“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.”
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.
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.
The writers didn’t have much imagination with what to do with women back then other than to victimize them.
To be fair, writing for a counselor bridge officer would’ve been hard mode regardless of gender. It’s not as if they had that much trouble with Yar, Crusher or Pulaski.
The year Crusher was gone was because Gates McFadden got fired from the show for advocating for her character to have more agency. Pulaski was intentionally written to be hated.
Also, Yar’s whole back story was that she grew up on a planet of roving rape gangs.
Also, Yar’s whole back story was that she grew up on a planet of roving rape gangs.
Was going to point out that this is more evidence supporting the statement of the writers not having any ideas of feminine conflicts beyond sexual assault. The last time I watched TNG, I’m pretty sure I said “what?..” out loud when she remarked on the rape gangs.
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.
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).
“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.
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She was basically a psychic assault magnet.
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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.
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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 recently rewatched the series, and the episode with Beverly and the ghost in fake-Scotland was even more cringeworthy than I remembered.
To be fair, writing for a counselor bridge officer would’ve been hard mode regardless of gender. It’s not as if they had that much trouble with Yar, Crusher or Pulaski.
The year Crusher was gone was because Gates McFadden got fired from the show for advocating for her character to have more agency. Pulaski was intentionally written to be hated.
Also, Yar’s whole back story was that she grew up on a planet of roving rape gangs.
Haha, I Cunningham’s Law’d myself.
Was going to point out that this is more evidence supporting the statement of the writers not having any ideas of feminine conflicts beyond sexual assault. The last time I watched TNG, I’m pretty sure I said “what?..” out loud when she remarked on the rape gangs.
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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.
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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).