All posts by Wil

Author, actor, producer. On a good day, I am charming as fuck.
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Star Trek is bigger than any single one of us, and it has the power to change the world.

Over on my Tumblr thingy, someone asked me if I have ever met any of the original Star Trek cast. I said

Not only have I met them, I am privileged to call many of them my friends. George has been a mentor to me since 1987, and he only found out (because I told him) last year that I’ve been modeling my choices and interaction with fans after what I saw him do for so many years.

You probably know that my father is an abusive, bullying, piece of shit who terrorized me my entire childhood before going out of his way to be cruel to me when I was really struggling with all the attention I got as a teenager. So it was in that environment that I first met George and Walter and Nichelle, and they all treated me with love and kindness that I had never gotten from any of the adults in my life (save my Aunt Val). They made sure I knew that I was part of a family, now, if I wanted to be, and that they accepted me just the way I was.

I had never experienced that before. Attention, approval, even basic affection were all conditional and never freely given in my home. I lived in a house with four other people, but I didn’t have a family because my father wouldn’t let me into the family he made with my brother and sister; I was a thing my mom used to chase her dreams of fame, and — worst of all — they are emotionally immature narcissists who hated each other so much, I got put on her “team” without my knowledge or consent, and my dad treated me accordingly.

It was just an awful, painful, lonely existence that was only made better at all by my Star Trek family, who made me feel loved and valued for 10 hours a day. And that didn’t just start and end on my set; it was handed down to us from the original series cast (well, most of them, anyway) and I do my best now, as a 51 year-old Legacy Trek Cast Member, to be for the new cast members who George and Frakes were and are for me.

I’ve always known, but didn’t grok until recently, that when we are part of Star Trek, we are given the tremendous privilege to carry something precious that deeply matters to millions of people across generations. What we do with it, and the privilege of carrying it, is up to us; there is no wrong way to do it (some folks just do the job and move on, that’s fine). The way I choose to carry it and share it with all the people I interview on Ready Room is inspired by George and Frakes: Star Trek is bigger than any single one of us, and it has the power to change the world. That is an awesome responsibility and privilege, for those of us who choose to accept it. I still want to make them proud, I probably will for the rest of my life.

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may your garden always thrive

I wrote this on Tumblr when someone asked me if I had any hobbies. In the chain of reblogs, I came across this beautiful parable, from which I took this post’s title.

I have a garden that I love to work in every day. It’s one of my very few hobbies that are mostly private, that I keep for myself. I freely and enthusiastically share my love for classic arcade gaming, Tabletop and RPG games, and all my super nerd shit, so I like that I have this one thing that’s just for me, no expectations, no risk of getting dragged into The Discourse. It’s just for me and I love it.

During the lockdowns, I learned the difference between having a garden, and tending a garden. It turns out that I just love to tend my garden. I love to walk in it, smell all the smells, prune it and tie it up where it needs it, keep the soil healthy, and leave it alone when I’ve done enough. I love to listen to the birds, watch the bees and the butterflies, talk to the corvids, feed them the occasional grub or unwelcome insect. Watering is so lovely, carrying the can around and giving everything as close to just what it needs as I can. My coffee tastes better out there, too. It’s science.

In a lot of ways, I use my gardening time as a metaphor. One that was particularly meaningful to me lately came when I was pruning this feral tomato that showed up in one of my beds late last year. As a general rule, when I get any volunteers, I leave them alone, except to keep them away from things I’ve planted myself, as long as they aren’t invasive. I have more wildflowers around the yard than I can keep track of because of this policy, and I get a tomato or potato every other season or so in their respective beds. But in this case, this plant was growing so fast and getting so out of control, I had to rein it in a bit, with some pruning and gentle redirection of the parts which were tied to the trellis. If you can imagine Sideshow Bob’s hair as a tomato plant, you can sort of get the idea.

While I was tending it, I started thinking about the individual stalks as parts of my life experience: here’s one that doesn’t have anything growing on it, but if I follow it all the way to this point, I can see that it’s providing support and nutrients to this huge, thriving, massively flowering hunk of the plant over here. It turns out that that part may look like it isn’t doing anything, but without it, this other part that’s gorgeous wouldn’t exist.

I could have just looked at it and seen a stalk that wasn’t doing anything. I could have easily pruned it right then and there, because it was ugly, and only afterwards would I have discovered this lush, thriving, beautiful part of the plant that can’t exist without this other part. I was so grateful that I took the time to look at the whole thing, to see that bare stem in context, to appreciate it.

I don’t know if this particular metaphor lands on you, but it landed real hard on me. It inspired a wonderful moment of reflection and gratitude, and I also got excited for the … I mean, it’s at least a dozen, but maybe more … little cherry tomatoes I’m going to get when they finish ripening on this little bit of the vine. This plant is threatening to deliver pounds of fruit this season, and I just hope I can get there before the squirrels do.

Another thing about tending my garden is that it is, by design and necessity, slow. It rewards patience. It is entirely about the journey, even if the destination is pretty great on its own. I have recently noticed that, as long as I can remember, I have felt like I can’t slow down, like I can’t take time for myself, that I should always be working or trying to work. I’ve been working on healing as much of my CPTSD as I can, and part of that includes doing my best to give myself permission to slow down, to take entire days or even weeks off, because I was put to work when I was seven, and I have earned it. It’s such a struggle for me to give myself that grace.

And that’s where my garden is a metaphor again: it may not be full of blooming flowers or tons of vegetables right now, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t growing. Maybe it needs to be watered and fed today, and tomorrow, I can just walk through it, listen to the birds, watch the bees, notice new buds and leaves, choose to be grateful for the entire experience.

Your garden can be a metaphor, too, if you want.

Or not. I’m not the boss of you.

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This was the worst Kings season in years. It’s time to fire Rob Blake.

Hockey incoming. If you don’t speak sports, keep on scrolling.

tl;dr: Hockey is supposed to be entertaining, even when teams are rebuilding. Teams are expected to be minimally competitive in the salary cap era. Kings fans have patiently waited through some very lean years, supporting an organization that’s fallen from its Stanley Cup years into a middling, rote, frustrating decade of missing the playoffs followed by three years of first round exits against the same team. The Kings need to clean house, starting with the GM and front office, or next season will be a repeat of this garbage season, which was the most frustrating and least entertaining season I’ve endured since the 80s. I mean, there were some really bad teams in the late 90s, but they could score power play goals, at least.

Rob Blake was a great player for the Kings. He has been a disaster as a general manager, and the Kings are going to be mid, at best, for years to come, due to his incompetence.

And I think his total failure to lead this organization comes down to two contracts: Cal Petersen and Pierre Luc DuBois. They should be hung around Blake’s neck like millstones, and he should personally write letters of apology to every season ticket holder (only mildly joking, there).

I want a reporter to ask him, and Luc Robataille, why they were the only two people in the entire NHL who didn’t see what DuBois has been showing the league since he was drafted: he has genuine talent, and he doesn’t use it. He coasts, he’s lazy, he’s selfish, he is — by all accounts — an absolute cancer in the locker room, he turns the puck over consistently, takes immature penalties away from the play, and drags down every single team he is part of.

None of this is a secret or should be a surprise. All you have to do is look at his numbers, take out the one season where he actually gave a shit, and have a very clear picture of a man who clearly does not care about playing in the NHL. If math doesn’t do it for you, talk to his former teams.

Rob Blake and Luc Robataille signed this guy for 8 years, taking up all the team’s cap space that was left after Rob Blake gave a 15 million dollar contract to Cal Petersen, who immediately unplugged his controller and will maybe play in the AHL, which is a shame. I really liked that guy and wanted him to succeed.

So at the deadline, when it’s painfully clear to everyone that the Kings need a goalie, they can’t do anything. Because this idiot tied up all the cap space with contracts that will take their place beside Lombardi’s curious choice to shovel money to Mike Richards when he had the opportunity to just release a clearly problematic player.

I sincerely do not understand how these guys can look at the same data that’s available to everyone, and somehow decide that it is actually the entire league and all of the former teammates of this cancerous boat anchor who are wrong; this is the guy who will step up to 1C and lead this team to playoff success.

The Kings are a decade away from the last time they were a genuinely competitive team. Kopitar and Doughty are legends, future hall of famers, and I love them. They are not top line, top minute players any more. That’s not on them, it’s just math, and they can still be valuable to this team in a different role. Put Kopi at 2C, move Doughty to the second pairing, and acknowledge that their amazing careers are nearing their end. Keep them in the room, on the bench, and providing leadership for Byfield, Anderson, Clarke, Thomas, and the rest. And go find and sign a fucking NHL goalie for fuck’s sake.

None of this will happen while the old boys club is in charge. These guys are just incompetent. They have nearly torn down all of the rebuilding work we have patiently endured for a decade, and they did it when we were within a year or so of actually accomplishing it. And why? It just doesn’t make sense. Why rush it when you’re so close?

I hope the entire organization cleans house from top to bottom. If that doesn’t happen, at the very least Rob Blake must be forced to answer for the damage he’s done to this team and its chances to be competitive.

I love this team and I love this sport. I love hockey dates with my favorite human. And I think I’m sitting out most of next year, because, win or lose, this team is just not entertaining. They are boring and frustrating to watch. I love Kopitar and Doughty. I can’t wait for the day their numbers are retired. But I am watching them struggle to keep up with the speed of the changing game, with no help from an overpaid, underachieving, turnover machine who doesn’t give a shit about his team. I watch them lead a power play that passes around the perimeter and shoots once, a rush that dumps the puck in for one shot, no rebound, a 1-3-1 that every other team in the league has solved, and I’m tired of it.

I will always be a fan of the team, but a night out to a hockey game isn’t cheap, and these guys aren’t earning it from me. As long as Rob Blake and Luc Robataille are in charge, the Kings will not be a serious organization.

If you’ve read this far, you probably know that my bracket is entirely blown up in both conferences (as anticipated), but I’m now pulling for the Stars, in memory of Stepto, and the Rangers, because Jonathan Quick.

If you’re a Kings fan, who do you want for head coach? How do you clean up Rob Blake’s mess?

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Because nobody asked, here’s my 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs bracket.

Because nobody asked, here’s my Stanley Cup Playoffs bracket.

Note this is not what I expect will happen, but what I want to happen because it would be fun.

Round 1 Western Conference:

  • Dallas Stars vs. Vegas Injured Reserve: Dallas in 5
  • Winnipeg Jets vs. Colorado Avalanche: Jets in 6
  • Vancouver Never Wins vs. Nashville Predators: Vancouver sweeps
  • Edmonton McDavids vs LA Kings: Kings in 7

Round 1 Eastern Conference:

  • Florida Panthers vs Tampa Bay Lightning: Florida in 5
  • Boston Bruins vs. Toronto Maple LOLs: Leafs in 7
  • New York Rangers vs Washington Capitals: Rangers sweep
  • Carolina Whalers vs. New York Islanders: Carolina in 6.

Round 2 Western Conference:

  • Dallas Stars vs. Winnipeg Jets: Winnipeg in 5
  • Vancouver Canucks vs LA Kings: Kings in 5

Round 2 Eastern Conference:

  • Florida Panthers vs Toronto Maple Leafs: Leafs sweep.
  • New York Rangers vs Carolina Hurricanes: Rangers in 5.

Western Conference Final:

  • Winnipeg Jets vs Los Angeles Kings: Kings in 5.

Eastern Conference Final:

  • Toronto Maple Leafs vs New York Rangers: Toronto ties it in the last minute of game 7 to force overtime, loses on an own-goal with 3 seconds left in the first overtime period.

Stanley Cup Final:

  • New York Rangers vs Los Angeles Kings: Kings in 6.

None of this will happen. But it sure would be fun if it did.

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i turned myself to face me – from star trek: the cruise vii

When I was a larval nerd in the 1970s and early 1980s, the concept of a Multiverse, as it’s popularly known and understood today, never came across my event horizon. The closest thing for me was the Mirror Universe in Star Trek, which was literally a mirror of our own. That was a concept I could easily understand: it was its own thing, on the other side of a single doorway that separated it from the Prime Universe.

The concept of an infinite number of discrete realities, most with vanishingly small differences between them, each of them as real and unreachable as our own was probably a little much for my tiny mind, but since I read a book called Hyperspace in probably 1989 or 1990, I can’t imagine anything different.

Sometimes, I’ll think about this, and I’ll say hello to the other Wils in their own realities, just in case one of them exists in a universe where hearing me is possible.

The first time I remember encountering this in fiction was Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. It came along at the perfect time for me, and landed in that part of my Venn diagram where fantasy and science overlap.

The first time I encountered a tangible, tactile, oh-this-is-exactly-a-parallel-universe-metaphor was last week, on Star Trek: the Cruise.

I have spent a lot of time Backstage, in theaters, at theme parks, at too many performances to remember. The idea of an area that is specifically for preparing the show, that the audience doesn’t see, is not some profound Plato’s Cave revelation. But an entire ship, with its own public spaces, dining rooms, bars, personal quarters, and all the other things the crew needs to live, silently weaving itself alongside the ship that all the passengers experience for their brief voyage, was a memorable experience. I only saw about 2% of it, mostly elevators (tiny, tiny, tiny elevators oh my god so tiny and unsettling) and corridors, but I saw enough of it to remember reading Neverwhere, and whenever the cruise staff used it to get me from one place to another as quickly as possible, my imagination took off, and I had a lot of fun pretending to pop in and out of this universe.

One of the times I … TRAVELED … like this was to get from my room on the 10th deck aft to the 3rd deck forward, to a space called Studio B. That’s where we did our Crusher Family Comedy Hour, and it’s where I did Wil Wheaton is Still Just A Geek: readings from and inspired by blah blah blah.

Only I didn’t have enough time to do any readings from, so I did inspired by; three pieces, one longer than the others, that I have never done in public before. I hoped they would all fit together to tell a story, and I was scared to death the the story they told wouldn’t resonate with the audience if it did.

But I needed to trust myself, trust Anne and my friend who told me it absolutely was going to work, and take what felt like a very big emotional and creative risk.

So I did, and … I think it landed the way I hoped it would. The audience was receptive, which was not always the case at cons for me but has increasingly become the norm this century. For the rest of the cruise, lots and lots of people told me, in that way only other survivors can, that my story meant a lot to them. And every single time, I’m like, “I’m so sorry, but I’m so glad we see each other,” and they’re like, “yeah, it sucks, but we are here”, and we never do an actual secret handshake, but we also do a secret handshake we wish we didn’t know.

I use my phone to record all of my talks and readings, and then I put them with all my glasses and my shoes, so I have them. Most of them, I keep for myself, but from time to time I want to share them with an audience that’s a little bigger than what we could fit in the room.

So here’s a link to the first performance (of two) I did.

At the beginning, you’re going to barely hear my space brother, Ed Speleers, introducing me. You can’t hear the smile on my face, or the overwhelming joy and gratitude in my heart, but it was there. I had no idea he was going to introduce me, and he was just so kind and lovely and everything you hope he will be.

Then you’re going to hear me read something I titled I Turned Myself To Face Me, which I hope will be part of a larger work later this year.

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