Approximately 162% of the total population of Twitter users has sent me this Gizmodo post about some mostly-awesome custom (unofficial) LEGO minifigs that are inspired by the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Approximately 600% of them asked me to comment, and since I can’t do that in 280 characters without resorting to the dreaded [THREAD 1/66], I’m doing it here.
Before I get into the Wesley part of this that you’re all here for: I love that this set exists. I love that enough people want to do TNG LEGO to create a market demand for these figures. I can’t speak for the rest of the cast, but things like this, based on us, are always awesome. Earlier this year, a guy gave me a little minifig that he made of Wesley, and even though it’s unofficial, it is a delightful thing to own. He’s in his little red spacesuit, and he looks like he’s got a course you can plot. I love it.
In this particular custom set, though, Wesley is depicted as a crying child, and that’s not just disappointing to me, it’s kind of insulting and demeaning to everyone who loved that character when they were kids. The creator of this set is saying that Wesley Crusher is a crybaby, and he doesn’t deserve to stand shoulder to minifig shoulder with the rest of the crew. People who loved Wesley, who were inspired by him to pursue careers in science and engineering, who were thrilled when they were kids to see another kid driving a spaceship? Well, the character they loved was a crybaby so just suck it up I guess.
“Oh, Wil Wheaton, you sweet summer child,” you are saying right now. “You think people actually loved Wesley Crusher. You’re adorable.”
So this is, as you can imagine, something I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with for thirty years. It’s been talked about to death (on this very blog, more than once), but I’ll sum up as briefly as I can: I reject the idea that nobody liked or cared about the character. Now, It is absolutely true that, for the entirety of the first season, Wesley was a terribly-written character. He was an idea, a plot device, and was not handled with much care or respect. I think the best example of this is in Datalore, which I wrote about in Memories of the Future Volume 1:
Wesley, who was sent to check up on Data, does what any smart Starfleet officer would do: He reports to his captain that something fishy is going on with the robot and suggests that maybe they shouldn’t be so quick to trust him.
Picard, the captain who recognized Wesley’s intellect and promoted him to acting ensign, and Riker, who chose Wesley over everyone else on the ship to check up on Data and report back on what he found, not only ignore Wesley’s concerns, they actually tell him that he’s out of line for expressing them!
“Data” (actually Lore) leaves the bridge — after making it clear that he doesn’t know what “make it so” means and arousing absolutely no suspicions from Picard — and Wesley decides he’s had enough of this bullshit.
“Sir,” he says, “I know this may finish me, but —”
And Picard, the captain who recognized Wesley’s intellect and promoted him to acting ensign, and the closest thing to a father figure Wesley has ever known, responds with three words that follow and haunt me to this day: “Shut up, Wesley!”
Trekkies around the country gasp in delight as an episode that was veering dangerously close to the Tkon empire suddenly has redeeming value. Printing presses, silk screens, and button-makers go into overdrive as entrepreneurial fans do what they do best: skirt the borders of IP infringement to make a quick buck. Children are still attending college today from the sales.
[…]
Wesley points out that everything he said in his report, and all of his concerns, would have been listened to if it came from an adult, or a competent writer. Picard considers this retort momentarily, and then sends him to his room to organize his sweaters. Then, for good measure, he sends Dr. Crusher to keep an eye on him.
“Personally, I hated the way they handled Wesley in this episode. He’s already on his way to becoming a hated character by the adults in the audience, and the writers cranked it up to Warp 11. It was stupid of them to have Picard give him an adult responsibility and then dismissively treat him like a child when he carried it out. It undermines both of the characters — how is the audience supposed to take either of them seriously?”
Another brief and related note on “Shut up, Wesley”, from a Reddit thread seven months ago:
People have been saying this to me since I was fourteen. I’m nearly 45. I’ve heard this for the entirety of my adult life. It’s annoying. It isn’t funny, it isn’t clever, and it’s just become obnoxious.
More than that, though, let’s put it into dramatic context: an adult says that to a kid who is doing his best to help, to do his job, to live up to the expectations that have been placed upon him. It’s used to shut him down, to disregard and silence him. And it turns out that, holy shit, the kid was right all along. In context, if we accept that it’s all real: Picard never says that to Riker, or Geordi, or Tasha, or to literally anyone else under his command because that would be profoundly unprofessional. But there are different rules when you’re dealing with the kid among the adults (and, believe me, the producers and directors on TNG treated me the exact same way).
So it’s a loaded phrase that bothers me, and I’d really like it if it just went away forever.
So back to the minifig: it’s “Shut up, Wesley,” made into what would otherwise be an awesome minifig, in a collection of truly amazing and beautiful minifigs. It’s a huge disappointment to me, because I’d love to have a Wesley in his little rainbow acting-ensign uniform, but I believe that it’s insulting to all the kids who are now adults who loved the character and were inspired by him to go into science and engineering, or who had a character on TV they could relate to, because they were too smart for their own good, a little awkward and weird, and out of place everywhere they went (oh hey I just described myself. I never claimed to be objective here).
I want to be clear here, because I know that future members of my Twitter blocklist will send me a cropped image of LEGO Wesley crying, or tell me to shut up because I’m making too much of this: this isn’t about me. This is about thirty years of people kicking Wesley Crusher around because writers in the first season of Next Generation (who gave us such memorable gems as Angel One, Code of Honor, and The Last Outpost) didn’t write him as well as writers did in later seasons, and once the fandom narrative was fixed, no amount of Final Mission or Starfleet Academy -like episodes could change it.
I understand that a lot of people will see the humor in this, and I respect that. From a certain point of view, it is very funny. I don’t think that this was done this way to be mean/ If anything, it’s just lazy. But because so many people asked me what I felt when I saw it: I’m disappointed, because this isn’t the way I’d like to see Wesley portrayed in a medium that I love. I just feel like Wesley Crusher and the boys and girls he inspired deserve something that isn’t making a joke at his expense, or just reducing him —again– to little more than an idea.
I do think Wesley was a foil for the first few seasons, he was also the personification of Cpt. Picard’s discomfort with children. Add to that, Wesley served as a constant reminder of Cpt. Picard’s role in Jack Crusher’s death, so on the one hand, it seems obvious that the Captain would have a fair amount of disdain for Wesley, as highlighted particularly in that episode and by that comment. The Captain’s relationship with Wesley evolves however, and becomes one of the more genuine relationships in TNG in my opinion. Wesley grows out of the do-gooder, know it all, wunderkind, and the Captain takes another step in leaning to take himself not quite so seriously. It’s a move in the right direction for both of them “Shut Up, Wesley!” is simply the low-water mark for this relationship, and a waypost to show how far the 2 have come.
Yo. I was like 8 years old when TNG came out and I was first exposed to Wesley Crusher. Completely changed my world. It was the first time I’d ever been exposed to anyone real or fictional who struggled in the same ways I did.
I never would have bonded to the character if he hadn’t been told to shut up – unfairly, with extreme prejudice, and often. That was my reality at the time, and the character’s story arc helped me to understand myself much better over time. I styled my hair like Wesley Crusher every single day for pretty much the whole 7 seasons.
So yes, your portrayal of the character touched me deeply and changed my life for the better, even with the terrible writing in season 1. No stupid Crying Wesley minifig will ever change that. If other people don’t get it, it makes no difference to me. Wesley is and always will be an inspiration to me, and I’m sad that the character never got a show of his own.
It looks to me more like he’s yelling than crying.
And anyways: you weren’t really Wesley Crusher. You were just pretending to be. 😉
“I reject the idea that nobody liked or cared about the character.”
Good! I’m 33, grew up watching TNG; I always remember seasons 3-7 more vividly than 1 & 2. But I know with certainty that I’ve never felt that I hated the Wesley character. To me he was part of the crew, albeit younger than the rest. I thought it was cool that he got a full Ensign’s uniform.
I don’t think you’re wrong to be disappointed in this character choice. On a side note – what’s with giving Troi a skant?
It really does seem odd that a show which purported to be for the whole family would treat the youngest member so shabbily. The arrogance with which they wrote Picard is why he is relegated to being only my second favourite captain (my favourite knows who she is).
I’ll admit to not liking Wesley for most of the show’s run, but not because Wesley couldn’t have been likeable. The reason I didn’t like Wesley was that the writers never gave me a reason to like him. He’s like this stranger who occasionally gets a spotlight shone on them, only to be almost immediately plunged into shadow.
Knowing what I know now (being significantly older, and hopefully a bit wiser), I like Wesley about as much as it’s possible to like a character who, at best, is a maguffin.
In closing, “Shut up, Trolls!”
Your character helped develop a deep love of science in me, let let me know that it was okay the be a smart kid (which where I come from, gets you hardcore bulloed). I lived for eposodrs with Wesley in them.
I have feelings about this post. I haven’t read all the comments yet, so I apologize if this is repetitive, but I felt like the episode in question was, looking back, one of my favorites. As opposed to being poorly written, I felt that it was a beautiful piece of art that warned adults not to disrespect or take lightly people just because they happen to be teenagers. I felt Wesley’s frustration as my own frustration as an intelligent teenager who was often not taken seriously or respected, and I feel like that was the episode where Wesley became one of my favorite TV characters of all time.
Therefore, I think that the line, “Shut up, Wesley,” reflected more poorly on Picard and the authority that he represented rather that reflecting poorly on the character of Wesley. The simple absurdity and outrageous frustration of it was, after time, the funny part. And honestly, if Wesley had just shrugged his shoulders and carried on, knowing that he did his best to warn those in charge, it would have given far less fodder to the trolls, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that Wesley was outraged, and there is always a certain humor when authority figures chastise those under their command, and the more earnest the one being chastised is, the funnier the scene. I could name several examples from British comedy almost off the top of my head.
So yes, I loved the character of Wesley and was hugely inspired by him to pursue science and math after high school, which I did. As for the Lego version, I still think it’s funny. Maybe I just have a warped sense of humor.
Add me to the list of young science geeks for whom your character on TNG was basically the only character like me I could draw inspiration from; flawed as the writing may have been at times. For my young self with his relativity book under his pillow, no-one to talk to about it, and the general attitude among my peers that obsessing about such things was completely uncool, that really meant a lot. Would I have gotten a quantum field theory PhD 17 years later if there hadn’t been Wesley Crusher? Maybe, but maybe not. He contributed to the spark, that’s for sure. The haters who belittle the character are relatively speaking completely irrelevant. We are the ones who matter – many of my students probably never saw a minute of TNG, but a little bit of your persona lives on in my teaching, influencing legions in a positive way, and the same is true for thousands of others.
Mr Wheaton, the type of fan who revels in the trope of hating the Wesley Crusher character, has always seemed to me to be the self-creating self-annointing trope of the soulless brain-dead robo-fan. I constantly tell anyone who will listen that Seasons 1 and 2 of TNG are nearly unendurable for their substandard writing and plotting, save for only a few episodes that were the exception. The revision that the show underwent beginning with season three was like a miracle to me because I had truly by that point given up hope that the show would EVER be any good. To sum up, when I happen upon a fellow TNG fan, and they engage in Wesley bashing, I get away from them as fast as I can. Whenever I hear “shut up Wesley,” I hear the master hacker from Leverage saying “take THAT Hardison.”
The beauty about legos is you can change his head to a face you want.
I have three children, two boys and one girl, between the ages of 8 and 4 years old. I have never, and would never, tell them to shut up. It’s demeaning to the children’s mental and emotional development and it would make me feel like an incredibly inept and incompetent parent, in addition to knowing that I hurt them with my words. Shame on the writers for what they did to young Wesley, and know that you have an amazing fan base, Wil, who respect and support you!
Well said!
I agree with you, and I am sorry they went this way with the minifig.
I’m with you on this one, and for the record, I always liked Wesley. Not always thrilled with the writing, as you point out, but he was a great kid with a great future, and he was an inspiration to many.
Wait… he’s not crying. He’s freaking directly the out about something the rest of the crew has thus-far failed to notice. Don’t worry. They’ll catch up in the last five minutes… like always.
As someone who started watching Star Trek:TNG at like, 3 or 4, and got to rewatch when I was 9 or 10, and every few years since then – Wesley grounded me into Star Trek. Sure, I grew to like and identify with other characters too. But Wesley let me know that, even as a kid, I could be a part of Star Trek. Jake and Nog did this too in DS9. Thanks for speaking to this!
just put a new head on him. stop crying.
Way to miss the point entirely.
I haven’t read through all of the comments, so this may be old news, and it doesn’t really take away from the suckage of this, but it does look like the head is either 2 sided, or comes with 2 heads so you can have a more normal expression. https://minifigs.me/shop/wesley-crusher-star-trek-custom-minifigure/
Wow, I just had an epiphany! TNG was my favorite show as a kid. I grew up to be an engineer…now I can clearly see a dotted line from Wil’s example as Wesley to my future career. Thanks, Will! Truly. Wesley mattered to me, then and now.
I’ve always like the Wesley character, bad writing aside. As a child I always fit in better with adults than kids my own age, so I totally get what you’re saying. Whoever created this set is just another bully in the world of smart kids.
Never a really fan of mini-figs as I did not grow up with Lego. However, I did grow up with Little People, and the Star Trek TNG Pin Mates by Bif Bang Pow do not include Wesley. I’m curious as to why that is.
Well said, Wil! Thanks much for taking the time to share your thoughts.
The fact that Wesley knew calculus at such a young age, made me feel inadequate in the brains department. Your character did make people aspire to be more and to become overachievers.
All this just reminded me how much I loved reading Memories of the Future. Guess I know what I’m reading tonight. Thank you Wil
You are delightful, and your fans adore you. Thank you for the light, laughter, and inspiration you continue to bring to us.
The shut up Wesley moment in Datalore had always seemed odd to me. Very against Picard’s character it seemed. The writers didn’t find a good place for Wesley at least through the first 2 seasons.
One of my favorite TNG scenes is in Best of Both Worlds Part II, when Riker is desperate to defeat the Borg and orders a collision with the cube. Wesley’s shocked expression and then following the order when Rike says “you heard me!” was really great. Great scene and you and Frakes pulled it off well.
The way you and Troi are depicted, it seems whoever designed these watched a couple of episodes of season 1 and called it good. Disappointing LEGO didn’t put more thought into it.
I never quite understood the character and why he was there in the first place. On the ship, yes. In some kind of intern capacity, yes. But he was unqualified and doing a starfleet officer’s job – on the bridge! So on behalf of all the newly qualified ensigns I always resented him! However he wasn’t a crybaby 😉
Honestly, he really shouldn’t have even been on the ship. Picard was completely right about how stupid it is to have children on board an active duty naval vessel. We’re talking about a ship that routinely gets deployed to the neutral zone, etc., and is almost destroyed every other week. Again, though, this criticism is not the fault of either Wesley or Wil, that one is on Starfleet Command / the writers.
I just contacted minifig and kindly asked them to change Wesley’s face. Funny thing, I noticed the Die Hard Villain looks like a present day version of you.
Personally, i think most of the people who hate Wesley, are really just jealous. They just wish they could have been as smart as him, on the bridge of the enterprise flying a starship when most of us aren’t even driving cars yet.
I remember watching TNG as a (younger) adult (as a kid, I know that I watched TOS episodes at least 30 times each) and the return of ST was something that I had dreamed of. And seriously, I enjoyed the Wesley character. I empathized with him being smart, and wishing that the adults around me had seen how smart or ambitious I was and given me a ‘leg up.’
I was not happy with the response in Datalore that Wesley got from his mentors. But as that young man, I couldn’t have told you exactly why.
Looking back at it, from an older man’s perspective, maybe I can get to the whole of it. Maybe, as written (perhaps admittedly sloppy), the thought, the essence the writers were trying to covey, was that the ‘adults’ around Wesley were doing what adults always do when they are confronted with different expectations than they were prepared for; they lashed out at the messenger. I’m not saying it’s right but it’s what often happens.
In a way this sets up the character of Wesley to be ‘believed’ or to be more authoritative in the future. If true, the set up was ham-handed, admittedly.
It’s totally unfair for you, as an actor, to be saddled with that B.S. for so many years. It saddens me that people can still be so petty and unintelligent. I hope that you take solace in words such as mine and can continue to ignore those petty people, no matter how obnoxious they are.
Looking forward to seeing you in something cool in the future (like Table Top). Missed you at Awesome Con by minutes. Would have liked to have been able to say hello.
Take care and Happy New Year.
I am 40 now and still love following the stuff you do. Though I have laughed at a few of the “shut up Wesley” memes, overall it pisses me off too, because he was my favorite TNG character. Anybody that thinks the character wasn’t a hit with a huge following should consider that the premise of Wesley was totally ripped off a few years later when Seaquest came around. And though I admittedly liked that show too (until they totally changed the premise) Jonathan Brandis played that character way more whiny than you played Wesley. My point is, the industry only copies things that are working. If you had done a crappy job playing Wesley or the writing of the charcter hadn’t improved, then Ensign Lucas would never have been on Seaquest.
It is easier to troll than it is to post positive stuff. Posting positive stuff requires that you have some kind of social skills that warn you when you cross from fan to fanatic, or go straight to lunatic. Trolling takes zero bravery and zero brains. I wish you didn’t have to deal with trolls. It s a crappy price to pay for being brave enough to share your talents with the world. As one of the many that are entertained by your talents, I thank you and hope that you know there are more people like me out here than there are trolls. Sorry I don’t praise you as loud as they insult you, but my wife says that if I did it would be weird and stalker like. Also admittedly I am lazy and this takes more effort than I typically put forth. My fandom of you usually just manifests in watching TNG or Tabletop and listening to your Podcast or the many episodes you were on the Nerdest Podcast. Reading this made me think you were upset though, so I was motivated to post something positive to try and help show you that what you have done and continue to do matters. Thank you for sharing your talents sir; I look forward to being entertained by you for many years to come!!!
Oh my goodness, I’d forgotten how whiny Lucas Wolenczak was! I was a HUGE TNG fan and a pretty big seaQuest fan, thanks in big part to Wil Wheaton and Jon Brandis (I was a boy crazy teenager, what can I say?). And I completely agree with you–TV execs copy things that are working, so putting Lucas on DSV was a huge nod to Wesley’s (eventual) popularity.
I was an adult when ST:TNG came on. On Datalore I not only disliked the Shut up Wesley part, but sending him to his ROOM? As a Star Fleet officer, Dr Crusher should NEVER have been sent to care for him or whatever Picard said. Humiliating for her and Wesley. We have every ST series on every night on Heroes & Icons. This episode is sometimes just too frustrating to watch.
I was pissed when I saw the Wesley face on the mini legos. It’s insulting. To Wil & to the series.
I’m sorry you still have to deal with this. I really enjoyed your book “Just a Geek” and you deserved better then and now. You’re a great writer and I wish you the best.
I never felt inspired by Wesley. However, based on just a casual following of your work since then, I have found you, Wil Wheaton, to be incredibly inspiring. Please don’t ever shut up.
Wow, I hadn’t heard about this, which is a bit disappointing, considering my nerdy circle of friends. My initial (and current) reaction was the same as Wil’s: disappointment and thoughts of a lazy designer/lazy designers. It’s such an old joke that it’s not funny anymore to those to whom it was funny at first (I feel the whole “shut up, Wesley” thing was unfunny from the beginning and poor writing for all the reasons Wil has laid out previously).
I hadn’t planned on becoming a collector of things like this set but I’ve been gifted several Trek items including Pez dispensers and shot glasses. Too bad I won’t be adding this to the collection (and my friends and family [i]better[/i] know me well enough to NOT buy this for me).
I liked Wesley Crusher when I started watching as a kid, but came into TNG in their third or fourth season. Didn’t see season one till later.
That sucks. I was the perfect age to look up to Wesley. He was my favorite part of the series, made even cooler by the person you turned out to be. You and he deserve better.
I suspect it is prescient of the young walking away from the civilization of the past and leaving it to die. Indeed, Wesley evolves beyond the Federation and leaves and that is a good thing. Its what the young need to do to civilization that they not be enslaved by a failing state.
I am a big Wesley fan. So they can ALL “shut up”
I don’t know if this will ever help temper your personal connection to that phrase, but for many younger audience members, myself included, that instant cemented a connection to our own personal struggles to be taken seriously by the adult mentors in our lives. Being haunted by moments from our childhood is something we all carry and your strength dealing with this, anxiety and depression makes you ,personally, a hero and an inspiration to us all. If you ever don the rainbow ensigns shirt again, I pity the opportunistic idiot that tells you to “shut up”, because they are going to get a stone cold “make me” right back.
As for this set, I’m just going to swap the head and hair for Rikers.
Wow, that is disappointing. :-/
You and I are the same age, Wil, and so I was a big fan of the Wesley character on TNG. I don’t remember the character being annoying, likely because I empathised with him.
In any case, add me to the long list of people who enjoyed the character you played, and one that will not be buying this set.
Perhaps it’s already been said, but it seems people overlooked at the “crying Wesley” Lego figure also has a reversible head which shows a smile. One has to point out that there are many who picked up their pitchforks and torches without looking into it any further.
Buy the set, don’t buy the set, that’s everyone’s right. That right ends when people omit information in order to build false rage.
https://minifigs.me/shop/wesley-crusher-star-trek-custom-minifigure/
Thanks. Blessings, Debbie
When I introduced my son to ST:TNG, a few years ago, Wesley was his favorite character, and I agreed that he was pretty awesome.
I pointed out that he not only saved everybody’s butts more than once, he often did it despite their dismissive and agist responses and onetime, while he was drunk!
I have actually lost respect for friends who say jerky things about Wesley/Wil, and usually get into an argument with them, ending it with, ” you know that the actor is an actual HUMAN BEING, right?!”
I loved Wesley the entire time, personally. People DO take youth less seriously just because they are young and even when it is proven that they were accurate. That doesn’t diminish the character (or the acting).
I seem to be a bit “phasered” by Worf’s Mona Lisa Smile…
Have one of your friends with a 3 D printer make up your own minifigs! Hmm…a punk rock mini fig Wesley Crusher…complete with middle finger extended. F**k you, season one TNG writers!
Wil,
episodic shows have to deal with the challenges of producing new stuff at a rapid pace. Not all writing, acting, directing and so on can be spot on all the time. Every has their own top list of episodes they love and of the ones they do not love. I agree with your assessment of the early episodes, thats normal for such a game changing show like Star Trek. But from what I read you underestimate the impact the show had also in its bad episodes on people:
I love Wesley. He was the most relatable character when I was his age. The writing exposed him to situations I was either exposed (not being respected by adults or peers) or was wishing to be exposed (the whole I live in space thing). And you portrayed him the way I felt about it.
I loved that the future was relatable. I saw Wesley fight the odds, argue with adults and rise and shine.
I wanted to be Wesley.
Looking back, there is little I would like to have changed.
PS: The rainbow sweater was may favourite.
The people that put down/ridiculed Wesley sound like playground bullies. They apparently don’t understand the ridicule supports bullying.
Shut up, Wesley.
Oh you are sooooo clever!
Shut the Hell up Joe.
So the first year of TNG you blame your character on the writing but the the years that followed we should just blame your acting?
Bye.
I think you’re awesome, and I’m sorry this stuff hurts you.
He can swap heads with the Riker fig. Boom, done.