To listen to Wil Wheaton, Wesley was doomed because the TNG writers did not know what to do with the character, in that they didn't understand how to write for a teenager. He did the best he could with horrendous material and direction.
Any teenager on the Enterprise D was pretty fucked from the start really. Given that his mother was a useless non-character appendage, outflanked by Pulaski at every turn, played by one of the worst actors I've ever encountered, poor Wesley never had a hope in hell.
Cirroc Lofton on the other hand had an extremely well portrayed and tender on screen father/son relationship with Avery Brooks, who is God. Rewatch the episodes and notice how physical their affection is, how many times Ben kisses Jake, hugs him, holds his face. It's well known how Brooks took Lofton under his wing and made him a part of his family off-screen, so everything you see between them on the show is pretty much them as they are.
This pays dividends in episodes like Emissary, Explorers, The Visitor, Rapture or The Reckoning. Or even pulp like Shattered Mirror or the Coen Brothers-style farce of In the Cards. You're seeing something that's more than acting on screen, which is a technique Brooks uses to amazing effect... witness his breakdown in Far Beyond the Stars and tell me that he was acting. There's always more going on, always more that he's set up behind the scenes. And let's not forget that it is Lofton's character who controversially says nigger on prime time telly in that episode, grounding a story that deals directly with racism when it could have strayed into typically bland Trek issues territory.
And although much of Jake's character arc is diminished as the show progressed past early Season Six, he is crucial in setting up the recurring theme of the Writer as the Hand of God, which is expanded upon through through Benny Russell and the K'ost Amojan, finally reaching its full realisation as DS9's writers themselves appear in the final episode. The show was about the writers wanting to tell whatever stories they wanted without the constraints of TNG, and through Jake they were able to write this into the text of the series itself. |
