As far as I know this episode contains the only known human telepath in Star Trek so what if instead of Dr Miranda Jones being human she could've been a member of a species that could later become the Betazoids? We don't exactly have a canon date as to when Betazed joined the Federation and it could've been quite easy to just make her one as any reference to her being human could be redone, even if she were half human, like Deanna Troi?
Is there in Truth no beauty - Introducing Betazoids?
- Thread starter Crewman47
- Start date
How do you propose redoing dialogue spoken in a television episode produced over 40 years ago? The script is full of references to Miranda's humanity. And whoever heard of an alien named Jones (okay, not counting the Martian Manhunter)?
And Miranda is not the only known human character with psionic abilities. Remember Gary Mitchell and Elizabeth Dehner? Their "esper" readings were fairly high, and there were other crewmembers who died in the barrier passage because of their psionic sensitivity. So it's been established since the second pilot that some humans in the Trek universe have proven and measurable psionic ability, at least at a low level. And TNG: "Haven" established that the human Wyatt Miller had a telepathic connection with his true love across interstellar distances, without even having met her.
And Miranda is not the only known human character with psionic abilities. Remember Gary Mitchell and Elizabeth Dehner? Their "esper" readings were fairly high, and there were other crewmembers who died in the barrier passage because of their psionic sensitivity. So it's been established since the second pilot that some humans in the Trek universe have proven and measurable psionic ability, at least at a low level. And TNG: "Haven" established that the human Wyatt Miller had a telepathic connection with his true love across interstellar distances, without even having met her.
Beware the temptress, Revisionism...
just watch the episode and say "betazoid" whenever the word "human" is spoken. 
He did not say generically "psychic abilities," Crewman47 specifically said "telepath."There no indication that Mitchell or Dehner had any telepathic abilities prior to the encounter with the barrier. Perhaps they could both start fires, cause goats to pass out, or something else..
Doctor Jone's abilities were from birth, and apparently completely natural.
In the series titled simply "Star Trek," Crewman47 is correct, there was only a single human telepath. but was Miranda Jones "human" as in Human Being? Dialog in the original Star Trek would use the word human generically for humanoids. And Doctor Jones (IIRC) did have the characteristic dark Betazed eyes. By Doctor Jones own statements, she had never been to Earth, but she had studied on Vulcan.
In the case of Wyatt Miller in the TNG episode, the telepathic contact could have been the product solely of the female's abilities, with Wyatt being a passive participant.
That's speculating beyond the evidence. Whatever nonsense people may believe about "psychic" abilities in real life has no bearing on what's been established within the ST universe. In that universe, species with psionic abilities are consistently either telepathic or telekinetic, or both.
Although actually, "causing goats to pass out" would constitute a form of telepathy, since that term refers to the remote induction of mental states in others, and unconsciousness is a mental state. Whereas pyrokinesis (firestarting) would be a form of telekinesis, the ability to induce physical effects through mental effort. Recall that when Kes in "Cold Fire" worked with Tanis to amplify her telepathic abilities, one of the abilities she gained was essentially pyrokinetic, generating great heat with "the fire in [her] mind." It's all part of the same spectrum of (fictional) psi abilities.
As for "Haven," the episode gave no indication that the Tarellians had any psi abilities; Ariana seemed to be as passive about it as Wyatt. And Lwaxana's explanation, which admittedly may have been more a personal belief than concrete knowledge, was that all consciousness is interconnected. Which seems, at least, to mesh with what the Traveler said in "Where No One Has Gone Before" about space, time, and thought being facets of the same thing.
The first retro mention of Betazoids, or non-mention actually, was Kirk warning Chekov that it was unwise to play poker with a Betzazoid when Kirk interrupted his losing card game in the dropped "last roundup" prologue of ST VI.
Denny Martin Flinn restored this scene as a prologue of his one ST novel, "The Fearful Summons", and the female Betazoid did make it into the scene.
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Why should unconsciousness be a mental state? It's more like the lack of one - and a telepath might be hard pressed to read an unconscious mind, "write" on it, or otherwise communicate with it.
More probably, the ability to use one's mind to strangle or bludgeon goats to unconsciousness would be a variant of telekinesis...
In which sense? Humans have been shown being highly inconsistent in both categories of paranormal skills - we have our telepath from the episode under discussion, possible other individuals who may be able to share some thoughts or at least feelings with aliens in special circumstances (Wyatt Miller, Will Riker) but generally are incapable of this, and then a great many humans who make it clear they possess no competence in these fields whatsoever. We also have this curious lack of (demonstrated) paranormal competence in Romulans who're supposed to be biologically directly related to the highly paranormal Vulcans.
Miranda Jones could well be the one and only true mindreader in mankind's (Star Trek pseudo-) history, even though paranormal skills in general appear to be common enough to warrant routine examination of Starfleet officers. We don't know if this is the case, because none of our heroes considers Jones' skill explicitly unique or common. The fact that Spock takes it on the stride is rather useless as evidence, considering how difficult it is to startle our favorite half-Vulcan... But the matter seems to stand that no other human is explicitly considered telepathic, not in Spock's "I'm aware of your mind attempting to contact mine" sense.
Timo Saloniemi
Except ... mindreading would not be necessary to cause someone (or goats) to passout, if a individual could cause say a sudden reduction in blood pressure, that would result in unconsciousness.
Which is what I thought was happening during the George Clooney movie.
Okay, but was there any way to tell from the dialog if Betazeds were some how "new."
"Telepathy" does not just mean "mindreading." As I said, the formal definition of the term refers to the remote induction of mental states or to communication between minds through means other than speech or normal sensory perception. Literally, "telepathy" is Greek for "feeling/sensing at a distance." And it's used to refer to any extrasensory interaction between minds.
And as I said, inducing a physical effect (such as blood pressure change) through mental exertion alone would be telekinesis. You're splitting hairs, but pretty much every effect you're proposing falls under the broader category of either telepathy or telekinesis, which are the two main categories of (imaginary) psionic abilities.
Actually no, at least not in the dropped movie prologue; but since the scene never canonically happened, it doesn't count.
It's a nice try at tying in the Betazoid race to an early TOS episode, but I really don't think it works in this case. Miranda is clearly human. Her eyes have a visible iris. Starfleet encounters the Betazoids somewhere down the road after Kirk's death... that is all we know.
Or, they could've joined two weeks after the Tellarites. There's no way to tell, one way or the other.
What does all this have to do with violence toward goats? 
I don't understand the bit about MJ being part of a race who later became Betazoids. You mean they didn't come up with the name until later? If there were Betazoids in the 24th century, they were there in the 23rd. Jones isn't one of them though. I don't consider Betazoids a very well-thought-out or interesting people myself. They're just like us, except with telepathy and dark eyes. What's so intolerable about letting MJ just be human as they intended? I'm far more of a TOS fan though, so I'm not out to revise it for the sake of Next Gen.
Just this - Why? Why tie Miranda down with a silly retcon? It's a great big universe, let it stay that way.
The thing remains, telepathy is a known but decidedly rare phenomenon in the TOS era - rare enough that it surprises our heroes virtually every time they encounter it. It's established in one episode ("In Truth") to be a human attribute, while another ("Where No Man") makes it clear that human paranormal abilities in general are for real in this fictional universe. Various other episodes give aliens varying telepathic abilities.
Betazoids in the TNG era are highly telepathic and despite this are not frighteningly exotic or adversarial. It's something of an attitude shift from TOS, and might suggest that Betazoids weren't known in the TOS era yet, or were considered pariah or enemy at that time, or (and this is the least likely scenario IMHO, considering Betazoid psyche) avoided being pariah or enemy by keeping the full extent of their abilities under the lid, Vulcan style. But it's not a huge thing, and Kirk might well have known a number of Betazoids before starting out on the five-year mission. Neither him nor Spock, McCoy or Pike are exactly stunned by their encounters with mind-readers.
So we're far from a definite answer. TNG Betazoids seem absent from TOS, and I see no merit in shoehorning Miranda Jones into that category of aliens. But many other TNG species associated with the UFP are absent from TOS as well, and are fully entitled to this, because a starship with mere 430 people plus at most a dozen onscreen guests aboard can be a pretty exclusive club...
Timo Saloniemi
Betazoids in the TNG era are highly telepathic and despite this are not frighteningly exotic or adversarial. It's something of an attitude shift from TOS, and might suggest that Betazoids weren't known in the TOS era yet, or were considered pariah or enemy at that time, or (and this is the least likely scenario IMHO, considering Betazoid psyche) avoided being pariah or enemy by keeping the full extent of their abilities under the lid, Vulcan style. But it's not a huge thing, and Kirk might well have known a number of Betazoids before starting out on the five-year mission. Neither him nor Spock, McCoy or Pike are exactly stunned by their encounters with mind-readers.
So we're far from a definite answer. TNG Betazoids seem absent from TOS, and I see no merit in shoehorning Miranda Jones into that category of aliens. But many other TNG species associated with the UFP are absent from TOS as well, and are fully entitled to this, because a starship with mere 430 people plus at most a dozen onscreen guests aboard can be a pretty exclusive club...
Timo Saloniemi
Because some feel the compulsive need to tie everything together into a tidy little package. Everyone has to know everyone else. And to be fair we've seen the creators of later Treks do the very same thing such as introducing contemporary Trek elements into the (supposed) pre TOS era via ENT.
There's nothing wrong with treating Star Trek as a unified whole, when it makes sense. This particular suggestion, though, is simply gratuitous. And I remain bewildered as to how the dialogue in a 43-year-old television episode would be "redone" under this proposal. The story repeatedly stressed the fact that Miranda Jones was human, so I don't see how it would even be possible to alter that without hacking the episode to pieces.
...Of course, TOS already had the precedent of Zephram Cochrane, a person who is both "human" and "of Alpha Centauri". Quite possibly, a certain category of alien beings from outside Earth was classified as "human" in the 2260s.
(Or then Zephram Cochrane was a human from the one and only Earth stock, and his association with Alpha Centauri had some complex explanation, such as him moving from Earth to AC, or him being the descendant of Earth humans transplanted to AC by aliens. But while a variant of this basic theme is the usual interpretation, it's by no means the only one.)
Timo Saloniemi
(Or then Zephram Cochrane was a human from the one and only Earth stock, and his association with Alpha Centauri had some complex explanation, such as him moving from Earth to AC, or him being the descendant of Earth humans transplanted to AC by aliens. But while a variant of this basic theme is the usual interpretation, it's by no means the only one.)
Timo Saloniemi
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