I'm rethinking Geordie marrying Leah

[Mojochi]

I never said it excuses the flaw. I'm saying it's endemic to the show to have that flaw, (a flaw you are recognizing as such) and that such a flaw in the show is not a reason to presume wrongly about the character's motivations, & suggest he's only making this hologram to get a play thing

 

[korblborp]

i vaguely recall following a similar discussion on this board last year shortly after i rejoined, and it didn't really get anywhere for pages and pages because at least one person was dead set on mischaracterizing geordi (one could almost say they have a hateboner for him specifically) and the situation as a whole.


the term "gaslighting" for example is thrown around repeatedly, which is not an accurate description of "a handful of poor decisions that came rightish in the end"

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I never said it excuses the flaw. I'm saying it's endemic to the show to have that flaw, (a flaw you are recognizing as such) and that such a flaw in the show is not a reason to presume wrongly about the character's motivations, & suggest he's only doing making this hologram to get a play thing

They're not the same sort of flaw, unless you mean it's part of a general observation that the NCC-1701-D is crewed by officers who can't do their jobs.

the term "gaslighting" for example is thrown around repeatedly, which is not an accurate description of "a handful of poor decisions that came rightish in the end"

Terms have just been getting here when they're applicable.

 

[Mojochi]

They're not the same sort of flaw, unless you mean it's part of a general observation that the NCC-1701-D is crewed by officers who can't do their jobs.

The flaw (for both) is that plot convenience trumps whatever your idea is of how events & conditions should roll out, that would prevent you from forming your own bad faith conclusions

 

[Skipper]

the term "gaslighting" for example is thrown around repeatedly, which is not an accurate description of "a handful of poor decisions that came rightish in the end"

"What??? You misunderstood everything!!! When I invited you to my cabin alone for a romantic dinner, it was just an offer of friendship!!! Why don't you show me some respect?"

"Oh no, I misjudged my virtual avatar who says all sexy, 'When you touch the engines, it'll be like touching me!!'. Will you ever forgive me?!?"

Sorry, but that's a textbook gaslighting.

 

[korblborp]

Terms have just been getting here when they're applicable.

"gaslighting" is a long-term, deliberate, and malicious set of actions meant to destabilize someone else's set of reality, which is not what happened in the episode, therefore it is not applicable.

 

[Guy Gardener]

"gaslighting" is a long-term, deliberate, and malicious set of actions meant to destabilize someone else's set of reality, which is not what happened in the episode, therefore it is not applicable.

Lets say that five or more lies bound to a consistent theme is gaslighting, and less than 5 is just being playful?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

"gaslighting" is a long-term, deliberate, and malicious set of actions meant to destabilize someone else's set of reality, which is not what happened in the episode, therefore it is not applicable.

Perhaps you'd like to familiarize yourself with sense #2 of the verb, given at Merriam-Webster [link]?

2 : to grossly mislead or deceive (someone) especially for one's own advantage​

The flaw (for both) is that plot convenience trumps whatever your idea is of how events & conditions should roll out, that would prevent you from forming your own bad faith conclusions

*morning coffee spew*

 

[korblborp]

2 : to grossly mislead or deceive (someone) especially for one's own advantage

which is also not what happened.

Sorry

you can hyperbolically describe a situation repeatedly, but it won't make it accurate.

i am not saying that geordi was right, it's kind of the point of it that he fumbled badly. whether that was *executed* properly... there's a lot of episodes where the intent was clear but executed poorly, because the writers didn't explore all of the implications (or couldn't if they wanted to, due to time etc.). see: half the episodes on artificial intelligence and sapience

but this framing of geordi as some sort of sexual predator is as bad faith of an interpretation of the episode as they come.

 

[Skipper]

you can hyperbolically describe a situation repeatedly, but it won't make it accurate.

Let's be a little more accurate.

Definition: The American Psychological Association defines gaslighting as “to manipulate another person into doubting their perceptions, experiences, or understanding of events.”

• “You didn’t see what you think you saw” move: Right after Leah says “Now… I understand…”, Geordi replies: “No, you don’t… it wasn’t the way it might look…” — an immediate attempt to override her interpretation of the situation.
• Minimization + reframe to neutralize harm: After Leah calls it “invaded. Violated” and “How dare you use me like this?”, Geordi insists: “Nothing like that happened. It was a professional collaboration.” and then implies the issue is her reading of it: “If you watched the whole program, you saw what it was…”
• Attack + reversal into “I’m the victim here”: He pivots to “you’ve been badgering me…” and culminates with “I offered you friendship.” — i.e., recasting her confrontation as unfair persecution and his actions as harmless. The offer of friendship is a blatant lie. Geordi's romantic intent was obvious, but he wants Leah to believe she's misunderstood and make her doubt her own perceptions.
• Later, Leah says: “I really owe you an apology… …Except the way I behaved…”
  The episode’s emotional resolution nudges the audience toward “maybe she misjudged him”—even though her core claim (“violated”) is not actually disproven in the confrontation.

In the context of the episode, Geordi pulls off a masterful gaslighting move: he manages to get the victim to apologize for her (justified) behavior.

 

[Mojochi]

Barclay telling the women they are mistaken about what they saw in his holodeck creations would be gaslighting, because we know he was getting massages from Bev & playing flirty games with Troi, which he designed for that purpose. Geordi defending himself from the accusation that he was doing similarly is not gaslighting because Leah does have the wrong assumption, as far as anyone can prove.

The computer simulation got personal with him, unprovoked. She presumed, from what she could see alone, that she'd been a play thing for him, and despite some people trying to lean into interpreting Geordi that way, it's based on nothing. If her interpretation is wrong & he's correcting it = not gaslighting.

This doesn't excuse other things he did, including being less honest than he should've been, which had he not done so, this wouldn't have gone so badly. Him saying he was offering her "friendship", is a bit more of a stretch of the truth, but it's also in the area of perceptions, on how you interpret the informality of his interactions with her. He starts the entire story out by exclaiming that at the very least they could be friends. So, it's also not a true case of him perpetuating an utter false narrative to gaslight her. Him being friendly, is a fair assessment of him too, from his perspective, her maybe seeing it as more than friendly is fair also, from hers. That's a legit difference of perception, not selling her on a falsehood imho

 

[korblborp]

defending oneself and attempting to correct an incorrect perception - and RealBrahms's interpretation of HoloBrahms is just that, we know that from the other episode - is not gaslighting.

she *has* been badgering him, she came on board hostile to him. he DID attempt friendship. even before the dinner thing. admittedly, his trying to turn it romantic was ill advised. but calling that a blatant lie is... i guess if you don't consider romance a possible level of friendship...

again, i am not saying he was completely right, but neither was she, they were trading misconceptions based on one thing or another. whether the episode handled it correctly in the end is one thing, but
framing geordi as an unrepentant villain is just inaccurate and wrong.

 

[Guy Gardener]

defending oneself and attempting to correct an incorrect perception - and RealBrahms's interpretation of HoloBrahms is just that, we know that from the other episode - is not gaslighting.

she *has* been badgering him, she came on board hostile to him. he DID attempt friendship. even before the dinner thing. admittedly, his trying to turn it romantic was ill advised. but calling that a blatant lie is... i guess if you don't consider romance a possible level of friendship...

again, i am not saying he was completely right, but neither was she, they were trading misconceptions based on one thing or another. whether the episode handled it correctly in the end is one thing, but
framing geordi as an unrepentant villain is just inaccurate and wrong.

He kissed the doppelbanger.

The only thing worse than that, would be if he kissed the dopplebanger in front of Picard, and then told a complete lie about how she can't do the best science when the ship is in danger to save the ship from danger, unless they are pashing like teenagers.

The gaslighting was " I just want to be your friend" when the truth was "i am super curious if your mouth tastes like the mouth of that sexy hologram impersonating your features, taking a guess at what level of Hygiene you work with."

Serious for a second.

This time when I looked at the clip, I didn't see a beautiful woman on the edge of giving it up in the face of a few skillfully told lies, I saw a woman who did not know how to apply make up, and wished that someone would fix it, because it was like she was from the 80s which is not how modern women with all their mental assets have applied their blush in 40 years.

 

[NCC-73515]

And where is Troi, the counselor/psychologist while Scotty is literally drunk in a holodeck, struggling to fit into a whole new century? Plot convenience trumps everything. She spent more time humoring Mark Twain. It's fair to assume the ship's engine designer is a useful collaboration, even beyond his own team

In the deleted scene just before that

 

[DonIago]

The novelization of "Relics", which I read before I saw the episode, really was much better and more thought-out and led me to believe the episode would be a two-parter. The episode itself was disappointing by comparison.

 

[Set Harth]

He kissed the doppelbanger.

 

[WarpCore]

Again, where's the rest of his engineering staff? Are they totally useless?

How is Geordi ever going to be thought of as a miracle worker like Scotty if he lets a team steal part of the glory? They're off polishing the nacelles or something. When the pride of the fleet is recovered, you want those corpses entombed in the best looking ship possible.

I just rewatched the scene right before going to the holodeck. There's only 1 other person shown in engineering while he's setting up the drafting room hologram program. One! On a ship crewed by ~1000 people the engineering section only has the chief engineer and one supplemental staff in it during an emergency. That'd be bonkers. There should be people all over the place who he could collaborate with to solve the issue.

You're 100% right. The script needed a "We're working with a skeleton crew for 4 days to perform a routine charting of a nebula while most of the ship gets some well deserved R&R." intro for the plot to make sense. A minimal complement could have made the hologram creation make sense more so than building on the idea from Elementary, Dear Data that Geordi is a complete dumbass when it comes to interacting with the holodeck. Twice he conjured up a "person" by accident.

 

[Mojochi]

Plot convenience trumps everything. If our story wants Geordi operating alone, we ignore there's an engineering staff. If we want Scotty sad & lonely & struggling, we ignore that there's someone there trained specifically for addressing that. It'll invent whole races of people who have spaceships or mind altering technology, & take advantage of our crew, because they just inexplicably need a torpedo, or really want their civilization to be remembered. Ferengis commandeer the ship. Picard leaves the Nexus to a previous time, just to stop Soran at the second star he destroys, when he could've prevented the whole ordeal from the start. Plot doesn't care about your logical reasoning. Never has & probably never will. lol

 

[Nerys Myk]

Starfleet doesn't excel at delegation.

 

[fireproof78]

No. The writers clearly say "What Leah did was absolutely WRONG, Geordie just did some little mistakes, and he such a nice guy who forgives Leah for her misdeeds."

I'll say it again. Geordi NEVER admits in the episode what he did wrong, he lies about his intentions ("Oh no, I wanted to be friends, why do you treat me like this") and places all the blame on Leah. A woman who has just discovered her holographic copy says things like "When you touch the engines, it's like you're touching me."

This. Geordi is wrong