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Do you think Barclay and Troi had sex when they went on a date at the end of "The Nth Degree"?

No, The date never happened. . He had to go to sickbay when the guy who lost the chess match because of him involving himself in someones game without asking got upset and caused a fight. Once again the show ends just when some more good stuff is about to happen in the episode.


Jason
 
I feel sexually liberated means something different, it doesn't mean you sleep with anyone at any time, but rather you don't feel social pressure one way or another. Like a woman wouldn't be considered a slut if she has multiple sexual partners, and a man conversely also wouldn't be denigrated for being sexually inactive/a virgin, etc? If you say it's rude to not have sex, well that really isn't sexual liberty at all is it?
 
And as we've seen, Starfleet has no regulations against fraternization - crewmembers are free to date, and even marry, whoever they want, regardless of rank, as long as it's consensual for all involved.

We aren't talking here about Starfleet's rules about fraternisation between officers per se, but about her duty of care towards a patient and sense of professional responsibility. She is a clinician and as such there are certain line one is not supposed to cross regardless of any other professional relationship.

Given this, I see every reason to trust that Deanna would be perfectly capable of keeping her professional and romantic lives separate. Obviously she would never use an active counseling session as an excuse to get someone into bed, but if she happened to 'click' with a fellow crewmember while striking up a conversation in Ten-Forward and they started dating as a result, I don't see any problem with that.

And if, in the subsequent course of her duties, she had to counsel a person she was already in a relationship with? She could make that work as well.

No, sleeping with someone to whom you are a counsellor or therapist is fundamentally a violation of the relationship between therapist and patient, regardless of which came first. Of course all of this is moot when we consider the fact we have seen her in sexual relationships with at least two other crewmembers, which is hard to explain unless we postulate there are other counselors on board or they opt out of access to her services.
 
This isn't how sexual enlightenment works....

I think that would be Gene Roddenberry's idea of sexual enlightenment. Granted I think Butters was going more for a joke with his response. The punchline being that sex is so casual in the future that it can be boiled down to basically being another form of good or bad manners.

Jason
 
Well @Spot261 I feel sometimes we're looking too much from our perspective, like today when a man has sex with a woman he often thinks he now owns her? I feel they'd view things differently, if I'm making sense? I just don't feel they'd really have such rigid limits on peoples' freedoms in the Federation unless he or she was no longer able to perform her duties? From episodes like Realm of Fear I still just don't get any vibe Reg and Deanna were ever sexual partners, lol.

@Jayson1 well he sort of stole that joke from Rob Lowe's race from the Orville? :)
 
I think that would be Gene Roddenberry's idea of sexual enlightenment. Granted I think Butters was going more for a joke with his response. The punchline being that sex is so casual in the future that it can be boiled down to basically being another form of good or bad manners.

Jason

Yes, Roddenberry's idea did find expression in the TNG episode "Justice."
chakoteya.net said:
LAFORGE: They're wild in some ways, actually puritanical in others. Neat as pins, ultra-lawful, and make love at the drop of a hat.
TASHA: Any hat.
Depicting actual human society this way would have been too much for mainstream 1980s viewers, so it had to be presented in the context of an alien culture.

Kor
 
Well @Spot261 I feel sometimes we're looking too much from our perspective, like today when a man has sex with a woman he often thinks he now owns her? I feel they'd view things differently, if I'm making sense? I just don't feel they'd really have such rigid limits on peoples' freedoms in the Federation unless he or she was no longer able to perform her duties? From episodes like Realm of Fear I still just don't get any vibe Reg and Deanna were ever sexual partners, lol.

@Jayson1 well he sort of stole that joke from Rob Lowe's race from the Orville? :)

I get that, but we aren't just talking about a man and a woman, we are talking about a man and a woman in a therapeutic relationship.

The difference here works in two directions, on the one hand there is a power imbalance between the two that would always bring the notion of informed and free consent into question. There are reasons why we see it as an abuse in our own times and there is no reason to suspect that mentality would change as a result of sexual enlightenment. On the contrary that enlightenment (one would hope) would be more in line with that seen endorsed by #metoo, where freedom is characterised as much by the right to say no as the right to say yes and the dangers of inappropriate and misused power relationships is highlighted, not brushed aside as an impediment to gratification.

On the other hand she has a duty of care to her patients and her therapy hinges on her own detachment and objectivity. Counselling works precisely because of that emotional detachment, the clinicians freedom from involvement and the trust that engenders in the patient. sleeping with that patient is not only a violation of their trust but also amongst the most damaging forms of emotional compromise to that objectivity and thus the therapeutic relationship
 
Oh I feel I agree with you, I might just not have been making sense? You are so totally right about enlightenment means you have the right to say no, that's why I disagreed very strongly with the whole thing about saying it's rude not to have sex, like wow! I mean holy wow that's scary, I think we've got a problem today with so many men having that attitude right? I don't think Deanna is really a psychiatrist like we think of (she's not called Dr Troi right?), I feel her duties are sort of more informal most of the time, but I do agree her therapy relationship would totally change if she and Reg were intimate, why I was mentioning Realm of Fear which was later right?
 
I don't really see it as a power imbalance because Troi outranks Barclay and even that doesn't matter much because they are in different departments. They are more collegues than boss/employee. The issue I would see is that Troi would loose her objectivity in helping him with his issues. Of course we are talking about humans who are more evolved so it can be said that any of those concerns might no longer be valid to 24th century humans. I also assume that if they ever did become a couple Troi could simply have him see another Counselor on board, assuming their is one. Strange that the ship seems to only had one counselor.

Jason
 
My ‘Rude not to’ comment was a reference to an episode of a classic sci fi comedy, one I was reasonably confident that everyone attending a site such as this would have seen and got.
 
This isn't how sexual enlightenment works....
If Reg bought Deanna dinner, that means she has to sexually put out?

I never picked up on any attraction on Deanna's part towards Reg. although it's obvious Reg is attracted to Deanna. I'd don't think Reg's attraction is romantic, there's a sexual component, and also the simple fact that Deanna has conversations with him.

Reg probably doesn't talk to women much outside of talking shop, and brief conversing with waitresses and other professionals. He is likely seen as a nice sort of fellow, but that's it.

I don't think Deanna would have sex with Reg based solely on she generally likes him, and he has a penis.
 
The punchline being that sex is so casual in the future that it can be boiled down to basically being another form of good or bad manners.

A society where it's considered bad manners to refuse sex? Do you have any idea how horrifying that is? :wtf:

an episode of a classic sci fi comedy, one I was reasonably confident that everyone attending a site such as this would have seen and got.

Which episode? And which comedy?
 
Maybe Riker had to officially renounce her as his counselor so that there would be no more "doctor/patient" type of arrangement when they decided to pursue their romance for real. I certainly wouldn't want my spouse to be my therapist!

Kor
I don't know if she was ever his actual counsellor.
 
A society where it's considered bad manners to refuse sex? Do you have any idea how horrifying that is? :wtf:

Like most sex fantasies , the fantasy usually doesn't hold up to real life realities. For starters everyone would have had to basically come to some kind of agreement that this is a casual kind of thing. It would make sex actually boring like a mundane choir. Constant unwanted child births. You would always need to be in the mood and you would have to do it all the time during the day. When would anyone have time to get anything done? You never know if your going to be having sex with someone your attractive to or someone who is even your sexual orientation which means you would need to create yet more established manners to address the flaws in the first set of manners. Which means everyone would in society would have learn a a almost endless number of sexual manners which nobody would ever want to do.


Jason
 
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