never really understood the point of troi: i think she was supposed to be eye candy but not really as hot as the other startrek chicks nichols, ryan or blalock and her character never adding anything at least ohura s jjob seemd to explain to kirk and the boys meaning behind events : all i can remember of troi is her "sensing" what was painfully obvious to everyone else: was a really lame choice to make her character a ship therapist : i think the problem with beverly crusher was the actor not tje character : what i think the major problem was with the b story lines is since the first episode they set up character overlaps to use as touch points for future sub plots but then never developed them but generally i think its failure in the first few seasons was it was kind of relying on TOS kind of ok well Star trek is popular so all we need is the title star trek : there was accorsing to documentaries all type of creation problems and in the end had to just churn something out : i at first disnt like riker but later the character develops some real depth: a lot of the problems with it is when they try to echo the TOS characters the problem is that often the characters are not truly developed. But I think that has more to do with people forget how the TOS cast were already very accomplished experience actors before the series started and all had a vision of what they wanted thier character to be : also TOS had a strong social agenda and did what scifi is known for which is trying to show a mirror to contemporary issues : TNG struggled for the first few years trying to decide what it wants to do as a show . I think this is do to the creation of it taking too long and when it came out its audience was in a different place then the show most important is identifying your audience . but then again TOS failed at first too
She could sense what potential enemy ships commanders felt. That's a huge advantage in battle.
I wasn't that much of a fan of hers, but at least in theory she should have be quite helpful in battles.
And also believed that nobody would ever mourn the death of a loved one or have any kind of personal conflicts whatsoever.
It seems pretty obvious that Troi, the "ship's counselor", was only there because Gene Roddenberry had long since gone into full-on New Age hippie psychobabble mode. Remember, this is the same man who (around the time of TMP) had actually thought that people would walk around naked all the time - the "New Humans' he often spoke of - and would need "love instructors".
If you doubt any of this, read Gene's novelization of TMP. That should remove all ambiguity.
That's because the Dr. Kate Pulaski character was a 100% rip off/homage/taken from the TOS character of Dr. Leonard McCoy - right down to the 'distrusts Transporter technology' quirk. TOS characters were actually still relatable human beings unlike the politically correct constantly moralizing mannequins we got for the majority of the main characters of the TNG era.
I get what you're saying, and you may be right. In that case, it's a story telling problem in what SHOULD be the A story and what SHOULD be the B story. I see Star Trek as a show that focuses on unusual and amazing concepts and ideas, using human relationships and other elements as a means of telling the story. If the relationship is the main focus of the story itself, I don't see the show as being any different than your standard soap opera.
