What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

[Citiprime]

I thought they might go the other way and try to connect it to the fall of Betazed during the Dominion War.

That they might say part of the reason why the Dominion invaded and conquered Betazed was to take out a species that might have the ability to sense Changelings. And that Troi would come into the story as either the person who could help clean house aboard the Titan, or they would build up for that only to reveal she wasn't the real Troi. Gladly, they went against my expectations with something totally different.

 

[at Quark's]

Whenever her powers get in the way of the story, they always have the out of saying her powers don't work on that particular species or in this circumstance because of [reasons].

Would have liked it if they had joked with that on occasion, too.
Riker: Deanna, why can't you simply scan the aliens' intentions?
Deanna: (frustrated) Because they apparently have a plot complication device that shields their thoughts from me!

 

[Macintosh]

And since we didn't have any Betazoids in DS9 save for Lwaxana Troi we had none of them interacting with Dominion Changelings, so for all we know Betazoids would have a lot of trouble sensing the emotions of a morphogenic life form like a Founder if not impossible for them to do so. DS9 also gave PIC an out for letting Deanna become useless when it came to sensing the enemy's thought processes.

Lwaxana states in DS9: "Fascination" that she can't read Odo's emotions.

 

[cooleddie74]

Well, there you go. I don't like that episode so it's been years and YEARS since I've watched it. Thanks for clarifying the issue.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Betazoids know when you're touching yourself.

If it's "Encounter at Farpoint", they feel it too.

 

[at Quark's]

I have often wondered how the combination of the existence of telepathic races and privacy is handled in the Federation. As far as I know, Deanna isn't asking permission to the alien of the week to scan his feelings before she reveals to the captain that 'he's hiding something' or some such remark.

Now, in the case of Deanna, that might not be a problem, because people just very good at reading others (but no empathic abilities in the Betazoid sense) might arrive at just the same conclusion by reading very small clues that the person being read is unwillingly giving away but that elude others. We usually don't consider that a breach of privacy.

However, in the case of fully telepathic aliens I wonder where the borders lie of what is allowed and what isn't. (Had Deanna been fully telepathic like her mother, would it have been permissible for her to read the thoughts of the antagonist of the week they just met, without asking?)

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I thought Betazoids could control if they read minds or not.

Except for Tam Elbrun, they can.

 

[Macintosh]

Except for Tam Elbrun, they can.

Agreed. In Lwaxana Troi's first appearance in DS9 ("The Forsaken") Odo asks her if she can sense guilt from anyone in Quark's bar where she's just had a brooch stolen, and she has to close her eyes and focus for a moment to check. Now Quark's is big, busy space with a lot of people in it, but clearly the implication is that a Betazoid has to make an active effort to read minds.

 

[UssGlenn]

with regards to Betazoid range, we shouldn't use the distance between ships as a measure of range. Troi can just read you through the view screen...somehow. perhaps telepathy uses quantum entanglement.

 

[Macintosh]

with regards to Betazoid range, we shouldn't use the distance between ships as a measure of range. Troi can just read you through the view screen...somehow. perhaps telepathy uses quantum entanglement.

Entanglement can't be used send information, but I daresay there's some equivalent subspace shenanigans that can.

 

[Forbin]

Maybe Troi's powers are "line of sight," even if the line of sight is an electronic viewscreen. By that I mean she has to see the person to read them well. I imagine reading faces and body language is part of it too (though the idea of alien races having the same expression and body language as humans and Betazoids is unlikely - except on Trek) .

 

[at Quark's]

Maybe Troi's powers are "line of sight," even if the line of sight is an electronic viewscreen. By that I mean she has to see the person to read them well. I imagine reading faces and body language is part of it too (though the idea of alien races having the same expression and body language as humans and Betazoids is unlikely - except on Trek) .

That may be part of it, but not the entire story. There are instances in which she senses without seeing much. For example in The Survivors she says "Captain, there are eleven thousand inhabitants in this colony. At this range, I should be sensing something. I'm not.", while in orbit. And a few sentences later she says "What I sense of them is human .... It's difficult to explain. I feel there's something different about these two people. I'm sorry. I can't be clearer than that.", without (presumably) having seen any more than a zoom -in from orbit of their apparently undamaged house and having no other information than that there are apparently two survivors.

Of course she could simply be bluffing there, handing out sufficiently vague statements to keep her job secure

 

[Orphalesion]

Arguably, I think the mental powers of the Vulcans are as ill-defined as Betazoids are. In Discovery season 1, you have Sarek and Michael communicating with each other in real-time across light-years of space. And Spock's powers in TOS are whatever the episode needs for the story a lot of times.

I will be honest that I don't watch TOS a lot, so my experience is limited and often working off of very old memories. But from what I remember Spock's telepathic abilities weren't the "main thing" of his character, unlike with Troi where her empathic abilities were a much bigger part of her character than her actual role on the ship and permeated every part of her. This is why I think leaving the powers loosely defined is a bigger issue with Troi than with Spock.

 

[1001001]

Sarek can talk to Michael across many light years.

 

[fireproof78]

This is why I think leaving the powers loosely defined is a bigger issue with Troi than with Spock.

I think they're both issues. Just that Spock had something else to his character with while Troi was a poorly defined character.

Spock could command a woman from across the room to pick up a communicator. Telepathy is sadly less thought out and more plot driven.

 

[Orphalesion]

I think they're both issues. Just that Spock had something else to his character with while Troi was a poorly defined character.

Exactly my point If a concept is basically the one thing your character has, you better sit down to define that concept properly. But they didn't. Which sucks because I always liked the basic idea of Troi and her telepathic species. If i

 

[Tallguy]

If i

If I what? We're not mind readers, you know!

 

[KamenRiderBlade]

Sarek can talk to Michael across many light years.

The power of Mind Melded folks allow long range Telepathic communications to individuals you've melded before.
Leaving a portion of your Katra with those you've mind-melded with before allows easy long range Psychic Comms.
It's a pretty handy power IMO.
Imagine if you can mentally link & communicate with loved ones several light years away w/o technology.

 

[Weyoun 251]

Let's consider Troi for a moment as an example of a Betazoid's telepathic range. Someone noted this above about a page or 2 back, but it's worth exploring.

The FX scenes really distort scale. Whenever Troi reads the emotions of a ship's captain whom Picard is sparring with on screen, that ship captain is tens of thousands of Km away. They really aren't within a few feet of each other.

Earth's diameter is 12.75 thousand km. Circumference is 40 thousand km. A typical class M planet.

So, if Troi can read the emotions of a specific individual that's tens of thousands of Km away, then she should be able to read everyone on the Enterprise from wherever she is on the ship simply by focusing or concentrating. Likewise, the same holds true if she's on a planet - anyone within range is open to being read.

Let's assume this is typical for a full Betazoid. At any given time there are anywhere from a few hundred to a few billion people within telepathic range. If, as Nyotarules keeps emphasizing, non-telepaths just broadcast their thoughts the way people have conversations in public, then that's upwards of billions of "voices" telepathically bombarding the senses of a Betazoid (or any telepath) all the time without letup.

With all that noise, maybe it takes extreme focus to pick out 1 specific individual. Does a telepath really need to work at not eavesdropping on the billions of stray thoughts bombing their senses or does it all become telepathic white noise?

That is, if there is a distance range limit. Perhaps it's line of sight and the target must be seen either in person or on screen in order to be read by a telepath. Can't see them? Can't focus on them.

Then again, Spock made a telepathic connection through a wall to an unseen target on the other side, Tam Elbrun made contact with Gomtuu across light years (didn't he?), Wyatt Miller did the same when he made telepathic contact across light years through Dreams. Spock even sensed the loss of the Intrepid from light years away.

So, who knows?

It’s a great point about how theoretically Troi can hear millions of voices in a cacophony - you would presume that it takes great skill and training to filter those so they don’t become overpowering.

You look at Cordelia in Angel where the demon causes her to experience the visions from TPTB all at once rather than in the targeted manner that she normally gets them or, I believe, as was done with Superman where he was made to hear all of Earth’s cries for help at once and with both how debilitating it was - I would expect it to be a similarly painful experience for Troi were she not able to filter etc

 

[Nerys Myk]

She does NOT dampen her pheromones as Gene explicitly demonstrated in the novel of TMP. It's even noted that the Ilia probe has them as well.

The Oath of Celibacy is just that. An oath. A promise. A rule.