Well, Betazeds are a bit like Changelings. Good ideas, fruitful for stories but not that well thought through. Odo becoming a mouse, a rock or even a cloud and this would fool sensors? It's virtually an omnipotent power!
As for Betazeds...the idea of an influx of Betazeds into Starfleet. Starfleet would have to rely on each one of them to police themselves and restrain themselves from accessing sensitive info for example. Starfleet would have to ensure they were all of good character. Any dodgy Betazed that slipped through the net would cause mayhem.
Betazeds really do challenge notions of privacy in the 24th century. It's difficult to see how anyone anyway committed to their own privacy could behave socially functionally around Betazeds. There's a bit of utopian thing behind the concept, that we are supposed to be so unconcerned with privacy that everybody is cool around them. They aren't all nice either - like any population they have criminal types. Lon Suder in Voyager and Admiral Satie's attack-dog in The Drumhead who was a very authoritarian figure and quite happy in stitching everyone up in a frenzy of Cosmic McCarthyism. Apparently he was a long term aide to Satie.
As for Troi I like the character well enough. But she just seemed to be at a loose end most of the time. An obviously dodgy lookin' alien with a shifty expression would appear on-screen, then Picard would turn to her and she'd say: "he's hiding something". Yeah? In other news, space is dark, Counce.
On the occasions Troi was tested though Sirtis played it well. The Loss has an excellent performance from her. I like the episodes were she gets snippy with the patients, haha.
O'Brien in The Wounded always reminds me alot of Kirk in TUC. As in someone going fom a passionste distaste to some sort of position of redemption.
