Wil Wheaton played the boy genius Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Practically every Star Trek fan has an opinion about Wesley Crusher. On the Enterprise with other intelligent officers, he saved the ship more than once, and that irked fans, especially when Wesley seemed to one-up those officers. Wil Wheaton got a lot of negative feedback from the fans about his character, and it’s a wonder he managed to stay until the series’ fourth season instead of bailing out earlier.
The negativity had an effect on Wheaton who wrote in his memoir “Still Just a Geek,” that when he was in his late teens and early twenties, he resented Star Trek because of the hard time that people gave him about Wesley. [via Screenrant] He didn’t feel it was fair that people who’d never met him were so cruel and hateful to him as a person. They couldn’t seem to separate him from the character he played on Star Trek. And that led to Wheaton wanting to put Star Trek behind him and forget it was a part of his life.
Unfortunately, Wil Wheaton was not alone in his troubles with fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation
Diana Muldaur who took over Gates McFadden’s position as the Chief Medical Officer aboard the Enterprise for the second season of The Next Generation didn’t generate much fan love, either. In later interviews, though, the actress didn’t blame herself for the issues even though her character wasn’t brought back for the following season.
The problem with the characters wasn’t necessarily the actors who played them but the writers who wrote for those characters. But that didn’t change who fans targeted. Fortunately, Wheaton recovered from his earlier resentment and is still among the Star Trek family, hosting The Ready Room and even making a guest appearance on Star Trek: Picard as his former disliked character, Wesley Crusher.