs, and then the idea of canon to try and make fans stop looking at/buying such materials.

[GandalfTG]

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.

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.

1) Except, he was a geek, and a nerd, and spent all his time studying. He was very well educated in the engineering disciplines. Ok, he out performed Riker et al, who had specialties in other areas, not engineering. when he out performed someone in engineering, it was more of a 'why didn't I think of that' type moment, rather than an 'I know more than you do' type thing. he could not have been a chief engineer, but the geek who knew more than the basics in a great deal of subjects, and a lot about a few subjects is believable.

Real Life Reference? The youngest entrant into the DARPA Grand Challenge was only 15, and it was designed and built by him alone. He also figured out how to pay for it as well.

As early as episode 2 Westley is shown to be very creative and well knowledgable reguarding the ship's systems when he built a model tractor beam and used it to keep the other intoxicated people out of his control room.

2) Um, what teenaged boys do you know, especially the geeks and dweebs of our society, that have so little control over their hormones that they are incapable of forming coherent thoughts in the presence of a female? There are a great many young men out there that for what ever reason, be it religious beliefs or general upbringing, feel they are unready for sexual relations, especially in a newly formed relationship. Sure, they are very willing to use locker-room humor with their friends, but when it comes to the actual situation with the girl Live and In Person, most young teens, 15 and 16, won't actually go all the way, no matter what Hollywood would have us believe.

Personally, I think he acted very much like a real person, dweeb that the character was. Westley was a 'Good Boy' and actually cared what other people out side his age group thought of him. Treating the females he was interested in developing a relationship with as nothing more than sex objects isn't a good idea, and unlikely to get one laid, even if one isn't socially innept because one spends all their time with their nose in a data padd.

3) The Travelers are hardly god-like beings. They have some minor ability to remove themselves from the timestream, and the ability to transport themselves over vast distances, but no other super-powers, and this was set up during Roddenberry's lifetime, so it's not a total fabrication of the writers screwing things up just cause he's not around to guide them.

[Deepcrush]

Welcome to the family!

[Captain Picard's Hair]

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.

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.

1) Except, he was a geek, and a nerd, and spent all his time studying. He was very well educated in the engineering disciplines. Ok, he out performed Riker et al, who had specialties in other areas, not engineering. when he out performed someone in engineering, it was more of a 'why didn't I think of that' type moment, rather than an 'I know more than you do' type thing. he could not have been a chief engineer, but the geek who knew more than the basics in a great deal of subjects, and a lot about a few subjects is believable.

Real Life Reference? The youngest entrant into the DARPA Grand Challenge was only 15, and it was designed and built by him alone. He also figured out how to pay for it as well.

As early as episode 2 Westley is shown to be very creative and well knowledgable reguarding the ship's systems when he built a model tractor beam and used it to keep the other intoxicated people out of his control room.

2) Um, what teenaged boys do you know, especially the geeks and dweebs of our society, that have so little control over their hormones that they are incapable of forming coherent thoughts in the presence of a female? There are a great many young men out there that for what ever reason, be it religious beliefs or general upbringing, feel they are unready for sexual relations, especially in a newly formed relationship. Sure, they are very willing to use locker-room humor with their friends, but when it comes to the actual situation with the girl Live and In Person, most young teens, 15 and 16, won't actually go all the way, no matter what Hollywood would have us believe.

Personally, I think he acted very much like a real person, dweeb that the character was. Westley was a 'Good Boy' and actually cared what other people out side his age group thought of him. Treating the females he was interested in developing a relationship with as nothing more than sex objects isn't a good idea, and unlikely to get one laid, even if one isn't socially innept because one spends all their time with their nose in a data padd.

3) The Travelers are hardly god-like beings. They have some minor ability to remove themselves from the timestream, and the ability to transport themselves over vast distances, but no other super-powers, and this was set up during Roddenberry's lifetime, so it's not a total fabrication of the writers screwing things up just cause he's not around to guide them.

But, he still had less training than fully trained Starfleet engineers, and vastly less experience. In regards to what Graham said about knowing what works in the real world, it is primarily experience that teaches that, not engineering textbooks (textpadds?). So, we should have seen some of the kind of moments GK described.

Don't forget, that Wesley was on a planet of "relaxation" (wink, wink), and thought he was OFFERED sex by a barely-clad attractive young female. He didn't even gawk at that, or look even a bit exited/nervous.

[Jordanis]

Sure, there are teenaged males who would turn down that offer. I've known some of them. The problem is, every one I've known has been an awkward, self-important twit. Unlikeable. So with that last, I guess Wesley is perfectly accurate.

[GandalfTG]

But, he still had less training than fully trained Starfleet engineers, and vastly less experience. In regards to what Graham said about knowing what works in the real world, it is primarily experience that teaches that, not engineering textbooks (textpadds?). So, we should have seen some of the kind of moments GK described.

Don't forget, that Wesley was on a planet of "relaxation" (wink, wink), and thought he was OFFERED sex by a barely-clad attractive young female. He didn't even gawk at that, or look even a bit exited/nervous.

If I had been the 15 year old in that situation, I would have said something similar. The difference between his reply and mine would have been, I was a lot less swave than his script writers made him.

The only thing that Westley was missing, given the onscreen dialog that gave indications as to his character, was Officer training and Procedures, and the "Why things on starships work as they do" type stuff. One does not need to burn their eyebrow off to know that Gasoline + Lots of Oxygen = BOOM! It is true that some things can only be learned from real world experience, Physics and Engineering aren't amongst them. Also, alot of what Westley did was along the lines of "Nobody's ever done this before, What would happen if we did X?"

[GandalfTG]

Sure, there are teenaged males who would turn down that offer. I've known some of them. The problem is, every one I've known has been an awkward, self-important twit. Unlikeable. So with that last, I guess Wesley is perfectly accurate.

So then, the actor did a good job portraying the character as someone you wouldn't like? He did a good job acting?

[Mikey]

It is true that some things can only be learned from real world experience, Physics and Engineering aren't amongst them.

Physics? OK. Engineering? Nope. You absolutely need real-world experience. I could very easily calculate all the forces brought to bear on a journal bearing, for example, but to actually construct one correctly you need an engineer who's done it before.

[Jordanis]

Sure, there are teenaged males who would turn down that offer. I've known some of them. The problem is, every one I've known has been an awkward, self-important twit. Unlikeable. So with that last, I guess Wesley is perfectly accurate.

So then, the actor did a good job portraying the character as someone you wouldn't like? He did a good job acting?

Yes, and I never said Wil didn't do a fine job. I and I think most people here are saying that Wesley was a terrible character, even if realistic.

[GandalfTG]

It is true that some things can only be learned from real world experience, Physics and Engineering aren't amongst them.

Physics? OK. Engineering? Nope. You absolutely need real-world experience. I could very easily calculate all the forces brought to bear on a journal bearing, for example, but to actually construct one correctly you need an engineer who's done it before.

Then how did the first one get built?

Some people need others to show them how things get done. Some people don't. Some people can wrap a glass jar in aluminum foil, put a little more inside and call it a capacitor, 262 years ago.

Real World experience can teach you many things, how close to crush depth you can actually push your submarine, how big a crater a 50 kt bomb leaves when detonated below ground. We can now calculate these things because someone did the experiment. We no longer need to go out and detonate 2 lbs of enriched uranium to find out how big a crater it'll leave. We no longer need real world experience in building submarines before we can design one and then calculate what its maximum safe depth would be.

Experience doesn't always make one right, just as the lack of it doesn't always make one wrong. That's usually the way things work, but there are exceptions to every rule, and Westley Crusher was obviously set up to be one of those exceptions.

But, yet again, you might find the character annoying, but the polls weren't about which character didn't you like, but which was the worst actor. My guess is that people just didn't care about the difference and deliberatly failed to draw the distinction between Actor and Character, and voted based upon which character they detested most.

P.S. Don't forget Lab Experience, which Westley should have plenty of in thanks to those marvelous computer simulations.

[GandalfTG]

Yes, and I never said Wil didn't do a fine job. I and I think most people here are saying that Wesley was a terrible character, even if realistic.

And that is precisely why I first posted my thread. Wil Weaton was voted the worst actor in all of star trek, simply because his character is the most hated, even though he did a pretty decent job of acting the part.

I had intended my post to bring this to light, but, going back and re-reading the initial post, I notice that I worded it the wrong way round, so it's about Westley rather than about Wil.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Thanks, Mikey. Hmm, that' book's canon to me! *Shakes head*

[Jordanis]

The problem is that your examples of when it didn't take real-world experience to create something will invariably come from the infancy of each respective field. By the time the field is mature, the encyclopedic knowledge of what has been tried and why or why not it worked that is required to create something new means you need to have been working in that field long enough to pick it up.

Microprocessor design, for instance. The first ones, with a few thousand transistors, could be the products of one guy working from a basic computer science degree. Modern ones, with hundreds of millions, are the products of a design team with intimate knowledge of what came before and how they might improve. Chances are if you come up with an idea, someone will tell you "we tried that in '98. It turned out that it was too fiddly to produce reliably in the fab", or something to that effect. That's just what happens in mature fields.