Deanna Troi's costuming

[borgboy]

I thought Voyager had a counselor who died in the first episode. I know there was a full Betazoid bridge officer who wasn't a counselor.
The Defiant had a much smaller crew.
I remember when Troi temporarily lost her powers, Picard talked with her about most other ship's counselors not being telepathic/empathic, so I read that to mean they still did the same job without special powers.

 

[doubleohfive]

Voyager's medic was killed, but to my recollection the ship was never assigned a counselor because it wasn't going on a long-term mission. Voyager sets sail from DS9 solely to find and retrieve Chakotay's ship and rescue Tuvok. That things went awry is the thrust of the story, and not having a counselor aboard just upped the ante a little bit.

 

[borgboy]

Maybe my imagination is just filling in the blanks, but I thought at some point Janeway mentioned the counselor dying. I very probably am wrong.
I remember the original doctor and a female Vulcan nurse, and the Betazoid navigator or whatever her position on the bridge was.
You'd think they could've made a holographic counselor.

 

[Orphalesion]

and the Betazoid navigator or whatever her position on the bridge was.

Lt. Stadi . I wish she had survived! Would have been awesome to have another Betazoid character and she was very pretty.
And of course she'd likely been more interesting than Harry or Chekotay simply by virtue of not being them.

 

[Lance]

Voyager's medic was killed, but to my recollection the ship was never assigned a counselor because it wasn't going on a long-term mission. Voyager sets sail from DS9 solely to find and retrieve Chakotay's ship and rescue Tuvok. That things went awry is the thrust of the story, and not having a counselor aboard just upped the ante a little bit.

Absolutely. The fact is, Voyager wasn't intended to be on a long-term mission, Janeway and her crew were expecting to be back at DS9 before long. That's what makes their being taken so far from home all the more tragic. They aren't a large mission ship like the Galaxy or the Sovereign, and they were never intended to be away from base for too long a period at a time.

And of course she'd likely been more interesting than Harry or Chekotay simply by virtue of not being them.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I understand why Troi was in civvies for most of the series (junior officers and civilians might feel uncomfortable having to face a uniform across from them when they're lying on the therapy couch), but she looked far better in uniform than she did in any other outfit.

Even if they'd kept her in a stylised version of the duty uniform (various sleeves, collars, patterns, skants, jackets, etc) would've been better than all the jumpsuits.

 

[Lance]

^ Good point, maybe keeping something like the skant would've been a perfectly reasonable compromise between the professionalism of a uniform and the casual nature of the jumpsuits.

 

[Squiggy]

TNG in 30 seconds (if Troi could actually be Troi)

Hey lady who can ready minds. Read those guys who I'm sure won't end up being one of the worst sci-fi villans ever introduced.

There's a device on your old ship that will give you killer migraines. Somehow they're going to take over the Enterprise with it. Of course, if you Chief of Security did her job once and went through the stuff that's been under hostile alien control none of this would matter.

Gah! Damn.

Do it.

 

[Orphalesion]

^ Except that there are other media featuring telepaths that don't get their plots resolved in 30 seconds. Andromeda had Trance, the X-Men have about 10 telepaths lying around at any given time and Babylon 5 had even more than that.

The whole issue is how you utilize the powers you give the characters. Part of it is that you need to define the powers and Troi's vague, useless empathy that reached through the far reaches of space was one of the worse ways to define mental powers.

They could have aimed to portray telepathy as realistic as possible, showing that minds are chaotic and that you have to posses considerable skill to filter out the thought you are looking for. They could have limited her mind reading to people she has strong bonds with and requiring eye-to-eye contact or even touch with strangers. They could have made it so that others would feel Troi entering their minds and being able to resist, forcing her to be careful and shrewd about who she read.

Lazy/unimaginative writing is no excuse for under-utilizing or castrating a potentially very interesting character.

 

[T'Girl]

TNG in 30 seconds (if Troi could actually be Troi)

To bad Betazoid's have trouble reading Ferengi huh?



.

 

[Ghrakh]

Does mind reading come with a built-in UT?

 

[Orphalesion]

Does mind reading come with a built-in UT?

That's another good question! And actually opens up a lot of question about how minds work. We do not think in minds alone, but also in feelings, pictures.
Minds are not simple and even if one could read them doesn't mean they could process or interpret them correctly.

 

[Squiggy]

TNG in 30 seconds (if Troi could actually be Troi)

To bad Betazoid's have trouble reading Ferengi huh?



.

Yes. That's the joke.

 

[velour]

True. Then again, bear in mind that the Betazoid people are said to be very sensual (they're basically just adapted from the concepts intended for the Deltans in the aborted Phase II from the 1970s), an openness with sexual tropes is a part of their day-to-day life, which is something we see overtly in Lwaxana Troi as well. And it seems humanity in the 24th century is more broadly accepting of that kind of thing.

I certainly agree that by any reasonable standard it's not something we would consider "appropriate attire" for a counsellor in this day and age. On the other other hand, perhaps being diagnosed by somebody wearing Lieutenant Commander's pips would be incredibly intimidating to junior officers, which is probably why Deanna chooses to wear the 24th century equivalent of 'office casual' to begin with.

As I said earlier in the thread, I think her costumes would've been easier to hand-wave if she'd been established as civilian staff back at the beginning, instead of being a Starfleet officer...

I wonder if the Enterprise command ever considered that Troi's rather provocative attire might send the wrong signal.

To the crew of an alien ship, how are they to interpret the scene on the bridge of the Enterprise when they are communicating with Picard over the view screen?

By the way that Troi is dressed, they might just as well assume that she's Picard's consort rather than his counselor. It could give them the wrong idea of the kind of organization that Starfleet is and the kind of operation that Picard is running.

One of the reasons that I liked Captain Jellico was that he put Troi in her place. I don't mean that in any misogynistic way. He ordered her to wear the standard blue uniform.

It reflected professionalism and a seriousness of purpose, plus it meant she wasn't getting any special treatment (one dress code for her and one for the rest of the crew). They were in a state of tension with the Cardassians. Her usual low cut attire gave a sense that she was in a bar or lounge.

Personally, I don't mind her in the low cut. But seriously, there has to a standard of professionalism that she should uphold.

 

[Mytran]

Maybe my imagination is just filling in the blanks, but I thought at some point Janeway mentioned the counselor dying. I very probably am wrong.

You're probably thinking of this exchange from The Cloud:

JANEWAY: You're closer to the crew than I am. How bad is it?
CHAKOTAY: There's a nuanka, a period of mourning, that everyone's going through. It's a natural reaction.
JANEWAY: I'm worried about them. I wish we had a counsellor on board, but the nature of our mission didn't require one.

 

[Lance]

True. Then again, bear in mind that the Betazoid people are said to be very sensual (they're basically just adapted from the concepts intended for the Deltans in the aborted Phase II from the 1970s), an openness with sexual tropes is a part of their day-to-day life, which is something we see overtly in Lwaxana Troi as well. And it seems humanity in the 24th century is more broadly accepting of that kind of thing.

I certainly agree that by any reasonable standard it's not something we would consider "appropriate attire" for a counsellor in this day and age. On the other other hand, perhaps being diagnosed by somebody wearing Lieutenant Commander's pips would be incredibly intimidating to junior officers, which is probably why Deanna chooses to wear the 24th century equivalent of 'office casual' to begin with.

As I said earlier in the thread, I think her costumes would've been easier to hand-wave if she'd been established as civilian staff back at the beginning, instead of being a Starfleet officer...

I wonder if the Enterprise command ever considered that Troi's rather provocative attire might send the wrong signal.

To the crew of an alien ship, how are they to interpret the scene on the bridge of the Enterprise when they are communicating with Picard over the view screen?

By the way that Troi is dressed, they might just as well assume that she's Picard's consort rather than his counselor. It could give them the wrong idea of the kind of organization that Starfleet is and the kind of operation that Picard is running.

One of the reasons that I liked Captain Jellico was that he put Troi in her place. I don't mean that in any misogynistic way. He ordered her to wear the standard blue uniform.

It reflected professionalism and a seriousness of purpose, plus it meant she wasn't getting any special treatment (one dress code for her and one for the rest of the crew). They were in a state of tension with the Cardassians. Her usual low cut attire gave a sense that she was in a bar or lounge.

Personally, I don't mind her in the low cut. But seriously, there has to a standard of professionalism that she should uphold.

True. Effectively there should be a 'bridge attire' and a non-bridge attire. Troi can wear whatever jumpsuits she likes in her counselling duties around the ship, but when on the bridge she needs to look like a professional, competent member of the crew.

 

[borgboy]

Maybe my imagination is just filling in the blanks, but I thought at some point Janeway mentioned the counselor dying. I very probably am wrong.

You're probably thinking of this exchange from The Cloud:

JANEWAY: You're closer to the crew than I am. How bad is it?
CHAKOTAY: There's a nuanka, a period of mourning, that everyone's going through. It's a natural reaction.
JANEWAY: I'm worried about them. I wish we had a counsellor on board, but the nature of our mission didn't require one.

That does sound like what I was thinking of, thank you for sharing that.
I still don't understand why they didn't just make a holographic counselor if they needed one.

 

[Ithekro]

I wonder what they would have done, costume-wise, if the casting choice had not been reversed for Troi and Yar. Crosby as the counselor and Sirtis as the chief of security.

 

[Lance]

^ I don't know how different Yar might've looked played by Sirtis, but maybe Crosby as Troi would've looked more like she does in 'The Naked Now'?

 

[borgboy]

It's really hard to imagine Troi and Yar swapping roles, they have seem so well suited to the roles they played.
This thread has me paying closer attention to the civilian clothes we see on the series. I watched the Host today, Beverly wore a really lovely off the shoulder sweater that looked reasonably contemporary.