Board Thread:False Info and Speculative Discussion/@comment-25123326-20140708033021/@comment-19765459-20140711214613

Why do you keep going back to TOS? The show itself, overall, was unquestionably the victim of heavy executive meddling. Which is why it only survived three seasons. However, there was significant tweaking of the characters themselves, which would prove important to the franchise when they took it to the big screen years later. Don't pretend that the epic franchise that Trek grew into was the sole result of an imaginary master plan by Gene to outsmart the studios and the audience in order to get his singular vision onto screens small and large without alteration, because that is pure fantasy.

And yes, Wesley was Gene's personal avatar. He was not especially hesitant to admit it. It was known, even then, that you didn't really need a kid audience surrogate on a science fiction program, since even young audiences tend to see a lone kid crammed in with a bunch of adults as a misfit. Producers kept trying it from time to time (e.g. SeaQuest) but it usually proves to be futile. Data may also have been a pet, but he was meant to fill the role of Spock alongside Riker as Kirk's expy (which became glaringly obvious in S2 when the debacle with Gates McFadden led to them bringing in Dr. Pulaski as an expy of Bones, only to screw it up royally).