Star Trek’s Wil Wheaton has a book about his past out now, and with its arrival came some reminders for fans about how rough his early years were. While Wheaton shared some unpleasant times during his run in the franchise due to vengeful tech writers and a meeting with William Shatner, he recently shared a story that proved things weren’t all bad back then.
Wil Wheaton appeared at Star Trek: Mission Chicago to talk about his time on The Next Generation (streaming now with a Paramount+ subscription) and field questions from the audience about himself and his book Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Memoir. One fan asked who among the cast told the best jokes, and Wheaton took no time at all to think before telling a hilarious story about a joke from Brent Spiner that got him in trouble while filming.
One that I can clearly remember is from Brent Spiner. Brent always made me laugh. He was–to this day remains one of the funniest people I know. He is absolutely the funniest part of our cast and we were at our stations one day and he says [to me], ‘Patrick is asking about the sauce,’ and I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘I don’t know, he wants to know something about the sauce.’ They roll the cameras and Patrick [in character] is like, ‘Well, consider the source,’ but you know he’s got that great Patrick Stewart voice and I hear him say ‘Consider the sauce.’ Of course, I explode into laughter. I get in trouble and Brent sits there like he had nothing to do with it. Those things happened a lot it was really great.
In a news cycle where stories about the trauma Wil Wheaton endured while filming Stand By Me are frequently mentioned, it’s nice to hear a story about a more positive time in his career. That is to say, it’s good that Wil Wheaton had people like Brent Spiner and the rest of the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation during his rise in Hollywood to laugh with during those hard times, and that there was some levity between hard moments.
The story makes me wish that Star Trek: Picard Season 3 included Wil Wheaton amongst its cast of returning stars from The Next Generation, but so far, he’s not involved. With that said, Wheaton already works with Paramount+ on the weekly aftershow for the franchise, The Ready Room, so it stands to reason he could’ve appeared on set for a cameo during filming and news of it wouldn’t have leaked out to the public.
We’ll just have to wait and see, and I’ll also cross my fingers that if he returns, we’ll see Wheaton’s Wesley cross paths with whatever character is lined up for Brent Spiner (who apparently doesn’t want Data back) to play next.
Star Trek fans can catch Wil Wheaton as Wesley Crusher in The Next Generation, which streams on Paramount+. With so many new Star Trek shows arriving in 2022, it’s hard to make an argument against subscribing to the service if you’re a fan of the franchise, so make sure to get in on the fun.
