Reading minds is also infinitely useful to Picard
this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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Reading minds
"I sense anger from the alien who just threatened your life, captain."
My personal theory about why she would state the obvious so much is that Betazoids have a seriously low opinion of humans' emotional intelligence. Like, "Oh, he's furrowing his brow and pounding his fist. I better hurry and explain what this means to the bridge, because these guys will never pick up on it."
I like how she sometimes knows when someone is lying and sometimes is totally unable to do that.
Also, without Deanna on the bridge, we wouldn't have the regular "Deanna gets a headache but it turns out to be an alien" episodes.
Deanna got plenty of alien shit happening to her while walking around her quarters or sleeping or in the corridors, too. Twice while she was sleeping, if you count Nemesis.
Edit: she and Lwaxanna once got beamed right out of their fucking clothes while having a picnic with Riker on Betazed!!!
She was basically a psychic assault magnet.
The writers didn’t have much imagination with what to do with women back then other than to victimize them. It did bring attention to the issue of sexual assault, which was good, but it became a trope that really diminished Troi’s character imo.
I’m sure Berman was no help.
Yeah, if you are going to have intergalactic battleships that can eradicate planets I think it is super forward thinking to have an extremely empathetic therapist sitting right next to the captain.
It is too bad Sirtis's character was never really given agency or allowed to be smart, but at least as Star Trek fans we all know who Deanna SHOULD be and can imagine how badass and effective she was at that especially with a captain like Picard who was fairly effective at getting input from his crew.
I think the most hilarious and best way to head canon Deanna is that we are watching a public record of Starfleet's flagship diplomatic starship and that it mightttt be considered a bit controversial that the captain brings a semi-telepathic advisor into almost every interaction with outside groups and individuals that aren't part of the federation and they almost NEVER openly reveal this to people they are interacting with even though that might really really really piss a lot of people off. In this head canon Picard leans on Deanna all the time for critical advice about assessing the intentions of groups and individuals and she more than Riker or Data effectively functions as the second in command on the ship. Unlike the way she is portrayed in the "public record" (the tv show) where she is frequently in high stakes meetings as eye candy but rarely gets to function as an expert advisor, in reality Deanna would quickly deduce the precise motivations and intentions of individuals in the vast majority of situations and would basically hand Picard the blueprints to what the villains of the episode were going to do.
I mean, how much deus ex machina stuff does Data do that ends up saving the day? How much of that was things Deanna figured out and Data was able to rapidly construct another method in parallel they could have figured out the truth and saved the day and implement it without highlighting that Deanna just fucking read everyone's minds.
The official starfleet record that we get to see in TNG is that she always just got headaches when bad stuff happened and was totally helpless because again people might be a little upset if Starfleet was manipulating high stakes diplomatic situations with a psychic they didn't tell the other people involved in negotiations they had.
Well, on several occasions she accompanied Picard in situations where Riker did not and effectively functioned as his diplomatic adjutant both off- and on-screen. While it wasn’t mentioned much, she had a great deal of experience as a diplomat working under Picard. It was a disservice, again, that we saw and heard so little of it. At least, when we did, she was very capable.
It was also nice to see, on the few occasions we did, in later episodes, her stepping up into some command roles when given the chance. Her crashing the ship twice, though, was dumb.
Her crashing the ship twice, though, was dumb.
Say what you will about picard season 3 being "fan service", but I loved when Deanna gets one of the bigger CGI shots in the series (and really, in terms of starship porn one of the best CGI shots in Star Trek period) to save the day by power sliding a starship.
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I always figured that a lot of interactions with other ships/civilization/etc are very stage-managed, so sometimes anger could be a show, for diplomatic/manipulation reasons. Her saying that anger is legitimate could have benefit.
I do agree that Betazoids have low opinions of humans emotional intelligence. Lwaxana playing with/abusing Picard's emotions is her way of demonstrating that.
Ahem… Chain of Command… ahem
That one episode where her empathic abilities stopped working prove your point. She was useless at her job without them. She could likely have adapted, sure, but over the course of years and with therapy designed to help her adjust. She was literally disabled and all the humans were like, "What's the problem? We live like this all the time."
Imagine if your sense of equilibrium just vanished one day and you were a professional athlete. That's a career ending disability right there. I feel like that episode would be written very differently if it was made now.
Yup, exactly. She was basically turned autistic and completely unable to read the emotions on peoples’ faces. Because she had never needed to do so before; She had always relied on her empathic abilities.
The best parallel I’ve seen is with the Elcor in Mass Effect. Natively, they communicate using subtle facial expressions, scent, implications, etc... So when communicating with other races, they outright state their emotional tones for each sentence, because other races aren’t used to dealing with Elcor subtlety. To other races, the Elcor seem downright nonemotional, because the Elcor emotions are too subtle to catch. And the reverse is also true, where the Elcor need to learn how to interact with other races, because their first reaction is that other races are hyperemotional; To an Elcor, a slight frown would basically be a declaration of war.
Deanna is basically an Elcor living among humans. She picks up on their subtleties, and has learned how to live among them. But she also has zero faith in her crew mates being able to do the same, because they never pick up on hers. So she constantly states the obvious when dealing with her crew mates, because why would she expect them to be able to read a room when they never feel her emotions?
She's also only half betazoid and is only an empath, not a telepath like her mother. She can only communicate telepathically with her imzadi, Riker. (Probably because she's atuned to him).
Sure, but so is doing something about what must be the worst case of PTSD in history. Other than the other captains.
Sorry O'Brien, your counseling appointment got rescheduled again. She'll get around to you one of these days.
Isn't work the best therapy though?
I released some cardassian voles across the station for you, here's a rat bashing stick, have at 'em!
Is Miles O'Brian actually Charlie Kelly, or is this just how we treat the Irishmen?
Yes.
Privileges of rank.
And DS9 didn't even get a counselor until Ezri.
And DS9 didn’t even get a counselor until Ezri.
Pffft, they had Kai Winn. What more do you need from a counselor, my child?
I heard that in her sickly sweet voice...
Plus access to a bar with real alcohol.
What, you don't like green?
There were probably civilian counselors though, right? I mean with that many people on the station…
Or maybe everyone just did virtual therapy like we do today 🙂
Just Morn
I just realized that can't be the reason Deanna is on the bridge, because Dr. Migleemo is also on the bridge in LD and he can't read minds. All he can do is make metaphors about food.
It also eliminates captain's discretion as a reason, because as far as I know, Captain Freeman doesn't even like Migleemo all that much.
It was such an interesting choice to put the ship's counselor on the bridge, and I really appreciate that they did it.
They never explained it outright, IIRC, but they didn’t need to. It always just felt right. Tori just fit.
Yes they did. She used her empathic powers to sense the mood of the giant tv screen and advised the captain on how to roll a 20 on Charisma challenges.
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I always saw it as a spot for another executive officer or lieutenant commander, which she fulfilled from the beginning even if she didn't make much use of the rank until a few seasons later
Which begs the other side of the question ..... what organization would place someone with so much trauma, PTSD, unresolved issues and psychological disturbances in the leadership role of a major ship that is responsible for diplomatic missions, first contact, military engagements while at the same time protecting the lives of a crew of hundreds of individuals.
It would be like having a captain of a modern aircraft carrier, who had been in the second world war, held hostage by the Japanese for months, psychologically tortured, had served in Europe and tortured by Nazis, been placed in psychotic/psychedelic testing after being kidnapped by Communist Russia ..... had his body surgically altered and had seen death and destruction to cause lifelong PTSD
It's pretty wild that they kept piling on the stress after every major life event and kept putting him in the captain's chair.
Drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.
We never hear about how the replicator can replicate lots and lots of drugs, but it clearly can replicate lots and lots of drugs.
And if you get addicted, sickbay has the cure!
Tea, earl gray, hot is vastly different from hot earl gray tea.
I'm guessing then that wasn't a regular cup of Earl Grey Tea ..... it was probably just programmed code for something else
Why do I have the feeling that the cure is more drugs?
Just use the teleporter to remove the traumatized parts of his brain. Or something. They have space magic level technology. Who's to say?
Because it's impossible to psychoanalyze an Irishman, so she steers clear of O'Brien
To be fair, his life didn't really smooth out until he moved to DS9. On the Enterprise he was just another smart guy. On DS9 he was the tech savant that couldn't take a vacation because the day after he left everything broke.
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