Barclay
Did he have social anxiety?
share[deleted]
I love Barclay! A real, fallible, believable, hilarious dipshit, on a show where most of the characters were polished to the point of dullness.
shareAccording to the series writers he was conceived as a satiric analogue to ardent fans of the 'Star Trek' franchise. He is socially awkward, if not agoraphobic; highly technically proficient but lacking in direction, ambition, or imagination; he follows orders well enough but possesses none of the leadership qualities presented by the more insufferable members of the Enterprise crew. in short, he is you and me, or rather, how the series writers see people around them. Nice, huh? It's great to have a great job, especially when it's one YOU think is great, that makes you better, more superior than the normal, boring hoi polloi who pick up garbage or toil in factories or teach in schools. Wouldn't it be great if everybody was a Star Trek: The Next Generation writer? Meh. I always felt sorry for the Barclays and Wesley Crushers of the series, cruelly dominated by pompous, self-important, superficial, completely artificially perfect and oh-so politically correct persons as the Enterprise command crew. You could believe these uber-explorers had never passed gas at a federation banquet, shouted out of turn at someone because they lost control of themselves, or ever, EVER made even the slightest mistake in their perfectly-constructed careers ('This will be with you for a long time, Wesley...' Pompous ass. He gets his own episode where the one mistake in his life turns out to be the defining moment of his ridiculous career! What does HE know of failure, or of not being equal to a task?). Listening to Counselor Troi's blatantly obvious attempts to 'get in touch with her crew's feelings', while vying with her ex-boyfriend for the title 'Barnacle Bill of Starfleet' always set my teeth on edge. Apparently sexual prowess is a metric in determining Starfleet leadership capacity... although if you can't find a real-world f**k-buddy, there's always the holodeck. Sheesh. These people make me want to vomit. Yes, Barclay has a socialization issue, and they never let him forget it.
shareAbsolutely spot on observation.
sharePicard is pretty pompous, but it seems he should be a little more sympathetic toward other people's mistakes, since him getting into a stupid barroom brawl in his younger days resulted in a traumatic injury that bogged him down with an artificial heart for the rest of his life.
My personal hypothesis about why he was hard on Wesley is that Wesley is actually his and Beverly's secret love child from their sordid affair back in the Stargazer days, and Picard has unrealistic expectations of nothing less than perfection from his own offspring.
My personal hypothesis is Picard is a giant hypocrite, a 'Do as I say not as I do'-type, insufferably content within his little bubble of followers all-too-anxious to 'Make it so' for him, while he calls out even the slightest aberrations like a petulant schoolmaster. He learned nothing from being assimilated, though it still gives him night-terrors. He learned nothing matching wits with the Q, except a sense of priggish superiority. He learned nothing from a lifetime spent as a humble iron-weaver on a distant, dying world, except how to play a flute. Bastard. He gets his comeuppance, though, trying to rescue the Romulans from their own star system, while his precious Starfleet abandons them, and him. Which made the bigger noise, I wonder, the shattering of a world, or his own ego?
shareThat's Roddenberry's future utopia were everyone gets along in Starfleet. No money either, just infinite energy and resources.
When CBS created Picard with real-world characters and politics, the True Trekkers went nuts. "How Dare you shit on Gene!"
Somewhere out there is the series bible for Battlestar Galactica, which we should all read together. It's awesome. BSG, if I understand the series bible correctly, was born from Ron Moore's frustration with the artificial perfection of the Star Trek universe.
shareTouchy touchy!
Okay, so the writers had a little fun at the ed expense of the nerdy fans. Well everyone makes fun of nerds, especially nerds themselves.
And the rest of your rant nails why I lovd Barclay, he's the one real human being onscreen.
One of, if not the best, rant I have ever read on this site.
GO BROCCOLI...ERR BARCLAY!