Destiny Trilogy (Spoilers)

[Mr Silver]

Nice, calling a woman going through severe emotional trauma a pain.

What?! Does know one not understand my reason for this? Ok heres the thing. Troi is a councellor. Her entire career revolves around helping people manage their emotions. Does it not seem seriously out of character to spend a good chunk of the story going through some severe emotional crisis?

Also we have to look at her as an empath, she could easily sense the doctor's intentions through his emotions and this would have saved several chapters (which admittedly I skimmed through because it bored me) of delay tactics.

As for what you said Mage. I really don't get why you are bringing the fact that she is a woman into it, are you saying that women have a right to be overly emotional more than say, a man? I would have said the same about any character, reagardless of gender if they were behaving like Troi. For instance, I disliked how Picard was having an emotional crisis too, but I wasn't irritated as much by that as I was with Troi and the sheer amount of story dedicated to it.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I'm still wondering how the Borg could have arisen in the MU, given the fact that characters from the 24th century Starfleet could not have been involved - there IS no Imperial Starfleet anymore by that time. But I guess that any of the other fanfic theories about the origin of the Borg (such as the one in SNW) could have applied.

Then again, the MU Borg aren't exactly the same - they travel in diamonds, they have a King, and seem to be more vicious. So I guess anything's possible.

 

[David cgc]

The 24th Century Starfleet didn't have anything to do with the Borg origin. It was all 22nd century Starfleet's fault, and Mirror-Hernandez and the Mirror-Columbia could've gotten up to all sorts of mischief with the Mirror-Caeliar.

 

[Christopher]

What?! Does know one not understand my reason for this? Ok heres the thing. Troi is a councellor. Her entire career revolves around helping people manage their emotions. Does it not seem seriously out of character to spend a good chunk of the story going through some severe emotional crisis?

It's not just "some" crisis. She suffered a miscarriage. HER BABY DIED. That's a profoundly traumatic and wrenching experience for anyone to go through. It's hard to imagine anything worse. And she was being told that she was going to have to go through it again. How can you not understand how incredibly devastating that would be for anyone, regardless of their professional career? What could be worse for any parent than losing their baby, except losing their baby twice?

As for what you said Mage. I really don't get why you are bringing the fact that she is a woman into it, are you saying that women have a right to be overly emotional more than say, a man?

I think Mage is saying that only a woman can carry a child, and thus only a woman can experience the horrible tragedy of having her baby die inside her own body. Surely it would devastate the father as well, but for the mother it's going to be even more intimately horrible.

 

[Mr Silver]

It's not just "some" crisis. She suffered a miscarriage. HER BABY DIED. That's a profoundly traumatic and wrenching experience for anyone to go through. It's hard to imagine anything worse. And she was being told that she was going to have to go through it again. How can you not understand how incredibly devastating that would be for anyone, regardless of their professional career? What could be worse for any parent than losing their baby, except losing their baby twice?

I am fully aware that she suffered a miscarriage and I know how much of a traumatic experience that can be, especially for those who experience multiple miscarriages (which is horrible for anyone to go through)

But thats not the point i'm making here. Troi has a responsibility as a starfleet officer, she cannot be emotionally compromised in any way during a mission, otherwise she shouldn't be on duty. There have been numerous tragic events throughout Trek where personnel have had to put their personal feelings aside and get on with their duty (as La Forge said to Sonya Gomez in Q-Who, "We'll grieve later"). I felt this was really out of character. I understand that incorporating elements of real life into any dramatic works is how a writer helps the audience identify with the characters. But in this case, I felt it went against what had already been established in Star Trek.

 

[Christopher]

But thats not the point i'm making here. Troi has a responsibility as a starfleet officer, she cannot be emotionally compromised in any way during a mission, otherwise she shouldn't be on duty.

Ideally, yes. But if fictional characters were just robots who could turn their emotions on and off by an exertion of will, they wouldn't be very interesting (Data in First Contact notwithstanding). As for whether she should've been on duty, maybe she shouldn't have been, but maybe Riker was too reluctant to pull rank, or maybe she did a good enough job of hiding it. By the time things really got out of hand, she was already on New Erigol and being on or off duty was a moot question.

I felt this was really out of character.

Put people in extreme situations and it can change the way they behave in unexpected ways. Sometimes people really are out of character. That phrase just means "acting in a way that's very different from normal." If such anomalous behavior occurs for no reason, that's a failure of writing. But if it's clearly brought on by an extreme situation, that's a different matter.

 

[Mr Silver]

Ok the point of this topic was not to argue gender differences. Its been purely about the characters.

The way you see it, doesn't have to be the way I see it. This is what someone having an opinion is all about. My opinion on this, Christopher is what I stated in my previous posts. I accept that the characters in Star Trek aren't robots, but in a dramatic sense, what I see of Troi in the Destiny series, goes against what Marina Sirtis established of the character in TNG and its subsequent films.

Part of trek literacy, when it involves already established characters seen on screen for me is about continunity from the aforementioned established elements. There have been numerous traumatic experiences befallen upon Troi in TNG and she has always braved them without getting too emotional and if necessary dealing with them later when there isn't much of a crisis going on. I accept that even the toughest of characters have their breaking points but it felt as if Troi had already had her breaking point and was now just regressing for the sake of adding an emotional subplot to the story.

As for being on or off duty on New Erignol not mattering. I beg to differ, clearly it matters that as starfleet officers it is their responsibility to survive and reach a compromise with their captors? And in Troi's case, Dr Ra resorted to extreme measures to ensure her survival, she ignored her responsibilities as the ranking officer and therefore she should have been relieved of duty and the next person in the chain of command should have ordered Dr Ra to do his thing, rather than waste time on the moral implications. This is what got to me, not because this is how I view real life, but because this is what is seen as the norm in trek and therefore this part of Destiny wasn't very "trek" for me.

 

[Sci]

Ok the point of this topic was not to argue gender differences. Its been purely about the characters.

You can't separate the characters from sex differences. It's inherent to who they are.

The way you see it, doesn't have to be the way I see it. This is what someone having an opinion is all about. My opinion on this, Christopher is what I stated in my previous posts. I accept that the characters in Star Trek aren't robots, but in a dramatic sense, what I see of Troi in the Destiny series, goes against what Marina Sirtis established of the character in TNG and its subsequent films.

I don't see that. Further, you seem to have been arguing that a counselor should somehow never experience an emotional crisis -- which is an absurd argument. It's the equivalent of saying that a doctor should never have an infection or that a surgeon should never have a broken bone. And it also ignores the reality that an emotional crisis is not inherently a sign of mental illness or dysfunction, but can, in fact, be a sign that the mind is responding properly to trauma.

As for being on or off duty on New Erignol not mattering. I beg to differ, clearly it matters that as starfleet officers it is their responsibility to survive and reach a compromise with their captors?

What he meant by that was that by the time she was on New Erigol, it was impossible to just take her "off duty." They were now in a crisis and had no way to take her "off duty" or control her, and they required everyone's participation to resolve the crisis.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The 24th Century Starfleet didn't have anything to do with the Borg origin. It was all 22nd century Starfleet's fault, and Mirror-Hernandez and the Mirror-Columbia could've gotten up to all sorts of mischief with the Mirror-Caeliar.

But the whole Destiny arc did definitely involve 24th century characters.

 

[David cgc]

The 24th Century Starfleet didn't have anything to do with the Borg origin. It was all 22nd century Starfleet's fault, and Mirror-Hernandez and the Mirror-Columbia could've gotten up to all sorts of mischief with the Mirror-Caeliar.

But the whole Destiny arc did definitely involve 24th century characters.

So? You weren't talking about the whole arc, just the parts that involved the rise of the Borg, and those could've happened in substantially the same way. Sure, the resolution couldn't be nearly as analogous in the Mirror Universe, leaving them in a situation where they made the Borg but don't have many ways to unmake them. Sucks to be them.

There have been numerous traumatic experiences befallen upon Troi in TNG and she has always braved them without getting too emotional and if necessary dealing with them later when there isn't much of a crisis going on.

"Always?" Didn't Troi once have a breakdown just because she couldn't read minds for a while, and thus couldn't do her job, because it's absolutely impossible to be a non-telepathic therapist?

 

[Christopher]

There have been numerous traumatic experiences befallen upon Troi in TNG and she has always braved them without getting too emotional and if necessary dealing with them later when there isn't much of a crisis going on. I accept that even the toughest of characters have their breaking points but it felt as if Troi had already had her breaking point and was now just regressing for the sake of adding an emotional subplot to the story.

I don't think anything could be a valid precedent for having to suffer a miscarriage and then be faced with the inevitability of another. She's never been through anything comparable, so all bets are off.

Besides, although fictional characters tend to be exempt from this, if we look at it realistically, the more traumas a person has endured, the more emotionally fragile they'll probably be as a result. Someone who's "braved" multiple harrowing ordeals in the past will still have been traumatized by them, which takes its cumulative toll, so the next ordeal might be too much for them. It's not always valid to predict people's future behavior by their past behavior.

 

[Thestral]

"Always?" Didn't Troi once have a breakdown just because she couldn't read minds for a while, and thus couldn't do her job, because it's absolutely impossible to be a non-telepathic therapist?

I was gonna bring this one up actually. Troi in Destiny seemed pretty in line with her characterization elsewhere, and especially in "The Loss."

 

[rfmcdpei]

Nice, calling a woman going through severe emotional trauma a pain.

What?! Does know one not understand my reason for this? Ok heres the thing. Troi is a councellor. Her entire career revolves around helping people manage their emotions. Does it not seem seriously out of character to spend a good chunk of the story going through some severe emotional crisis?

As other people here have said, Troi was having a horrible time of it, first recovering from the aftermath of one miscarriage, and then, just when things seemed to be going better, being told that she would be going through another miscarriage. Including Ian from "The Gift", this would be Troi's third dead child. Let me repeat, and italicized: her third dead child.

And on top of all this, learning that the damage inadvertently caused her by her beloved Ian meant that she would have to forego motherhood altogether (well, biological motherhood)?

Me, I was surprised that Troi was as functional and rational as she was, not especially caring whether she lived or died as she told her alarmed Tellarite colleague. I don't think that Trek literature could get away with depicting a key character from the television series as being actively suicidal, but that wouldn't have surprised me, either.

Troi's story worked with me because it was one of several stories that fit with Destiny's trajectory of things being saved, of hope and the future returning to life despite impending catastrophe. Troi's despair was no more out of place, or unexpected, or unjustified, than Picard's.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Heres one more thing arguing against the extermination of the Borg. Why did the Borg bother going back in time to stop First Contact? We could argue that by assimilating the Human's in the past would make sure the Borg existed anyway, but if the Colombia crew weren't around, then how would the Borg collective have been formed? Theres a mindfuck that I'd like to see Christopher try to explain!

Had they completed it, they might well also have undone themselves in addition to creating a parallel reality or who knows what.

 

[rfmcdpei]

"Always?" Didn't Troi once have a breakdown just because she couldn't read minds for a while, and thus couldn't do her job, because it's absolutely impossible to be a non-telepathic therapist?

I was gonna bring this one up actually. Troi in Destiny seemed pretty in line with her characterization elsewhere, and especially in "The Loss."

And I think that her characterization in "The Loss" made sense. How would any one of us react to being blinded, or losing our sense of touch, or taste, even?

 

[David cgc]

And I think that her characterization in "The Loss" made sense. How would any one of us react to being blinded, or losing our sense of touch, or taste, even?

I'd probably be only a bit less traumatized than I would be from a miscarriage.

My point wasn't that Troi was a whiner, it was that she wasn't some kind of stoic super-shrink who was unaffected by the troubles that beset mere mortals.

 

[Christopher]

Right. Who counsels the counselor? It doesn't follow that just because someone is a professional therapist trained in helping other people with their emotional problems, she must therefore be able to deal with her own problems effortlessly. Especially in fiction. Heck, the brilliant professional who helps other people solve their problems but is ironically unable to cope with his/her own problems is a popular trope in fiction, from psychiatrists like Frasier and Niles Crane to mediators like Sarah Shahi's Fairly Legal character.