Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)
That's another reason why I'm a little disappointed that Discovery isn't an anthology series. I think there's so many cool stories that they could tell in the Star Trek universe, up to and including "What's Wesley up to?" I think a "different era each season" story (like American Horror Story* for Star Trek) would work, or I think a complete anthology series could be really cool (like Twilight Zone* or Black Mirror*)
* Talking strictly about format.
You probably wouldn't get Avery Brooks to return as Sisko for a whole season of something, but you could get him for an episode. Same with virtually any of the other actors (Patrick Stewart might be the only guy too big for something this small, but even he might do a cameo or something). Let's check in on the TNG crew. Or the people at Deep Space Nine. How's Riker's first big command going? What's Jake Sisko doing? How'd the Voyager crew end up? What was the adjustment to the first years of the Federation like for the Enterprise crew?
Or go further. What's life like in the 26th century? 29th? 32nd?
That is why God invented all those comic books and novels that you're too good for. ;-)
**
The situation Wil Wheaton described in his autobiography was circa 2001 or so. He's doing fine now.
Wheaton, in his biography, explains that Rick Berman prevented Wheaton from exercising his option to be absent from THE NEXT GENERATION in order to do a film, telling Wheaton the film's shooting days overlapped with a Wesley-centered episode. Then the shooting days for the Wesley episode came and Wheaton had no scenes whatsoever.
Wheaton was outraged and quit. In the rush of freedom from STAR TREK, he decided to focus on acting lessons, hone his craft, refine his skills and turned down the lead role of PRIMAL FEAR which took Edward Norton to stardom while Wheaton finished his education andwent to work for a computer startup firm that collapsed.
In returning to Hollywood, he couldn't land any roles. He'd been a very cute little boy, but now he was an extremely average looking adult man and the roles he competed for went to more conventionally attractive actors. He used up his money from STAR TREK on his wedding, his stepsons and a series of legal problems caused by his wife's ex-husband. With his savings gone and not much work, Wheaton was under a mountain of debt, borrowing money from his parents and constantly terrified to lose his house. He describes an evening at Hooters where his server asked him, "Didn't you used to be an actor when you were a kid?" and the horrifying realization that he couldn't claim to be an actor now.
In his autobiography, Wheaton describes how leaving STAR TREK was the right move in that moment: a chance to grow up, move forward and not be ruled by Rick Berman's ego. He studied acting more thoroughly. He met his wife. But years later, he was out of work, financially shattered, and he fully grasped the bitter irony that STAR TREK had been driving him to depression and misery, but he was depressed and miserable now and if he'd done his seven years on the show, he could be depressed and miserable and not nearly bankrupt. In shameful desperation, he was auditioning to game shows and trying to trade in on his D-list celebrity standing to support his wife and children, barely winning a spot on THE WEAKEST LINK.
He was called to appear in NEMESIS in a single scene that would take two days to film that was cut from the movie and not even invited to the premiere. Wheaton notes that this was a long line of behaviour from Rick Berman at events where Berman would call up every TNG regular to go onstage and take a bow and be recognized -- but Wheaton would be excluded, left sitting alone in the actors' section, the only person left in that section, seated while his co-workers were onstage.
Wheaton also said, however, that he didn't handle his exit from STAR TREK well. He doesn't go into detail beyond saying he was immature, that it was hard being a child surrounded by adults, he later describes an apology he gave to Patrick Stewart without conveying precisely what it was for which he had to apologize. Wheaton says that Stewart responded simply by saying that Wheaton had been a teenager and that everyone understood. So, I assume that Wheaton was not exactly innocent, although youth excuses many misdeeds.
I'm not clear on Berman's reason for disliking Wheaton, but at one point, Wheaton exclaims that he is sorry and that he was a kid and that it hurt that the DVD set doesn't use any photos of Wesley on the box or the discs. Then, Wheaton relates how he hit a period where conventions were no longer offering him a decent speaking fee, considering him on the same level as performers who played Transporter Chief #7 and sell signed headshots. "I went there expecting to sell hundreds of autographed pictures... hardly anyone was interested. I sat in a cavernous and undecorated area. 'This is what my life has come to,' I thought. 'I am a has-been.'"
A convention organizer for a 15-year anniversary convention flat out told him that while they paid top dollar for STAR TREK captains and good money for the likes of Denise Crosby and Gates McFadden, Wheaton was worthless.
Wheaton blogged about this conversation and the organizer was beset by a deluge of emails, phone calls and faxes by angry TREK fans who were furious at a TNG-actor being treated in this fashion and the convention apologized and booked Wheaton and his comedy troupe.
Wheaton describes the tipping point of his career -- an infomercial where he would peddle 3D glasses for computer games, an infomercial Wheaton describes as the final nail in the coffin holding his aspirations to be a serious actor. Weighing it, he felt that the product was good, that his career was dead anyway, and he might as well take the money, pay off his debts, support his family and transition into writing.
This led to his career renaissance on THE GUILD, THE BIG BANG THEORY and his involvement in the GEEK AND SUNDRY media platform and eventually, Wheaton was able to step into a new career as a geek-personality and web media producer and then a voice acting career. I think, financially, Wheaton is doing fine now. However, I think his career trajectory, during the downward spiral, spoke to a failure to recognize opportunity and a lack of creativity.
I can't judge him for quitting STAR TREK (although I'm sure his accountant does and Wheaton clearly credits this decision with destroying his career), but turning down PRIMAL FEAR was really, really stupid and he says so himself. "I foolishly thought Hollywood would wait for me," he writes. After that, he spent too much time doing only auditions when what he needed to do was start making his own work.
I'm friends with lots of actors (okay, two actresses) and they are perpetually auditioning for roles they don't get. Their attitude is to write their own dream roles and make sure that even if they're tending bar and working shifts in group homes to pay their bills, they have lived out their creative ambitions in the venue of independent stage theatre. Then there's actors like Tom Welling who spent their time as actors treating the set of their show as film school so that afterwards, Tom wasn't just an actor but also a producer and director. Allison Mack was in the same position as Wheaton on SMALLVILLE and stuck it out for nine years before having a mid-life crisis that resulted in her reduced role for Season 10. Why'd she stay? She did it for the money.
In an interview with Robert Floyd, whom I still like even though he voted for Trump, Floyd spoke how of actors should save their money. "You got paid as a guest star," he recalls saying to a bartender. "Don't spend that money, don't live off that money or you will be broke, you will have nothing," advising his employee to instead treat his bar wages as his spending money and his acting wages as savings.
Wheaton says after TREK, he fell in love with the woman who became his wife, fell in love with her children, now his stepsons, and he spent everything he had from TREK and STAND BY ME to set up his new life with his new family. Getting married so young and with kids to support without a stable income was foolhardy, but while Wheaton regrets leaving TREK and rejecting PRIMAL FEAR, his marriage and stepsons are not regrets and never were, not even when he was on the verge of homelessness.
As Wheaton himself confesses, he would've been better off doing Seasons 5- 7 of STAR TREK. But he doesn't need it to help him anymore; he makes his own work now and he's not selling signed action figures to make a minimum payment and hoping DISCOVERY will cast him in order to save him from his creditors.
