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World War Wesley

© Ellen Ross

The first thing you hear is, "This is not about Alexis Denisof. I'm sure that he's a perfectly nice guy, and he is certainly not responsible for anything that happened." Then, with that disclaimer duly out of the way, it follows:

The Wesley war.

Does anyone remember the intense fan hostility toward Wesley Crusher, the universe-saved-weekly boy wonder on "Star Trek: The Next Generation"? In the early days of the 'net, back when most online fan communication was through newsgroups, behold, there sprang up newsgroups with names such as "alt.ensign.wesley.die.die" and "alt.wesley.crusher.die.die" and the fans competed to create elaborate fictional scenarios to rid themselves of pesky young Wesley forever. After years of fan clamor, Wesley Crusher finally skipped out of the series to travel through alternate realities.

When Joss Whedon called Alexis Denisof at the end of his summer holiday to let him know that his "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" character, the ex-Watcher Wesley, would be a new regular on "Angel," he may not have remembered to suggest an investment in a hard hat and body armor (since 24th century force-field technology remains sadly unavailable as yet).

One wonders if the actor had fair warning of the hornet's nest that his hapless character, now a would-be "rogue demon hunter," was about to enter.

And I don't mean on the show. http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor...

After the character of Doyle was killed off in the episode "Hero," the following episode, "Parting Gifts," re-introduced viewers to Denisof's Wesley, the character who had previously tried and failed to replace Rupert Giles as Buffy's Watcher on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." By the next episode after that, Alexis Denisof had taken Glenn Quinn's place in the opening credits.

If Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt were setting up the character of Wesley as a lightning rod for all the fan anger and resentment at Doyle's death, they succeeded. Fans who might have been writing their weekly letters to Whedon and Greenwalt have been distracted by an irresistible new passion: bashing Wesley!

The fan controversy over Wesley has become so personal that it has driven fans off mailing lists and forced websites to close down. But is the firestorm really about Wesley at all? Or is it primarily a reaction to the way the character was introduced, emerging from the shadows in the episode after Doyle's heroic death?

As one fan put it: "There was some sniping

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