How does one respect Deanna Troi after watching S4: E10 “The Loss”?

Straight from the beginning I noticed that her telepathy with the only thing keeping her from being entirely useless. As a counselor she appears to have only a (at best) superficial knowledge of psychiatry and for an empath she isn’t very empathetic for there are plenty of times she completely fails to understand basic human emotion and action. Plenty of times her moral grandstanding seems to obscure any cognitive function she has. And then along comes the episode “The Loss” where she loses her powers causing her to have a mental breakdown showing us exactly who she really is. Her entire self-worth revolves around her (limited) telepathic ability and she sees humans without it as lesser beings. The episode reveals that she’s bigoted, has no introspection what so ever and overly relies on her ability to the point where she felt unable to perform her duties as a counselor, which doesn’t require telepathy… Personally I’d prefer a psychiatrist that couldn’t read my emotions just to inform me that I needed to figure it out on my own. Seriously though, most of the time she just points out the obvious! “Hmm… that mean looking alien over there with the battle axe wants to behead you.” Thanks Doc!

 

Therapists are always the worst patients. Except for doctors. And after Samaritan Snare, I'd put ship captains prominently on the list as well.

 

If a musician lost their hearing, I might have more respect for those with a strong mental fortitude to immediately accept the new reality and push forward, but I wouldn't lose all respect for someone who has a bit of a nutty while beginning to deal with their trauma and adjust to the new reality of no longer having what you likely considered your most important sense for understanding and entering the world.

Wouldn't we let a war amputee have a little time to adjust psychologically before we label them an unrespectable failure?

 

Technically you’re not wrong but my respect for her as a character had already been stretched thin, this episode just happened to be a breaking point. Her behavior left much to be desired from a ships counselor. What she lost isn’t akin to losing a limb, ironically I would say she lost everything and nothing. Everything because of her character flaws major entirely dependent on her telepathy, and nothing because let’s face it being able to read others emotions is much more impressive than being able to literally sense them. In fact I’m quite astounded that she even managed to get the position as ships counselor, I presume it wasn’t through meritocracy that’s for sure.

 

Counselors take a beating in Trek in general. Look at DS9's... they went without for 6 years, then brought one in who was more neurotic than her patients.

Fortunately, Enterprise has a very capable counselor onboard, even if she does wear a hat that you could land a shuttlecraft on.

 

It's been many years since I watched this one, maybe I still remember something about this one....?
Deanna suffered something that is a huge loss for her. Suddenly she was back in her office with clients. How about trying to cope with the new situation for some time or more likely for a long time.
I've been looking at this episode from my own perspective sometimes. I got diagnosed with MS over a decade ago and it took a long time to accept it or more like learning how to live with it. Obviously it can't be directly compared to what happened to Deanna but it was a huge change. Big changes take time to handle and one shouldn't judge someone right after something bad has happened. If Deanna didn't get her emphatic abilities back at all the audience should wait for a long time before making up their minds if they like how she is behaving. I didn't like how she handles herself and behaves in this episode but it was a new thing for her. Could any of us be unaffected if something completely life changing happened?

 

It ironically had value in "Encounter of Farpoint", where only she could pick up on things that no human there possibly could begin to do. However, 178 episodes of faceless space mushrooms and galactic squids with tentacles made from a disused cat toy with all those frayed strand edges would get repetitive way too fast.

On the flip side, having her teach to Picard in every episode how it's a miracle species can communicate as she asks him to describe what the mug of steamy piping hot brown liquid tea may or may not have been ("Ensigns of Command") isn't much better, but the occasional use is great. I'd have to see "Loud as a Whisper" again, I think she had a decent moment in that one...?

Then you have these goofy middle ones where she loses her powers or wakes up as a Romulan and never manages to stumble or have the universal translator recognized...

Then the "it's obvious, captain" shtick, the ever-used crutch when it wasn't the Troi-centric episode of the season.

Troi's based on an interesting idea, popular for the era, rarely used well, often misused, and without enough knowledge in other areas as a backup.

Then she is stuck in an episode sitting awkwardly on a blue chair with a blue drape in front of her and having to say the react to the same silly line over and over. Oh wait, wrong episode-- she's now the antithesis of Tam Elbron, because if he was interesting than doing the opposite condition into Troi for a very special one-off episode is going to be a dozen times better... or not.

Maybe it's brave to re-frame Troi as the "layperson" trope, how we the audience would feel if it happened to us.

It was worse, since I got the impression that Guinan ended up being "what Troi would have been". So now they're stuck with Troi doing the same things they never quite figured out how to make consistent use of, never mind the few times they were onto something they were generally in episodes deemed "average" or otherwise "not well-received". Tea cup scene aside, it never got any better.

Even worse, when she and her mom were kidnapped by Ferengi, even her mom knew how to turn a basic green bedsheet into a well-tailored dress, but Troi still had the frumpy blanket on until they allowed her to put that puce puke-hued garment back on.

It seemed an easy way for writers to shore up a script on time, if nothing else.

She became the TNG equivalent of Arnold Rimmer, I'd guess? TBH, it's bold to show someone being so continually perfect to have a big stumble. Yeah, it was a trope and by the end all would be perfect again. At the time, it was more daring. But was it successful?

"Lesser" because nobody else had the empathic ability?

It is said that when one sense is lost, others make up for it. Is Troi really showing "true colors" or is the RGB wheel now showing a brighter GB because R vanished?

Could a possible plot point be in how others respond as much as the one who lost theirs is reacting?

Dare I say it - is this episode worth a rewatch, not because it's been forever but because there may be a spark of an idea that should have been explored but didn't?

That's an entertainingly creative way to put it.

But Troi did get the short shrift as characterization goes and it's all down to the scripts dropping the ball.

 

It's funner to write about Jimmy Olsen than Superman, I suspect. Giving a regular character on a show this tremendous advantage either makes her too useful and therefore puts a tidy bow on what would otherwise be complicated plot, or else she just becomes part of the scenery. An argument could be made Data was in the same situation, but with Data at least they could dither on how strong he was, how fast he was, and not deal with things like why does he have to type on a console.

And I'm not sure anyone could drag me to a therapist that could read my emotions. To hell with building THAT trust relationship.

 

In "The Loss", they were trying to have her go through the whole grieving process: denial (go back to work like nothing happened), anger (explode at everyone), bargaining ("Beverly, you have to do something"). But you don't go through that process, not properly anyway, in an hour of television.

Later on, when she has calmed down, she makes more sensible decisions, especially regarding her career. I don't think she would have been wise to stay on as ship's counselor, had her loss of her powers been permanent: as she said, the skills human counselors use (that Deanna didn't need until then) take years of work to develop. But at least she examines her situation objectively.

 

Her knowledge of psychology is pathetic.
I get the feeling that the writers had no idea what a counselor actually does.
You think ST would have...I don't know...maybe run some ideas by someone who actually knows a little bit about psychology...

 

The best kind of not wrong.

 

I have fine.

 

How does one respect Deanna Troi after watching S4: E10 “The Loss”?

Easily. She worked past her own issues, and provided the needed insight to save the ship.

 

I thought it just goes to show, for better or worse, how big a part of what she lost was to who she is personally. Think Turnabout Intruder or Enemy Within redux.

KIRK: "The things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. We lose them we lose ourselves."

 

I think Deanna's humanity is something that caught people off guard. They were used to seeing her as the comforter and the one with the answers. I even liked that fit she through in Bevs office. DS9 didn't believe in perfect heroes, well TNG had not had that at times. I don't think its meant to be offensive to those like Geordi who has been blind most of his life. He doesn't need anything but his visor as its a illness from the future and not blindness in the classical sense, he doesn't need a cane so I don't mind throwing his heavy visor your way. Knocking you out, the real fan. Ready to take my head off and it may even be in the very real and physical sense.

 

Ironically, by having some empathy. Any loss is a loss, especially one so closely rooted in who she is

 

This. Let's take our example from how Beverly handled it: she understood that Deanna was dealing with emotional trauma, and her nasty behavior toward her was the result of that. Even if Deanna had lost her empathic sense for good, she would still have calmed down in time.

Also, there have to be limits on what Troi's empathic powers can detect. Otherwise, she would be like a "win" button.

 

But Troi did get the short shrift as characterization goes and it's all down to the scripts dropping the ball.[/QUOTE]

In fairness though, she wasn't the only one tbf. You only have to look at how seriously underdeveloped the characters of Wesley Crusher and Tasha Yar were in that first season.
I've said it before and will say it again, yes Troi's an empath but she's first and foremost a person. People don't generally say things like "captain he's hiding something." thats just lazy writing in my view,

 

Troi never acted like she thought other races were inferior.

I know if I suddenly lost my math skills that I lean on to do my job well, I’d have a bit of a crisis.

 

It might be kind of like losing the ability to understand others.