News "Star Trek's Jonathan Frakes Still Has Issues With How The Next Generation Handled Riker And Troi"

On the topic of Worf/Troi, it’s certainly my least favorite aspect of TNG’s series finale. It’s in the same vein (albeit not half as bad) as the Seven/Chakotay throughline in Voyager’s finale.

Let’s just say I’m thrilled that there’s been zero indication Seven stuck with Chakotay. But even so, watching “All Good Things...” and “Endgame” will never not be a little strange to me because of these bits.

 

IIRC, the whole Worf/Deanna relationship was borne out of the fact that Michael Dorn and Marina Sirtis are really good friends in the real world, but due to the nature of their characters there wasn't really much opportunity to have them share screen time together on the show. So they started this off with Alexander coming back to the Enterprise to live with Worf permanently, this creating a situation where Worf would need to see Deanna for counselling sessions regularly and thus a friendship develops and eventually a romance. Maybe they should have left it as just a really strong friendship, but I actually enjoyed the story arc of the two of them becoming closer as it developed in the sixth and seventh seasons of TNG and was somewhat disappointed it was forgotten in the movies.

 

The incentive to improve is to improve the relationship. Sex is just one facet of a relationship and it requires communication, not compatibility.

Relationships, like many human activities, are complicated, and declaring that something is the "ultimate hang up" is odd, to say the least, where there is so much variety within human sexuality, including monogamy having evolutionary benefits, i.e paternity confirmation, more paternal investment and sharing of resources in caring for young.

 

Which is all meaningless in the kind of conservative patriarchy that insists on abstention before marriage. Sucks but true: for them women.don't.matter.
As for the benefits of monogamy, there's no "evolutionary benefit" to it. That's adding science words on a relatively new concept that was born out of averting tribal warfare and making sure property stayed in the correct hands. Paternity confirmation only matters to men where a clear heir is needed. We know who the baby came out of. Women get bored in sexual relationships sooner and more often than men. So, monogamy doesn't benefit them much. In our earliest communal societies, before property, sex was an true gang bang, with no one knowing who impregnated whom or even how babies were made. There's actually a theory that women are so vocal during sex so that other men in the community will hear it and line up, and that women need more variety and effort to orgasm because more partners are evolutionarily preferable. Especially for an animal that gives no sign of their fertility and only have one baby per pregnancy.

 

Right. I will not take your word for it since I have worked with people who are in monogamous relationships and work to improve their relationships through communication with those women who "don't matter."

Psychology has a different perspective: So, from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, monogamy is natural because fathering is natural in the human species and fathering only evolves with sufficient sexual exclusivity to allow for paternity certainty for men and sufficient resource provision certainty for women."

Now, does monogamy work for everyone? Nope. As I stated, human relationships and sexuality are a varied thing, so declaring one thing to be a "hang up" where there is evidence for evolutionary benefits, especially from a psychological point of view, is a limited view, at best. I don't labor under prescriptive aspirations for individual choices. I work within what I know and what I have seen and studied from a psychological point of view.

To further quote an article I read:

"Of course, we don’t all have to be successful monogamists if it’s not something you really aspire to or are good at, even if it’s something you would like. Some of us might aspire to be successful at consensual nonmonogamy and that, too, requires certain personality dispositions and interpersonal skills like overcoming jealousy and insecurity about consensual partner sharing. And some of us that are monogamists at heart might have to accept that we just aren’t that good at it despite our best efforts, and that’s OK. We all need to develop self-compassion for our human limitations. And just maybe some of us will finally figure out how to succeed at monogamy if we just don’t give up on trying to learn from our mistakes."

 

So you're part of upholding the system? And that gives you what authority? And I didn't say all monogamy was bad. I'm married for 20 years and I like it fine. But specifically patriarchal systems that enforce abstinence are bad for women. It's also not at all an evolutionary priority. You trying to make it seem like I'm against general monogamy and ignoring my specific rebuttals against specific arguments for a scientific basis of monogamy doesn't help your case or your appeal to authority (a logical fallacy, BTW, harkening back to our other discussion).

What's the historical basis for that? The nuclear family is very new invention. Children didn't matter much even a hundred years ago. Even the rich shipped their kids off to another family to be raised. You're speaking in biological absolutes that don't exist.

This is a modern rationalization for a constructed traditional system that forces an everyone-for-themselves living arrangement. In our original communal living systems the the woman could get sex whenever she wanted from who she wanted and would be provided for by everyone. She didn't need a father because she had a village. The reason fathers became important is because men took over and created male dominated families where women could only receive support from one man. All this strengthened was that those men were assured of regular sex. Women didn't get anything out of it. Marriage makes sure men get laid.

Your article's points about nonmonogamy don't go against a single thing I've said so far.

 

No, they don't. My only argument is that you insist that it is the ultimate "hang up." There are a lot of human sexual behaviors that I find that descriptor odd, to say the least.

If that is not the argument and I misunderstood then I apologize.

I work were people are at. If they want to be monogamous then I work with them. No judgement from here. What gives me that authority? Well, people who come to be wanting to work within that system and ask for my help. If they wanted to move outside of it I would support that too. But, I see plenty of people who were abstinent until marriage, and work within that relationship in marriage to develop satisfying sexual lives through communication and relationship development.

 

And I never said monogamy was the hangup. I said committing yourself for life without testing sexual compatibility was. You know that. It's obvious because that's what I wrote verbatim. It was conservative systems and how they never benefit women. You're anecdotal evidence of people fixing those relationships eventually doesn't really matter to me. Maybe if they'd tested the waters with more people or even just with each other before committing they wouldn't be suffering as much now. And data does suggest that's true. Millennials are screwing around more and later into life and are getting less divorces than previous generations once they settle down.

This conversation was never about monogamy until you made it about it by consistently trying to call it an evolutionary imperative. You can't have it both ways. You can't say you're okay with every kind of relationship but then repeat fallacious arguments about the biological importance of patriarchal systems.

 

And I disagree.

 

And facts and data disagree with you.

 

Not all. But, I'll not appeal to authority here.

Take care.

 

This was what I think would have been interesting and was Fontana’s intention with the characters. If they were just screwing around as a nothing fact of life it would have added a lot to Their relationship and the show in general. That ship needed a little spice. The fact that people love Riker/Ro so much speaks to that.

 

Psst...Jabayzel was Chatokay's sister...

 

I'm another one of the few people who actually liked the Worf/Troi relationship. I thought it was an opposites attract thing, and I was hoping that Troi would've showed up on DS9 to resolve it, or be at his wedding to Dax. Of course, I preferred Riker and Troi more, and was glad the relationship was rekindled in Insurrection and they finally tied the knot in Nemesis. I have yet to see the actual Picard episode with their return but I'm sure that I will be pleased to see them together again on screen.

 

The only one they have done reasonably well was Kira/Odo. Maybe Keiko/Chief. The rest (Torres/Paris, Riker/Troi, T'Pol/Tripp, Worf/Dax, Julian/Ezri, Burnham/Tyler) have all been pretty poor. Though there was some potential there.

 

Though some of the crew with non-crew romance has been better.

 

Did Fontana create Riker and Troi? I thought they were Decker and Ilia with the serial numbers file off. Or did Fontana create them, too? I'm asking anybody, because I'm fuzzy on all of that, especially the Phase II stuff, but the origins of TNG too.

 

You are right about their origins, but Fontana wrote the outlines for Farpoint as well as the scripts before it Gene had to add another hour to it. She lays down a lot of the dynamics between the characters in it.