O que os fãs acharam de Wesley?
Não tenho certeza sobre a reação geral dos fãs; Eu era muito jovem para Star Trek durante a corrida original da TNG, e muito pouco disso permanece facilmente acessível na Internet. Felizmente, o Google arquivou o antigo grupo Usenet alt.ensign.wesley.die .die.die 1 que tem mais de 1400 tópicos (reconhecidamente muitos, embora não a maioria, dos quais são spambots) e somente Q - sabe quantos posts, desde de outubro de 1990 para Março de 2013 . Então, isso é uma pista, de qualquer forma.
No entanto, havia definitivamente desgosto suficiente para o personagem que Wil Wheaton freqüentemente comenta sobre ele. Em uma entrevista relatada pelo TrekMovie. com , por exemplo, ele disse:
What I was hearing back in the old days were older people who were just sort of predisposed to not like a young character on a show. I think the writers could have navigated around that and made him more relatable, instead of like an idea, but they had a hard time overcoming a lot of that stuff. And when I was a kid it was very hard. It was hard not to take that personally. Kids are awkward. Kids are insecure. I spent 50 hours a week doing Star Trek when I was a kid. That was really my life. To go to conventions back then and have people criticizing me and attacking me personally instead of maybe talking about the writing, it was hurtful.
E em seu FAQ do site :
Did it bother you that the fans didn't like Wesley?
Yes, at the time, it really really did. Imagine being a teenager, trying to handle all the things a teenager has to deal with. Now multiply that times being on a HUGE TV show, and all these people hate you. It was tough.
No entanto, a reação não foi completamente negativa; Wheaton comentou que algumas pessoas, particularmente aquelas que eram crianças na época, assistiram ao programa porque de Wesley. Em um post no blog , ele escreve:
[A]s I got older and started to meet more people who were also kids when Next Generation was in its first run, I started to hear these stories from people, about how they had nothing in common with their parents except for Star Trek, and they wouldn't have watched Star Trek together if Wesley hadn't been on the show. I've lost count of the number of people I've met who are now doctors and engineers and scientists because they were inspired by Wesley and Geordi the way our parents’ generation was inspired by Scotty.
A partida de Wesley foi motivada por essa antipatia?
Improvável. Wesley não foi escrito fora do programa per se : Wheaton desistiu. Ele conta a história em seu site, e tem mais a ver com como ele foi tratado pela equipe de produção ( Eu tirei alguns dos waffling de Wheaton, no interesse da brevidade):
After something like this had happened a lot of times, this was finally the last straw: I had been cast by Milos Foreman to be in Valmont. [...] I would have had to sit out the first [TNG} episode of the year, right. That's not a big deal, it's not like I'm the fuckin' Captain, you know. At that point, I was the guy who pushed buttons and said, "Yes, sir!" So, I said to the people on Star Trek, "I need to be written out of this particular episode, because I'm going to do this movie and my film career's going to take off." [...] [T]hey said, "We can't write you out because the first episode of the season is all about you. It focuses entirely on your character and it's your story..." So, he said to me, "The story is entirely about you, we can't write you out." I said, "Well, this really sucks, but I'm under contract to you guys and if that's your call and if that's what you say I have to do, I have to do." I had to pass on the movie.
A couple of days before the season was ready to premiere, they wrote me out of the episode entirely. What they were doing was they were sending me a message. The message was, "We own you. Don't you ever try to do anything without us." That was the last straw for me. I called my agents and said, "They don't own me. It's time for me to leave this show, it's time for me to be gone." That's what really pushed me over the edge. It's not worth it anymore. That's why I left.
1 Nod para Rori nos comentários por me apontar para isso