Sensing emotions through space

[JesterFace]

Deanna is an empath, but sometimes I wonder, do emotions travel through space with a ”spacecall”.

Example, something like this happened in 'The Enemy': Picard is discussing something with Tomalak and the entire Neutral Zone is between them. Still, Deanna is able to tell Picard, ”he's deceiving us”. Is Deanna reading Tomalak's facial expressions or some other signs... or is she sensing Tomalak's mind through many lightyears?

 

[Mojochi]

Deanna is an empath, but sometimes I wonder, do emotions travel through space with a ”spacecall”.

Example, something like this happened in 'The Enemy': Picard is discussing something with Tomalak and the entire Neutral Zone is between them. Still, Deanna is able to tell Picard, ”he's deceiving us”. Is Deanna reading Tomalak's facial expressions or some other signs... or is she sensing Tomalak's mind through many lightyears?

It's all pretty vague. There is evidence in Tam Elbrun that Betazoid ability can traverse space, (Even a ton of it) but I never got the impression that Deanna specifically had that kind of power. Hell, there's times when they get attacked, where she's standing right there & says nothing. (in that way it's also rather inconsistent)

In cases where she's reading a distant person via viewscreen, I just assume there must be some kind of energy that a being is imbued with which is readable through that medium alone, because canonically, she doesn't have the power to be doing it from the being's actual presence light-years away

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Space and time and thought are the same thing in the world of Trek. See Where None Have Gone Before, Haven, Remember Me. Also The Enemy is not the only time Deanna senses emotions from a person in another ship, in The Price she implies that reading the enemy captain's thoughts are standard procedure.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Spock was capable of mental contact over distances of light years, for example in "The Immunity Syndrome" when he felt the Vulcans die on the Intrepid and got a read on their emotions, sensing astonishment, and later in TMP when he felt V'ger approach while he was still on Vulcan.

 

[Kaelef]

Tori's abilities are solidly in the "what the writer needs of them" range.

 

[Mojochi]

Betazoids seem to have a really broad spectrum thing going on. For example, Deana can read multiple people aboard in Disaster, but she doesn't know who they are or where. Perhaps seeing the person, even on a view screen helps to focus that clutter & put them in contact

 

[Christopher]

I've always figured that when Deanna reads emotions over a viewscreen, she's just picking up on body language cues and microexpressions. A lot of empathy might just be a keener sensitivity to that. Human empathy (in the literal, non-sci-fi sense) comes from mirror neurons, the part of the brain that lets us see other people's emotions and reactions and imagine them in ourselves. Someone with more developed mirror neurons might be even more acutely perceptive of others' emotional response, perceiving it more keenly than the average human, and that might appear like mind-reading to us.

 

[2takesfrakes]

According to the episode "Haven," just to keep it in TNG's 'universe' ...

LWAXANA: All life, Wyatt, all consciousness, is indissolvably bound together. Indeed, it's all part of the same thing.
WYATT: Yes. I have wondered if something like that (weren't so) ...

This may partly explain how Betazoid minds can reach deep into the inky Void and assess someone's emotional state, even if their world orbits an alien sun.

 

[Nakita Akita]

Isn't there an episode where Riker was talking loudly, his face was red and there was a pulsating vein across his forehead and Deanna, with her uncanny ability said,
"I sense you're angry."

Just sayin'!!!