This has to be the ultimate Wesley Crusher episode.
He unnecessarily rats out his friends like the lamest, preachiest hall monitor, but the show's writers seem to share Picard's impression that he summoned the courage to do the right thing under pressure and at great cost. Instead of surviving with a reprimand, one of his best friends has his life destroyed for something that Wesley was complicit in.
Wesley lacks stoicism. He's unwilling to be haunted by unpleasant thoughts about himself, or to deal with painful contradictions. He's the antithesis of a character like Horatio Hornblower, who accepts solitary duty even though it causes him pain.
When I was a kid, I never understood why Wesley was universally loathed, but now that I'm revisiting this great series as an adult, I keep thinking that Wes is the last person in the world you would ever want on your team, or whom you would entrust with an important secret.
(Wil Wheaton the actor strikes me in a similar way, oddly enough: a terminally online, terminally memorizing virtue signaler who's treated as if he's genre royalty even though nobody ever particularly liked his characters or his performances. His opinions are always conventional, always blowing with the prevailing winds, but he presents his freezing cold takes as if he's speaking truth to power. It's a character defect that a lot of the TNG cast members have, to be honest. Social media is a curse, I guess.)
About this episode's big moral dilemma, I would just say: the right thing to do in a crisis is never to throw all of your close friends under the bus because you selfishly want to impress an older mentor with your decency.
He unnecessarily rats out his friends like the lamest, preachiest hall monitor, but the show's writers seem to share Picard's impression that he summoned the courage to do the right thing under pressure and at great cost. Instead of surviving with a reprimand, one of his best friends has his life destroyed for something that Wesley was complicit in.
Wesley lacks stoicism. He's unwilling to be haunted by unpleasant thoughts about himself, or to deal with painful contradictions. He's the antithesis of a character like Horatio Hornblower, who accepts solitary duty even though it causes him pain.
When I was a kid, I never understood why Wesley was universally loathed, but now that I'm revisiting this great series as an adult, I keep thinking that Wes is the last person in the world you would ever want on your team, or whom you would entrust with an important secret.
(Wil Wheaton the actor strikes me in a similar way, oddly enough: a terminally online, terminally memorizing virtue signaler who's treated as if he's genre royalty even though nobody ever particularly liked his characters or his performances. His opinions are always conventional, always blowing with the prevailing winds, but he presents his freezing cold takes as if he's speaking truth to power. It's a character defect that a lot of the TNG cast members have, to be honest. Social media is a curse, I guess.)
About this episode's big moral dilemma, I would just say: the right thing to do in a crisis is never to throw all of your close friends under the bus because you selfishly want to impress an older mentor with your decency.