I’ve never been a Wesley hater. By the time I was old enough to watch TNG, it was already mothballed and existed only in reruns. My best recollection is that our NBC affiliate (WAVE3 out of Louisville) ran TNG on Saturday afternoons, and seemed to favor episodes from the last three seasons of the show. My primary exposure to Spandex Seasons 1 and 2 came from either renting or, more often, purchasing individual episodes on VHS tapes, so my exposure to Wesley was fairly limited. Due to his absence in the TNG films (except for a few frames in Nemesis) I had no idea what a central figure Wesley was until I watched TNG in its entirety for the very first time as a 30 something with a Netflix account. 

Having backed my way into Wesley-dom, I have to say, he’s fine. Wil Wheaton was a talented young actor and he brings plenty to admire to his portrayal of the 24th century wunderkind. Common complaints about the character being whiny or overpowered (no, high school students should not helm the Federation flagship, no matter how good their grades) must have deeply frustrated the TNG writers because, obviously, those feelings were indicators of their success. Wesley was often intended to be grating to the audience, as most teenagers are. Fans of any fictional world frequently forget that they are observing what ought to be fully realized people with likes and dislikes, good days and bad days, and, occasionally, long stretches of teenagerdom.

So I can understand where people are coming from when they say they don’t like Wesley, even if they don’t always understand why they don’t like him. But its important to remember that, at the time, Wil Wheaton was arguably the most famous person on set (with the possible exception of LeVar Burton) and without Wesley Crusher, The Next Generation may never have seen the light of day. 

With that in mind, I say again that I’ve never been a Wesley hater. But you know who was a Wesley hater? This guy:

Season 1, episode 19, “Coming of Age” is definitely a Wesley episode. After earning a perfect score on the Space SAT Wesley travels to Relva Seven to compete with three other eggheads for early admittance to Starfleet Academy. Meanwhile, on the Enterprise, one of Wesley’s less successful classmates is experiencing a mental health crisis.

This is the story of a young man who only got an A+ instead of an A++, attempted suicide, and was rescued, only to disappear without a trace. This is the story of Jake Kurland.

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Computer, begin personal log:

Stardate, who gives a goddamn gas giant. Actually, before we get started…

Computer, delete previous entry from Jake Kurland Personal Log.

No point keeping a suicide note floating around if I’m still wasting space on this shitty ship.

I don’t know what I expected, its not like the shuttle had a cloak or anything. They were going to know the minute I stole it. Honestly I’m surprised I got as far as I did before they finally noticed me. I was already outside the shuttle bay doors before I heard any alarms. It felt like an eternity passed before they hailed me, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute.

Maybe if I’d gone straight to warp? But jumping to subspace while inside a star system is stupid. I’m stupid. Of course the shuttle wasn’t going to work. They were always going to find a way to turbocharge the transporter for an emergency beam-out, or extend the reach of the tractor beam by using the deflector dish or some other nonsense. No, if I wanted to die in that shuttle I should’ve turned and fought. A couple of shots across the bough and Captain Dick-ard wouldn’t have had any choice except to blow me up.

I guess I could’ve shot myself, but honestly the phasers are way harder to access than the shuttles - most of the weapons lockers are biometrically sealed, and you try getting a Klingon’s fingerprints without him noticing.

Maybe the transporter? They say its safe but a lot of people think its a suicide machine. They say the teleporter destroys the original user, transmits their DNA pattern to a new location, and “reassembles” a clone, Prestige style. (Spoilers for a 300 year old movie, I guess.) So I figure all I gotta do is stop the transporter from spitting out a clone, and I’ll finally be dead. But with my luck they’ll resurrect me from an old file in the pattern buffer, or a strand of hair they find in my room when they are searching for DNA instead of READING MY GODDAMN SUICIDE NOTE.

So. No phasers. No transporters. Dr. Crusher and that quack Troi keep the meds locked up tighter than a television syndication contract. You can’t get alcohol poisoning from synthehol, and they wouldn’t serve me in Ten Forward anyway. Plus dad has the parental lock on the replicator.

I thought, briefly, about sneaking into Worf’s quarters to steal one of those ridiculous wave-bladed knives he likes to show off, but in the end that seemed…messy. Plus we’re back to the fingerprints again.

The shuttle. Honestly I thought they’d fire on me or remotely engage the self-destruct, chalk it up to a malicious AI corrupting the shuttle’s operating system, or an untraceable alien spirit possessing the controls.

It never occurred to me that they’d hail the shuttle. I mean, why all the sudden interest in what I have to say? No one was paying attention when I was scoring record highs on the Starfleet Academy Preliminary Entrance Exam.

Yes, actually second highest is still a record. Honestly, fuck Wesley Crusher. Beat me by 37 points - do you know how few that is? It sounds like a lot but this test is not out of 100 or even 1,000. The full Academy Pre-Entry Assessment is over 10,000 points and covers everything from warp theory to first contact, plus over 100 non-Federation languages including Klingon, Romulan, and Breen. Have you ever heard Breen? Have you ever heard a fork in the garbage disposal? Me neither obviously, I live in the future where garbage disposals don’t exist, but that’s what it sounds like. 37 points is a ROUNDING ERROR not a personal failure! Man, fuck this post scarcity utopia bullshit where everyone is either a fucking nuclear submarine captain or a cafe waiter. Where’s a middle management training course when you need one?

I’m 13 goddamnit. I once read that on ancient Earth the SAT only had two sections, Math and Reading. Reading. They teach babies how to read, what the hell does that have to do with getting into a good college?! Fast forward a few hundred years and the Academy expects cadets to be on another plane of existence, literally, apparently.

The pressure is worse at home. Things were fine before dad’s promotion. Now that he’s a Lieutenant Commander he thinks he’s such hot shit - he says since he’s a department head he deserves respect - dude, your department is the dolphin tank, not Engineering. They can give you all the pips you want but you’re still just Chief Blowhole Waxer and Mackerel Beheader.

But yeah, that’s when all the pressure started. “Did you do your work” and “why aren’t you studying” are the only things my dad has said to me for months. I could’ve built a photon torpedo in the living room and he wouldn’t have noticed as long as my homework PADD was out. Go grease a sentient mammal’s holes, dickwad.

I bet if my dad was Chief Medical Officer instead of Lead Dolphin Wrangler I would’ve passed the test. I bet Wes’s mom doesn’t come home from work every night, reeking of fish guts and synthehol. Wes has such “main character” syndrome that he wins even when he loses. I heard he already failed the admission exam, but he’ll come out on the other end of this having learned some big deal moral lesson, and I’ll just keep getting yelled at by the captain.

Dad’ll go postal when he hears what happened. And if that isn’t enough, now I’ve got Riker breathing down my neck with his “discipline” horeshit. How about some fucking THERAPY or is the THERAPIST too busy talking to the goddamn emotionless robot who, btw, clearly has emotions??? What scam is he running anyway?

This ship sucks.

Computer, end personal log. I’m gonna take a walk, see if I can’t find an open airlock.

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