HESTON, IA - Star Trek fan Joseph Stemalk expressed extreme confusion over Wil Wheaton's cameo appearance in the franchise's latest film, Star Trek: Nemesis. Stemalk, who prides himself on knowing even the most obscure pieces of sci-fi trivia, was at a loss to explain Wheaton's presence.
Stemalk posted several extensive messages on various fan newsgroups shortly after leaving a promotion screening, complaining of the sudden reappearance of Wheaton's character, Wesley Crusher, in the wedding reception scene at the beginning of Nemesis.
"I just don't get it," said Stemalk, 27, self-proclaimed 'First Jedi Master of the United Federation of Planets,' "I'm at a complete loss to explain why Wheaton is just sitting there at the edge of the screen!"
"I know that if you look very carefully at the Enterprise when it's flying by in the opening credits, you can see Captain Picard walking by some of the windows. I even know that Robin Williams was originally supposed to appear in the episode 'A Matter Of Time,' but was unavailable when filming of the episode began," Stemalk fumed. "So why can't I explain Wheaton?"
Producer Rick Berman and Wil Wheaton himself have both revealed that, although scenes that would have explained Wesley's presence were filmed, they were cut from the final version of the film because they were not relevant to the main storyline. Wheaton's character was last seen leaving for parts unknown with the effeminate alien known as the Traveller, and was barely mentioned again.
"How could those scenes not have been important? He left Starfleet! For all we know, he left the universe and fell into some kind of black hole that reformed his molecules into some kind of space cucumber and now he's happily existing as a distant cousin of Gomtuu," continued Stemalk. "They could have made it simple by just panning the shot over a few inches to exclude Wheaton entirely, but nooo! He's sitting there smiling, and the mystery is so tantalizing! They had to make all the hardcore fans like myself get completely confused because there's no logical explanation using anything in the Star Trek universe to explain why Wheaton is there and no one is acting like he's not supposed to be."
After taking a deep breath, Stemalk elaborated on his statement. "You'd think that, after disappearing for ten years and exploring space and time, the crew would be quite interested in seeing him," he told The Daily Bull. "Even his mother seems to ignore him, and she's sitting right there beside him! No one even acts as if it's pretty cool that Wesley emerged from out of nothingness to appear at Riker and Troi's wedding."
"Why couldn't they have left his dialogue scenes in?" he asked. "It would have taken a few extra minutes of their time to save so many hours of mine."
Stemalk and his fellow Trekkies are now forced to rationalize and theorize more than they have ever done before. "This beats trying to figure out why Zefram Cochrane looks older while he's younger," said one fan.
"I keep trying to talk to Wil myself and ask him if he knows why and how Wesley got there and what he's been doing along the way, but I keep getting hung up on," Stemalk added. "The closest I got was talking to his wife after I pretended to be an agent for a big studio, but when I popped the question, I got told off instead of getting an answer."
All hope for resolution is not lost, however. With the rise in popularity of deleted scenes, Stemalk is hoping that the extra Wheaton scenes will make it to the DVD release of Nemesis and finally end the agonizing debate that he is currently engaged in with himself and his copy of the Star Trek Encyclopedia.
Some are willing go much further, though. A group of several fans, desperate to achieve a more full account of Wheaton's appearance than any deleted scene can give, is even organizing a petition to Paramount to create a new Star Trek series based on the travels of Wesley Crusher.
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