10 Star Trek Characters Who Don't Deserve The Hate
3. Wesley Crusher
Wesley was the character it was 'cool' to hate for many years. If we were to focus strictly on season one of The Next Generation, then the haters may have a stronger leg to stand on. Wesley was the child prodigy and in being so, he often figured out the answers to riddles that the ship's officers could not.
Frankly, it made the ship look bad, rather than making Wesley look good.
The underrated second season goes far in rectifying this imbalance. Here, the chinks in Wesley's armour are introduced, such as his struggles with leading a team, or his inability to figure out romance, while still retaining the knowledge he picked up in the first season.
The character who finally dons the red uniform in the third season is almost entirely different from the jumper-wearing kid from Encounter At Farpoint. As an audience, we saw Wesley grow, even if sometimes it was a little slow for our taste. Yet grow he did, so that by the time he left the ship in Final Mission, we knew that he was ready for the Academy.
He may not be the most perfectly written character, but Wesley Crusher deserves far better than to be chucked on the scrap heap of hated souls on the Enterprise - and we want to see him back!