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

Long ago, Starfleet dedicated itself to clearing up the confusion between stalactites and stalagmites, and it's been caves ever since. Wil Wheaton's last episode as a series regular — Wesley's Final Mission before heading off to the Academy — was, then, one of the finer examples of Star Trek's speleological subgenre.

The reasons given for Wheaton's departure have varied over the years — from backlash to the character to wanting to work on other projects — but we'll let Wheaton himself explain, as he did in the fifth episode of The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek:

I [had] this terrific opportunity to go work in a feature film, and Rick Berman said 'this is a really important Wesley episode. I have personally written an extremely important scene. […] He has to pass on the film.' After I had passed on the film, […] he wrote me out of the episode completely, and I was furious. It hurt so much, and after that happened, I said to my agent 'get me out of this contract. Get me off this show. I don't wanna work for this person anymore.'

Final Mission, at least, was written expressly to avoid the way Tasha Yar went out. According to Michael Piller in Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, "There had been a lot of very bad feeling [about that]. So we were determined to give Wesley a send-off that had real value and something that stayed with us."

Of course, Final Mission wasn't the final appearance. Arguably, Wesley became a much better character once he'd passed the rite of passage of the cave. After leaving the Enterprise, his biggest mistake — Locaaarnooo! — was also his best episode.