At the core of the show Roddenberry placed . . . three versions of Gene Roddenberry. The captain was to be nearing the end of his career and (after he was originally called “Julien”) Gene made him his phonetic namesake: Jean-Luc. The new captain would be an old sage offering advice to the up-and-coming William Riker, a clean-cut leading man—an idealized Gene Roddenberry firmly from the same mold as Lieutenant Rice, Captain Pike, and Dylan Hunt. Finally there was Wesley Crusher, a bright teenager about the same age that Roddenberry’s son was at the time—and who was given Eugene Wesley
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