It's right around this moment, according to historical data and polling research, that the Kill Wesley movement got its first member.

January 15, 2007 2:07 PM

One of Geordi's first stops is to visit his good pal Wesley Crusher, who shows off one of his science projects (a mini tractor beam,) and one of his toys, a device that lets Wesley recreate speech from anyone on the ship. Any doubt that Wesley is a complete weenie is removed when we learn that he uses this device to have Captain Picard say things like, "Welcome to the bridge, Wesley," instead of having Counselor Troi say things like, "Smack my ass, Wesley, I'm a naughty, naughty bitch."

Wil Wheaton recaps Star Trek: The Next Generation.
posted by EarBucket (53 comments total)

"Then something went horribly wrong, and I know what happened, but I can't tell you exactly how..."
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:11 PM on January 15, 2007 [10 favorites has favorites]

I was just watching an episode from the first season of TNG, thinking about Wil Wheaton in particular. There must be some sort of cosmic alignment going on here.

Also, this is entertaining.
posted by Dasein at 2:12 PM on January 15, 2007

This reminds me of the argument that I had with the then mrs-veedubya when she was giving birth to veedubling-prime. Long story short: never shush a woman in labour because Picard is about to say something profound.
posted by veedubya at 2:15 PM on January 15, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

I could have sworn this was a double. Anyway, these reviews are pretty funny.
posted by chunking express at 2:19 PM on January 15, 2007

yikes
posted by phaedon at 2:22 PM on January 15, 2007

Will Wheaton is really just a geek.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 2:23 PM on January 15, 2007

Odd. He seemed eager to shed any association with the old show. In addition to the video game revivals he does for The Onion, didn't he have a fairly popular (non-Star Trek related) blog not too long ago? Now he's reviewing old TNG episodes and mere steps away from a Shatneresque DirectTV spot.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 2:24 PM on January 15, 2007

instead of having Counselor Troi say things like, "Smack my ass, Wesley, I'm a naughty, naughty bitch."

That's what the holodeck is for. Duh.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:36 PM on January 15, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

he'll always be Gordie the kid who got a leech on his balls to me.
posted by drjimmy11 at 2:36 PM on January 15, 2007 [4 favorites has favorites]

There is actually some fairly serious commentary on the acting, sprinkled in amongst the snark. Hell, even self-deprecation: [W]atching this scene for this review, I really wish I'd just done more than stand there while the grown-ups did some actual acting.

Interesting.
posted by louie at 2:40 PM on January 15, 2007

Ah...Wil Wheaton, one of my first crushes.
posted by Asherah at 2:58 PM on January 15, 2007 [3 favorites has favorites]

He was one of my first Crushers.
posted by yeti at 3:04 PM on January 15, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

Wait. What? Separate the saucer section from the stardrive section? The ship comes apart, like a Transformer? Can it turn into a gun and a boombox and a dinosaur, too?

That was pretty much what I thought. God we hated that pilot episode! My roommates and I had the best TV of all our friends and invited a bunch of people over to watch "The New Trek!" And then it sucked as bad as Howard the Duck. Good thing we had beer.
posted by octothorpe at 3:09 PM on January 15, 2007

he'll always be Gordie the kid who got a leech on his balls to me.

Ditto, with the added weirdness that young me and young beleeched Gordie looked a lot alike. Thanks for reminding me about that constantly, family.

The bit quoted in the post up top reminded me of the funniest laugh-out-loud moment in Trekkies—during the end credits, they run a few stand-up comedians doing Trek/scifi jokes, and one of them does a routine about the unexplored possibilities of the holodeck vis-a-vis the proclivities of a horny teenage boy.

At one point, the comedian is, as said teenager, making wading motions, and the captain says, "son, you've got issues. I think you need to talk to Counselor Troi."

And he yells back, still wading vigorously, "THIS IS COUNSELOR TROI!"

It's, uh, better when you see it.
posted by cortex at 3:09 PM on January 15, 2007

By the way, this is a nice read about the experience that made him leave his Star Trek angst behind a few years back.
posted by idigress at 3:17 PM on January 15, 2007 [5 favorites has favorites]

Picard then introduces Riker to the ship's counselor. As she walks down toward them, she projects some of her thoughts into Riker's mind, and calls him "Imzadi," which is Betazoid for "Backstory red herring that never really goes anywhere for seven years but finally pays off (sort of) in the last movie when Riker gets Worf's sloppy seconds, but let's not go there because 'ew gross.'"

One of the things I like best about Aaron Sorkin's screenwriting is his penchant for toying with romantic interest, using it as a dynamic without actually "hooking up" the characters. Ditto here — I think TNG would have been less interesting if Riker and Troi had become an active item. Keeping it as backstory was a smart decision.
posted by cribcage at 3:21 PM on January 15, 2007

Wait. What? Separate the saucer section from the stardrive section? The ship comes apart, like a Transformer? Can it turn into a gun and a boombox and a dinosaur, too?
There was a guy that really liked that idea.
posted by Wolfdog at 3:22 PM on January 15, 2007

Why-Aye man, proper geordies in space.
posted by Artw at 3:23 PM on January 15, 2007

Wait. What? Separate the saucer section from the stardrive section?

I seem to remember from some of the extremely nerdy games I used to play that pretty much all the Federation ships could do this, but that it didn't necessarily go back on later.

It was more like an escape pod if the rest of the ship had been damaged beyond repair.
posted by drjimmy11 at 3:27 PM on January 15, 2007

idigress, thanks for that link. A "nice read" indeed.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 3:29 PM on January 15, 2007

Indeed, idigress. Great link
posted by yeti at 3:35 PM on January 15, 2007

I read Wheaton's blog religiously. By which I mean from my knees with a glass of red wine.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:35 PM on January 15, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

yes wil did have a popular non-trekkie blog, which he "broke", so he created Wil Wheaton in Exile, in which he writes a lot about poker, a newer obsession of his
posted by tsarfan at 3:41 PM on January 15, 2007

The Life and Times of a Holodeck Janitor.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:42 PM on January 15, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

"instead of having Counselor Troi say things like, 'Smack my ass, Wesley, I'm a naughty, naughty bitch.'"

See, in my world it was me smacking Wesley's ass and saying he'd been a naughty, naughty bitch.

I'm really quite impressed with him. He got over the angst, and is slowly blossoming into quite an egaging writer.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 3:59 PM on January 15, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

"Backstory red herring that never really goes anywhere for seven years but finally pays off (sort of) in the last movie when Riker gets Worf's sloppy seconds, but let's not go there because 'ew gross.'"

IIRC, and I have no idea why this knowledge has chosen to settle in my brain, theres a Peter David Star trek novel that deals with this quite extensively.
posted by Artw at 4:04 PM on January 15, 2007

Yes, but the novels weren't the show.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 4:14 PM on January 15, 2007

"Imzadi" is a good read for a fan, though. It's how I found out about Peter David and I loved how he worked in "The City On The Edge of Forever."
posted by Cyrano at 4:29 PM on January 15, 2007

I still remember the first time he was allowed on the bridge.

...PICARDSo tell me Wesley, have you ever seen a Star Fleet Officer naked?
...

posted by George_Spiggott at 5:35 PM on January 15, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Do you like holodeck simulations about gladiators?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:40 PM on January 15, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

pic54: u like enterprise
w_crush: ya it's cool
pic54: been 2 the holodeck?
pic54: pretty cool yeah lol
w_crush: i beena couple times yeah
pic54: what ur fav programs?
w_crush: u know, football sim, science explorer
pic54: i like plaster-cast scenario
posted by cortex at 5:50 PM on January 15, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

pic54: let me know when yours reaches rock
posted by Mid at 5:54 PM on January 15, 2007

drjimmy11: this game? I was an extremely nerdy kid, too. ISTR the rule book was more complicated than a reactor plant manual.
posted by ctmf at 6:26 PM on January 15, 2007

He seemed eager to shed any association with the old show.

Not really. He celebrates it in his own way.
posted by Hildegarde at 6:32 PM on January 15, 2007

My favorite Wesley/Geordi interaction was the episode where Q showed the young ensign a glimpse of himself in 10 years.

Geordi's wolf-whistle response to Wesley's future hunky self ("All right, Wes!" or something equally girly-squealy) was hysterically blatant.
posted by rob511 at 7:26 PM on January 15, 2007

Will Wheaton is really just a geek.

Well, duh! Don't you remember chatting with him on GEnie??
posted by WolfDaddy at 7:40 PM on January 15, 2007

Wesley Crusher, the role, was that of a well-behaved bright youth. Why must such a role be denegrated? This is something which puzzles me. Perhaps I idolize such a charater over much, because I was a considerably ill-behaved bright youth. Perhaps this is simply a manifestation of my Clever family complex, a common enough issue to have been explored in more modern TV shows and humor.

I just got the full STNG series on DVD, for Christmas. I love the show, but I do appreciate, now, how akward some of these early episodes are. Reading the link from idigress (thanks, it was great!), I had no idea Will Weaton was so young IRL, on that show.

Dirtynumbangelboy: You clearly appreciate Wesley Crusher ;-)
posted by Goofyy at 11:14 PM on January 15, 2007

Wesley Crusher, the role, was that of a well-behaved bright youth.

At first, maybe — but then somebody got the dim idea to develop his character into that Mozart-esque prodigy; so now you had that backstory hanging over every plot, which leads to the same reason why fans hated the X-Men character Bishop: The writers introduce a character, tell you that he's inherently "more special" than everybody else, and then they expect to just continue with normal storylines like nothing has changed. It crosses the line from serving as backstory to dangling as a loose end.
posted by cribcage at 12:19 AM on January 16, 2007

I always thought that the Wesley character was a bit heavy-handed.

Part of the reason that we like Star Trek is because there's this whole undercurrent of "Wow, this is really cool!" TNG succeeds because the "Wow" factor is usually fairly muted and understated. However, it doesn't help much when you have this boy-genius character running around and actually saying things like "Wow, this is really cool!" It just makes the whole thing so much more geeky.

I always wished that they hadn't included the Wesley character. However, years later I found out that lots of girls had a crush on him. And really, can anything that causes girls to watch things like Star Trek possibly be bad?
posted by Afroblanco at 1:00 AM on January 16, 2007

Reading that is a lot more fun than watching actual episodes of Star Trek.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 1:16 AM on January 16, 2007

Wait.... SG has a web "magazine" with no 19 year old n00dz? What?
posted by cavalier at 2:24 AM on January 16, 2007

By the way, this is a nice read about the experience that made him leave his Star Trek angst behind a few years back.

Wow. Thanks for that. That was almost better than the series itself.
posted by dreamsign at 3:01 AM on January 16, 2007

Also: It wasn't about the people who made me cry when they booed me offstage at conventions.

WTF?
posted by dreamsign at 3:04 AM on January 16, 2007

Also (now reading the main link contents) what A Thousand Baited Hooks said.
posted by dreamsign at 3:09 AM on January 16, 2007

"We get it. Hey, as long as you're taking your time and not moving the story forward at all, why not have a pod race?"

Gold!
posted by TwoWordReview at 4:21 AM on January 16, 2007

This is good stuff. And thanks for that link, idigress.
posted by zennie at 6:55 AM on January 16, 2007

In addition to the video game revivals he does for The Onion

He's not doing those any more.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:45 AM on January 16, 2007

I thought it was funny.

Those Ferengi must be BADASS.
posted by Sprout the Vulgarian at 7:59 AM on January 16, 2007

I used to read WWDN all the time, but then he got into all that poker stuff and I lost interest. I did buy a couple of his books though, which are quite good; Dancing Barefoot in particular. He pays his own little homage (of sorts) to ST, and of course, "William FUCKING Shatner"!

Worth a read.

Nice post.
posted by elendil71 at 8:40 AM on January 16, 2007

Down on the planet, Wesley is jogging around with his new friends. Unlike the adults, who are busy getting their freak on in Plato's Retreat, the kids are busy showing off their gymnastic skills. One of the Edo boys walks on his hands! Oh! Wesley got served! But wait! Wesley serves back with some cartwheels and a roundoff, and IT'S ON! (from Justice)

This had me howling with laughter! I really appreciate Wheaton's humor and vulnerability about his role in this bit of cultural history. Thanks for the link.
posted by jasper411 at 9:12 AM on January 16, 2007

cortex: Back in the day when he had a Mindvox account, Wil's IRC nick was goatboy. I remember when a friend brought him to the Boston 2600 meeting, that was funny.
posted by scalefree at 9:40 AM on January 16, 2007

Great stuff. Will is a great writer.
posted by hellphish at 1:31 PM on January 16, 2007

That was fun. Thanks Whil.
posted by xammerboy at 2:17 PM on January 16, 2007