Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Wesley Crusher

All artists and creators put something of themselves into their work — usually blood, sweat, tears, and RSI. You 'write what you know,' and that should really begin with knowing thyself. When it comes to the 'Mary Sue' type character, however, they are often a far more direct, idealised self-insert on the part of the author/creator. And Wesley was Gene Roddenberry's middle name. "I identify probably more so with Wesley because he is me at seventeen. He is the things I dreamed of being and doing," Roddenberry once said.

In the beginning, Wesley was Wesley (Crusher), and there are the memos to prove it. However, as detailed in The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, writer/producer Robert Justman, feeling that the problems of "boy teenagers" had been done to death, pushed to make the character female. In the very first casting call for Star Trek: The Next Generation from 10th December 1986, the description for the character formerly known as Wesley read as follows:

LESLIE CRUSHER—An appealing 15 year old Caucasian girl (need small 18 or almost 18 year old to play 15), Her remarkable mind and photographic memory make it seem not unlikely for her to become, at 15, a Starfleet acting-ensign, Otherwise, she is a normal teenager.

Roddenberry then changed Leslie back to Wesley, according to Justman, because "he felt there would be a wider range of stories available dealing with the character if he were a male instead of a female." By the time of the Writer/Director's Guide of 23rd March 1987, Wesley was definitively Wesley and 'Wes' — all "four foot ten inch[es]" of him. Later, from his mother's personnel file in Conundrum, we learnt that Wesley's middle name, with knowing nod, began with 'R'.