Thread by @bitterkarella

We're rewatching some old Star Trek: The Next Generation and damn wow they really jam Wesley down your throat constantly

Picard: we're going to gamma episilon ellen tau for very delicate space negotiations
Picard: but first let's check in with wesley
Picard: wesley how do you feel about this
wesley: golly jeepers wow
Dr. Crusher: as a mother let me just say

Picard: why is this boy on my bridge
Dr. Crusher: actually wesley is so smart they hooked him up to a computer to try to teach it some things, but he had so much knowledge, it overloaded, and then it got really hot and caught on fire!
Picard: that didn't happen did it

Picard: oh no the ship is on fire
Wesley: golly jeepers captain i don't see what the big problem is, all that's happening is the rapid oxidation of a material in the exothermic chemical process of combustion
[everyone stares at wesley in pants-shitting awe of his pure genius]

[in the star trek writer's room]
Gene Roddenberry: i've been thinking and i've got some notes about the show
Roddenberry: wesley should be smarter and more infallible
Roddenberry: and whenever wesley's not on screen, all the other characters should be asking, "Where's wesley?"

Dr. Crusher: everyone better be nice to my normal teenage genius son
Dr. Crusher: sometimes my son wanders into restricted areas and gets his head stuck in the jeffries tubes
Dr. Crusher: just like a normal teenage genius

wesley: golly gee i wanna be a star fleet captain when i grow up
picard: yeah well you kinda have to
picard: seeing as that's the only job in the future
picard: unless you're a huge asshole, then you can be an ambassador

oh god now an all-knowing alien with weird hands is telling picard that wesley is super smart and picard better be nice to him haha

Diane Duane: so in this episode the crew goes to a place where all their thoughts become reality
Gene Roddenberry: can you put in a bit where an alien tells picard how smart wesley is
Duane: um
Roddenberry: wesley is the key to everything

Roddenberry [pounding table in anger]: why doesn’t the audience like Wesley?? Don’t they realize how smart he is??
Roddenberry: I’ve told them like 100 times that he’s super smart!
Roddenberry: People love weird ass-kissing volcel dorks who constantly correct everyone around them

Roddenberry: I’LL SHOW THEM ALL
Roddenberry: WHAT CHARACTER HASN’T SAID HOW SMART WESLEY IS YET?
Duane: uhhh worf?
Roddenberry: MAKE WORF SAY IT

Wesley: golly gee whiz there’s nothing I want more in the wide world than to sit on this chair on the bridge
Wesley: just a normal thing that a normal teenager would want

Now they're on one of those sex planets full of hot hippies who just love to fuck all the time and Wesley is being a huge whiny baby but Worf is talking about how he always blows out the back walls when he fucks human women

Alien sex girl: we love sex all the time
Wesley: nurrrrghhh i don't know how to have a boner, i only like science, nuuuuurrrghhhh

the sex hippies are about to execute wesley for crimes of high nerdism. this would be the perfect way for starfleet to get rid of him but no

Dr Crusher: jean luc, this alien society is going to execute my son for stepping on a flower
Picard: oh yeah thats a real shame, real shame
Picard: gotta respect their customs tho, you know
Picard: prime directive and all that
Dr Crusher: but
Picard: PRIME DIRECTIVE

Dr Crusher would spend the whole series demanding that picard look at wesley's drawings stuck on the refrigerator if she could

Dr. Crusher: I will not let these space hippies to execute my son!
picard: look i know you're upset cuz he's your son but have you considered you could do better

*several days after wesley's death*
Dr.Crusher: yeah with the benefit of hindsight you're right, wesley fuckin sucked

star trek doctors are really not very big on informed consent, Dr.Crusher's just goin around jabbin randos with hypospray like it's the knock out game

uh oh, looks like this might be a troi episode, which means it's either gonna be "wah wah my psychic powers don't work" or "wah wah my mother is visiting"

oh criminy it's a goddamn Q episode. We JUST had one like 5 episodes ago!

oh apparently Q's true form is a soap bubble with 3 cobra heads what

oh turns out it's like an aldebraon serpent or something

Q has an extremely online persona, he's always acting like he's just trolling but it's super easy to make him legit mad just by saying "no u"

Q: oh ho ho jean luc i'm a wacky funster, won't you play my merry game, you puny insignificant human
Picard: actually humans are good
Q: [sweats, forehead veins throb in fury]

Q: ah jean luc, i've devised a way for humans to prove their worth to me
picard: what again
picard: how many episodes have we done where you want humans to prove
Q: in my test, all humans now have tails

damnit, if Q is so desperate for humans to prove that their a superior species, why don't they just show him wesley? since wesley is so goddamn smart

oh god Q just magicked Wesley into the episode for no reason, probably because Gene Roddenberry was having delirium tremens after a full 20 Wesley-free minutes

i can't believe they gave Riker godlike Q powers and he wasted them on bringing Wesley back from the dead

Riker: I will demonstrate my Q powers by giving you each your deepest desires
Riker: wesley, i will make you adult
Riker: data, i will make you human
Riker: jean luc, i will give you hair

Riker: worf, i'm gonna give you a sex woman to have real klingon sex with
Klingon woman: [ruts against worf like a feral cat]
worf: yeah this is great

They're all gonna reject Riker's free gifts to make some sort of obtuse moral point, they do that constantly in Trek.

klingon woman: [biting worf's dick]
jordi: jeez you call this sex

WOW NICE KINK SHAMING JORDI JEEZ

I love when Trek characters intentionally fuck their own shit up to make some abstract moral point that no one cares about