I just had to say it

[Mojochi]

Odd. When I cam to rewatch TNG I realised what a good actress Marina is...she holds an accent that’s unnatural to her, makes you believe in various relationships, and always seems basically belivable. I can’t think of any instance of particularly bad acting. Your complaint seems more with writing and character as developed.
The acting is fine though.

The "I sense" stuff can be rather hokey, & out of place. She just rarely ever delivered it in a way to make me comfortable with it. It never seemed organic. I mean it was a show of oddball presentations, when you consider Data's emotionlessness, & Worf's stifled hostility, but hers never found its groove as well as those others imho. It's why they tried more often to have her be therapeutic

Oddly enough though, you're right about her other stuff. She found a very comfortable niche in how she played off the other cast members, in social dynamics, & some of her own stories are not bad either. Face of the Enemy, her bits in Disaster & Thine Own Self. All in All, I always thought Crosby was a worse actress than Sirtis. Gates McFadden isn't all that much better either, tbh. You know, they're soap actors. How much can you really expect?

 

[marlboro]

Crosby was gone from the show early on, Sirtis should have followed her. At least by season 3 anyway. Guinan makes her character pointless. Whoopi was a much better actress and the character only showed up when it made sense storywise.

Michelle Forbes, Colm Meaney, Whoopi Goldberg

Troi scenes:

1) Troi senses something patently obvious to everyone. "Hmmm....Klingons seem grumpy"

2) "Troi senses a flicker of emotion so we have a 60 second scene of she and another character verbalizing something that the audience just saw" scenes. It's like the writers don't trust the other actors to properly express the emotions of their characters so they have Troi come in and explain it to the audience. There is a scene at the beginning of We'll Always Have Paris that is the perfect example of this. Picard is disturbed by hearing the name of a scientist from his past. He does a perfectly fine job demonstrating distress to the audience, but before the scene ends up pops Troi to needlesslyhammer it home .

3) Troi gets mind raped.

4) Troi falls in love with a douche. 50/50 shot she gets mind raped by same douche.

5) Troi likes chocolate!

6) Troi's mom shows up! Again. And again. And again.

7) Face of the Enemy. Holy shit - a good episode. You know a character is f'ed up when the audience is so surprised that she is in a good episode that it spawns a Tv trope.


Giving so much screen time to Troi is like having the writers decide every episode of Enterprise should have heavy doses of Travis Merriweather. Oh, and we need his wacky space boomer parents to show up once a year, too.

Troi is just not a character that needed so much screen time. There just isn't a reason for it from a writing point of view,and Sirtis isn't a good enough actress to make up for that fact.

 

[Mojochi]

Well, despite how poorly used it was, the reason for a Troi character is simple. Mind reading is a very sci-fi relevant gimmick, just like androids & blind guys with technovision. It's a futuristic show that wants to feature stuff like that, hence why they had it even back on TOS with Spock

When TNG was conceptualized, I get the strong feeling they wanted to spread out their sci-fi aspects, to be represented by more than just one alien race, like Spock was. So, in a weird way, aspects of Troi, Data & Worf all come from divvying up Spock's characteristics. Troi has the mind reading, Data has the subhuman emotional state, & Worf has the jarring & sometimes disturbing alien culture.

Sadly, in some ways it kind of spread those traits too thin, expecially in Troi's case, where it just isn't enough to be the entirety of a character, which is why she eventually just became a more familial presense.

Bringing Guinan in, besides being a play to give Whoopi some screen time, was to give Picard a confidant. Troi never could fill that advisor role quite well enough, being a subordinate, nor Riker for that matter. No subordinate could play off him like Guinan did in I Borg, for example.

 

[jaime]

Crosby was gone from the show early on, Sirtis should have followed her. At least by season 3 anyway. Guinan makes her character pointless. Whoopi was a much better actress and the character only showed up when it made sense storywise.

Michelle Forbes, Colm Meaney, Whoopi Goldberg

Troi scenes:

1) Troi senses something patently obvious to everyone. "Hmmm....Klingons seem grumpy"

2) "Troi senses a flicker of emotion so we have a 60 second scene of she and another character verbalizing something that the audience just saw" scenes. It's like the writers don't trust the other actors to properly express the emotions of their characters so they have Troi come in and explain it to the audience. There is a scene at the beginning of We'll Always Have Paris that is the perfect example of this. Picard is disturbed by hearing the name of a scientist from his past. He does a perfectly fine job demonstrating distress to the audience, but before the scene ends up pops Troi to needlesslyhammer it home .

3) Troi gets mind raped.

4) Troi falls in love with a douche. 50/50 shot she gets mind raped by same douche.

5) Troi likes chocolate!

6) Troi's mom shows up! Again. And again. And again.

7) Face of the Enemy. Holy shit - a good episode. You know a character is f'ed up when the audience is so surprised that she is in a good episode that it spawns a Tv trope.


Giving so much screen time to Troi is like having the writers decide every episode of Enterprise should have heavy doses of Travis Merriweather. Oh, and we need his wacky space boomer parents to show up once a year, too.

Troi is just not a character that needed so much screen time. There just isn't a reason for it from a writing point of view,and Sirtis isn't a good enough actress to make up for that fact.

So, again...the points you raise are in the writing and the stories themselves, and when given something to actually do...Sirtis does it. Face of the Enemy. (And some of the other stories you hint at. Man of the People for instance. She also pairs well with Riker. Oh, and that one where she gets possessed. Disaster gives her some stuff, but you don’t hint at that one.)

 

[Valenti]

Gowron's eyes too wide open
Riker hopping over the chair to sit down
Picard and Riker's unnatural stance.

 

[The Rock]

Whenever Worf did that goofy-looking jump over the wooden rails on the bridge to run up to an invading enemy to fight him. He did it a couple of times during the show's run.

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Makes me laugh out loud every time.

 

[Herbert]

That leg flailing as he goes over the rail is pretty funny

 

[Mojochi]

Kobe Bryant he is not lol

 

[Forbin]

Garak. I don't get the love. He's just another dull secondary DS9 character, and Robinson's acting was like he was reading it cold from que cards. *shrug*

 

[Mojochi]

Data ages. Get over it. No one ever said he wouldn't age. Only that he had no life expectancy. Until they killed him off, I had notions of him living so long that the material used to create him was no longer reproducible for repairs, & centuries or millenia after Starfleet was gone, he'd start looking like Nick Valentine in Fallout 4

 

[velour]

Whenever Worf did that goofy-looking jump over the wooden rails on the bridge to run up to an invading enemy to fight him. He did it a couple of times during the show's run.

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Makes me laugh out loud every time.

Notice how Tasha took her cue from Worf and then did her own lame jump on the other side of the railing. I say Worf won the style points.

Bringing Guinan in, besides being a play to give Whoopi some screen time, was to give Picard a confidant. Troi never could fill that advisor role quite well enough, being a subordinate, nor Riker for that matter. No subordinate could play off him like Guinan did in I Borg, for example.

Picard was the wise old man of the bridge. Troi, and to a certain extent Riker, were light weights. Neither one matched up to Picard at any level that would be needed to make an effective or convincing confidant for Picard. Neither one had the stature of a Spock or McCoy.

They should have made Troi the communications officer like Uhura was. That would have given Troi something useful to do.

 

[Terok Nor]

What is the deal with Geordi's fingernails?

 

[Stroudarian]

This is one of the funniest damn things I have ever seen.

 

[Herbert]

They should have made Troi the communications officer like Uhura was. That would have given Troi something useful to do.

I agree. The only time Troi should have been on the bridge at all was if Picard had specific need for her empathic abilities say in a negotiation or when gauging intent of an enemy or potential enemy. Otherwise, she has no business being given her own seat on the bridge. It makes me laugh when she tries to warn Riker about the Pakleds intent and he just glosses over the entire thing. On the other hand, the whole episode is predicated on Geordi being taken captive by the Pakleds so once again, story trumps logic as it so often does on a TV show. Story wins over everything.

 

[Ghrakh]

What is the deal with Geordi's fingernails?

Well, they're attached to his fingers for one thing.