Wil's response to the whole thing deeply, truly delighted me. That's one good guy there.

Ever since I discovered Wil's online presence and his post-acting career writings on geekdom, I've been delighted by his outlook on life in general, geekdom in particular, and Trekdom in extra-particular (just made that up. I like it!). He truly is One of Us, in every sense.

And the expression on his face in that picture is bloody priceless.

And Scalzi's an evil genius. Except that now that he's a New York Times bestselling evil genius, I expect he'll get eviler still. Bring it on.

Possibly the most heinous gift ever bestowed upon a human being.

I nearly snarfed up a lung laughing when I saw that post. Heh.

FWIW, my daughter is 12 and thinks Wesley Crusher is da bomb. I've been showing her both original Trek and TNG in the last several months, and she finds them equally rewarding in different ways.

The cheesiness of the original series, coupled with moments where the writers are genuinely trying to do something different, has its charm, and I have tried to give her perspective on what made old Trek worth coming back to week after week. (plus she laughs her head off at the whole Kirk-Spock-McCoy dynamic)

TNG, of which she has seen fewer episodes (because we have to get those from Netflix instead of snagging them off late night broadcast TV in NYC), holds up well enough in the special effects department not to feel too different from contemporary stuff she's watching. And in some ways TNG--at least some of the early episodes--is more forward-facing than some contemporary TV.

It's empowering and encouraging for my daughter to see a woman in charge of security, and women wearing uniforms with pants, non-white characters in a variety of roles, etc. In the land of tween and teen programming, it's hard to find shows that don't pigeon-hole characters by gender or race (we don't have cable, but what I've seen there is pretty limited as well).

The fact that the adult characters interact with Wesley as if his opinions matter is also important, imo, because so many times the input of young people is dismissed out of hand.

Trek is not the only place my child can learn these lessons, but it's a good counterbalance to so much of the televised entertainment that is aimed at/marketed to people her age.

In his own piece, Wil Wheaton quoted himself on TNG: "[...]the writers who couldn't figure out how to write a believable teenage character."

Well, some writers tried hard. A spec script I wrote, "The Heart of Peace", had Wesley Crusher as the main protagonist, caught in the grip of raging teenage hormones. I thought I did a good job of it. (I was still young enough in 1990 to remember pretty clearly how those days felt.)

Didn't get bought (spec scripts rarely are), but it impressed Pillar & company enough that I got in to pitch other stories, which eventually lead to "Clues" being bought. (Which script also heavily featured Wesley in the goings on. But Wheaton left the show about a month before the episode was filmed, so 15 or 20 pages of my script ended up being tossed out the window, and Joe Menosky doing the rewrite.)

I should dig that spec script out someday and put it online. Somebody kick my butt about this, okay?