Why didn't they make Troi the communications offcier?

[C.E. Evans]

That being said, I would have liked to see the original conception for the officer who became Troi's counselor position, which was originally a sort of political officer designed to assist the captain at the edge of known space, and to enforce rules like the PD when it was deemed necessary.

In many ways, that was the duty served by various Federation high commissioners on TOS. They were civilian officials that were only aboard the ship temporarily for special missions, but they all had authority over Kirk.

 

[RoJoHen]

Making Deanna ship's counselor would have worked better if they had given her an office in/near Sickbay. She had no business on the bridge, and then she and Bev could have gotten into all sorts of feminine hijinks.

OR they should have also given her telekinetic and mind control powers. And then turned her evil. Basically, she should have been Jean Grey and/or Dark Phoenix. Or something.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Making Deanna ship's counselor would have worked better if they had given her an office in/near Sickbay. She had no business on the bridge, and then she and Bev could have gotten into all sorts of feminine hijinks.

It seems like they did eventually give her office, but I've always favored the idea that the only reason why Troi was on the bridge is because Picard wanted her there. On other Galaxy-class ships, someone else--like the second officer--may sit there or there may only be two chairs in the command well at all.

I also tend to think that if Edward Jellico had continued as captain of the Enterprise-D, Troi wouldn't have been on the bridge for too much longer, IMO.

 

[Solarbaby]

Regarding her telepathic abilities, these were a problem for the writers. Why was she not in the episode conspiracy? Because she would instantly know that someone she knew well wasn't who they said they were- albeit a slug inside them controlling them. So she was inexplicably absent.

No, she wasn't. She was present throughout the episode, and when Picard talked with the corrupted admirals, Troi could only say that she felt something was being hidden but she couldn't tell what, or by whom. Keep in mind too that even though her powers were a little wonky in S1, it became clear early on that Troi's telepathy is limited by her human genetics, and that she can't communicate telepathically as easily as her mother could. She was better at sensing emotions, hence she was empathic in most other eps.

That being said, I would have liked to see the original conception for the officer who became Troi's counselor position, which was originally a sort of political officer designed to assist the captain at the edge of known space, and to enforce rules like the PD when it was deemed necessary.

My bad.

I wonder what episode I'm thinking of where she wasn't present and her abilities would have immediately stopped the story. It's been a long time since I watched TNG. I'm waitign for the blu ray then I'll go through them all.

 

[Christopher]

Like a diplomatic officer? First contact specialist?

Which is her role aboard the starship Titan in the novels. And I've established in my Trek novels that that was part of her job description on the Enterprise as well, since it often was her effective role in practice even if they never used the terms.

 

[sonak]

Making Deanna ship's counselor would have worked better if they had given her an office in/near Sickbay. She had no business on the bridge, and then she and Bev could have gotten into all sorts of feminine hijinks.

It seems like they did eventually give her office, but I've always favored the idea that the only reason why Troi was on the bridge is because Picard wanted her there. On other Galaxy-class ships, someone else--like the second officer--may sit there or there may only be two chairs in the command well at all.

I also tend to think that if Edward Jellico had continued as captain of the Enterprise-D, Troi wouldn't have been on the bridge for too much longer, IMO.

That makes sense. And again, I think a lot of the reason for her being on the bridge was her empathic abilities, not her being a therapist.(because what sense does it make to put your ship's therapist on the bridge?)

So on other ships, where the counselors aren't telepathic or empathic, they probably just stay in their office and see crewmembers.

 

[Doug Otte]

I tend to agree with this. Just one example which springs to mind is the scene in “We’ll Always Have Paris” where she takes the captain aside and expresses her concerns about the spike in his emotional response after he heard Manheim’s name, and warns him not to let whatever it is (she doesn’t actually know why he has this sudden reaction) affect his judgement in dealing with the situation. Scenes like this, IMO, give perfect justification for why she has got a chair on the bridge. In terms of the scripts she rarely got to do anything particularly useful. But in terms of her place in the hierarchy of the Enterprise crew, her position, then sitting next to the captain on the bridge was quite logical. One of her chief official responsibilities is clearly to monitor the captain and make sure he maintains discipline during those situations which might cause him stress and anxiety, as well as providing him with a comfort zone, somebody he can ask for advice when ever he is called upon to make a tough command decision.

I agree, and I remember how impressed I was by her role in "WAHP." (How's that for an acronym?) I was disappointed that she didn't have many further interactions with Picard like it in the series. The only similar one that I can remember is in The Defector. After Picard concluded a staff meeting in the conference room, and after the rest of the senior staff had left, she challenged him on some decision. "Wouldn't it be prudent to..." ...something along those lines.

Doug

 

[Unicron]

My bad.

I wonder what episode I'm thinking of where she wasn't present and her abilities would have immediately stopped the story. It's been a long time since I watched TNG. I'm waitign for the blu ray then I'll go through them all.

Eh, no worries. I think you're right that there's at least one ep like that, and I can't remember which one it is either.

 

[Lance]

I subscribe to the theory that Starfleet created the councilor position because of Kirk. The job isn't so much a therapist as a political officer that monitors the crew to make sure they don't break the Prime Directive. Troi's position on the bridge and Picard consulting her makes a lot more sense in that light.

I tend to agree with this. Just one example which springs to mind is the scene in “We’ll Always Have Paris” where she takes the captain aside and expresses her concerns about the spike in his emotional response after he heard Manheim’s name, and warns him not to let whatever it is (she doesn’t actually know why he has this sudden reaction) affect his judgement in dealing with the situation. Scenes like this, IMO, give perfect justification for why she has got a chair on the bridge. In terms of the scripts she rarely got to do anything particularly useful. But in terms of her place in the hierarchy of the Enterprise crew, her position, then sitting next to the captain on the bridge was quite logical. One of her chief official responsibilities is clearly to monitor the captain and make sure he maintains discipline during those situations which might cause him stress and anxiety, as well as providing him with a comfort zone, somebody he can ask for advice when ever he is called upon to make a tough command decision.

^^^ I get what you're saying here. But I don't think a captain would really need that close monitoring and extra incentive to maintain discipline and all that.

How little confidence would Starfleet have in their captains if that kind of constant babysitting would be necessary?
An accomplished and professional officer like Picard shouldn't need that kind of second-guessing or monitoring. If a captain DID need that kind of "guidance", he shouldn't be captain in the first place. He'd have the wisdom and experience and training to make sound decisions, or he wouldn't be captain.

Yes sure, provide a counselor aboard to assist the captain with those matters when needed. But to place a counselor directly on the bridge and literally at his side, that's overdoing it (if the role is indeed to "keep on eye" on the captain rather than advise).

I think we only need look at the original series to see why Starfleet would consider it a very good idea to have a ship’s counsellor right there on the bridge next to the captain during stressful situations.

A core component of TOS (in as much as it was written into the series bible) was that the captain would sometimes feel the very real pressures of his responsibilities. We seen it with Captain Pike in “The Cage”, and we also seen Kirk grapple with it multiple times. Moments where their emotional control lapsed. Further to this, you get guest captains, like Decker in “The Doomsday Machine”, whose decisions were flawed and who ultimately tipped over the edge into a full-on breakdown. So there was always an acknowledgement that it was a very stressful position.

Kirk had the support of McCoy, who acted as something of a counsellor on several occasions as well as being a friend of the captain. But McCoy can’t be in sickbay and on the bridge at the same time. Evidently, by the time of The Next Generation, Starfleet had concluded that there were benefits for giving the captain a crutch to lean on. In theory, the counsellor being there on the bridge avoided the situations we occasionally seen in TOS, where a starship captain made the wrong call, or let their immediate emotional responses to a situation dictate their decisions, often for the worse. The counsellor is there to monitor that the captain doesn’t become another Matt Decker or Ronald Tracy during a crucial moment. Presumably she also frequently liases with the chief medical officer about the state of the captain’s mental well-being. But her position on the bridge is, IMO, fully justified.

All of that waffle said, I don’t particularly agree with Troi having been a part of the chain of command. I think it would have made more sense for her to have had several degrees of seperation from actual command responsibilities. “Encounter At Farpoint” aside, I’ve always felt that this was the general implication for much of the series’ run, at least until somebody in the fifth season suddenly remembered that she’d been a Lieutenant Commander in the pilot episode and made it into a plot point (“Disaster” ), and then they began puting her into a uniform and training her up to be a proper commander in year six.

 

[Shon T'Hara]

^^^ I get what you're saying here. But I don't think a captain would really need that close monitoring and extra incentive to maintain discipline and all that.

How little confidence would Starfleet have in their captains if that kind of constant babysitting would be necessary?

Captains like Ben Maxwell, Erik Pressman, Rudolph Ransom, Ron Tracey, and Garth of Izar? And that's not even touching on the admiralty.

 

[Kegg]

IMO, the communications officer is a very limited role. And what I mean by that is unless there's a concentrated effort to make him or her more than just a bridge position to be filled--and I see that happening with the Abramsverse Uhura--the comm officer will very rarely say anything more than "Hailing frequencies open, sir." or "We're being hailed, sir."

Quite.

In theory, anyway, a counselor character might have less dialogue than a communications officer while on the bridge, but that dialogue is more likely to be of substance, involving insight into the personages involved in a given situation. It made sense as a job position.

In Enterprise to make the communications officer job relevant they had to make it more than diverting incoming calls, hence the addition of the idea that she is also a xenolinguistics expert.

I think we only need look at the original series to see why Starfleet would consider it a very good idea to have a ship’s counsellor right there on the bridge next to the captain during stressful situations.

Not only that, but when the original series did need to deal with psychological issues it tended to lean on the medical doctor McCoy to provide that duty, as in, for example, "The Balance of Terror", where he gets under Kirk's skin in just the right way. His role in "The Doomsday Machine", where he determines that Commodore Decker is clearly unstable and unfit to command, is the kind of role one could see a ship's counselor doing.

 

[SchwEnt]

^^^ I get what you're saying here. But I don't think a captain would really need that close monitoring and extra incentive to maintain discipline and all that.

How little confidence would Starfleet have in their captains if that kind of constant babysitting would be necessary?

Captains like Ben Maxwell, Erik Pressman, Rudolph Ransom, Ron Tracey, and Garth of Izar? And that's not even touching on the admiralty.

Yes, that's true. Throw in the admiralty and that's a big bunch of trouble, in more ways than one.

I suppose that's a common failing in ST, whenever we see Starfleet outside of our regular heroes, Starfleet is evil or stupid. It works for a single dramatic eps or movie. Cumulatively, it gives a very bad impression of Starfleet captains.

And they've mentioned the psych tests and advanced training that few starship captains can pass, so you'd think they'd weed out the wacky ones.

Maybe it's brought some good drama and good eps over the years. But it's too bad the belivability factor suffers so badly. IRL, even under stresses of war and Cold War tensions and nuclear arsenals at their disposal and all that, how many commanders have been so stressed and unstable they required a constant psych counselor at their side to monitor them, lest they fly off the handle?

I'd think that if current day professional training can produce stable and qualified commanders, Starfleet should be able to produce equally competant commanders without needing counselor babysitting (at least not constantly on the bridge).

But then, I guess I'm comparing reality with what works as good drama and story in fiction.

 

[Christopher]

The counselor's job is not just to keep an eye on the captain, though that is a part of it. The counselor's job is also to keep the captain appraised of the crew's state of mind. The idea expressed in the TNG behind-the-scenes materials is that 24th-century Starfleet considered the crew as integral a part of the vessel's functioning as the physical hardware, and so it was important to have an expert whose job was to ensure its smooth functioning. So basically the counselor is to the crew what the chief engineer is to the engines. The engines shouldn't need constant babysitting, but you still have someone whose job it is to monitor them and regularly report their status, even if the report is just "all systems nominal."

And really, why is it so bad to have a counselor always on hand for the command crew to talk to? It's a myth that mental health care is only needed in cases of mental instability or psychosis. As with physical health care, regular maintenance is part of staying healthy, especially if one has a stressful job. It's like sports teams always having a team doctor on hand. A captain often has to make difficult and stressful decisions, and it's useful to have someone to talk to, someone who can be a check on your reasoning and force you to confront whether you're making your decision for the right reasons. Talking with a therapist isn't about staving off insanity, it's about taking the time to examine yourself and evaluate your own thought process and motivations, to get to the truth about yourself and confront the questions you might've been unwilling to ask on your own. And given the vitally important decisions a starship captain may have to make, it's a very good idea to have that kind of analysis of the decision-making process. It's about keeping the captain honest.

 

[Lance]

The counselor's job is not just to keep an eye on the captain, though that is a part of it. The counselor's job is also to keep the captain appraised of the crew's state of mind. The idea expressed in the TNG behind-the-scenes materials is that 24th-century Starfleet considered the crew as integral a part of the vessel's functioning as the physical hardware, and so it was important to have an expert whose job was to ensure its smooth functioning. So basically the counselor is to the crew what the chief engineer is to the engines. The engines shouldn't need constant babysitting, but you still have someone whose job it is to monitor them and regularly report their status, even if the report is just "all systems nominal."

^^^ All of that ties in very well with (I think) Jonathan Frakes’ statement in interviews that he felt Deanna Troi was one of the most important characters in the fictional setting of the Enterprise crew, even if her role in the scripts wasn’t often reflective of the important role she played.

 

[CDR6]

It is odd they did away with Uhura's position in TNG. Someone cannot fire torpedoes AND listen out for unusual sounds in space frequencies. Especially Worf and his bad aim.

It seems such a waste of a consistently badly written -yet extremely able - at times- character to just sit next to the captain and do nothing except state the obvious and ask the question that the audience needed asking- despite being a Lt.Commander and already should know the answer.

Obviously there were many times she was important with her telepathy etc. But she was missing from some episodes altogether. Given her skills she should have been the communications officer and a counsellor second. Her place on the bridge just seems silly as a counsellor. As a comm's officer it would have given her more credibility.

I am not dissing her character on TNG- she is my fave character of all Trek.

What do you think?

I agree with what you are saying here... It was a common failing w/Next Gen to have everything, done by everybody, all the time. I think she would have been an all around better character with the Comm Function as her bridge duty.

Regards,
Chuck

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Troi's role as Counsellor makes sense, especially on a ship with 1000-odd people onboard. I can even understand why she was allowed to be in her leotards (civvies and some crewmembers might not feel like opening up to someone in uniform), though I do think she always looked better in uniform than her other outfits. Her empathic abilities also make her ideally suited to the role, even if she was a little over-dependent on them. Being on the Bridge at times also makes sense, to advice Picard on crew morale and the psychology of alien races they make contact with.

I do think they should have done more with that though, named her as she ship's Diplomatic Officer (though with Picard about, the role would be a little redundant). In that capacity the duties of Communications Officer would fit in nicely and make sense, in addition to being Counsellor. Otherwise the role could be quite limiting (especially seeing as how tactical and operations can both handle communications).

On ships with starfighters I can understand a dedicated Comm Officer, needed to co-ordinate the fighters and ensure a unified attack force. But on a Galaxy-Class it doesn't seem all that necessary to have a dedicated character in the role.

But that's just my opinion.

 

[Christopher]

I think it might've made more sense if Troi had actually been a civilian. The original idea was that there was a large contingent of civilian scientists and specialists aboard, not just family members of officers; the Enterprise-D was meant to be sort of a university village in space, a mobile research institution. It would've made sense to have someone whose job was to be the civilians' official representative and liaison with the command crew. It might've given the civilians a larger role in the series, and could've given Troi a more clearly defined role as the mediator between Starfleet and civilian priorities.

It may seem irregular to have a civilian in the command crew, but other Trek series have similar instances. Voyager had Neelix and Seven (and Kes, to a lesser extent) as key advisors, and the Doctor wasn't technically an officer. And on Enterprise, Dr. Phlox was a civilian, and T'Pol, the second-in-command, was a member of a foreign nation's military for the first two seasons and a civilian for the third before finally getting a Starfleet commission in season 4.

 

[Lt. LaForge]

Regarding her telepathic abilities, these were a problem for the writers. Why was she not in the episode conspiracy? Because she would instantly know that someone she knew well wasn't who they said they were- albeit a slug inside them controlling them. So she was inexplicably absent.

Hehe, good spot. The sneaky writers!!! I think Uhura's job itself was useless to be honest. Communications Officer? on a Starship, seriously?

 

[SchwEnt]

I like the idea of a counselor serving as a "crew" engineer, keeping the ship's complement up and running well.

I can see the counselor serving a vital ship function this way, as important as a CMO, if you want to give equal significance to both physical and mental health.

But even then, we haven't seen Chief Medical Officers having a permanent bridge station, so why would a counselor need to be stationed at the captain's side all the time?

 

[Christopher]

^Because that's just one facet of her job, in addition to being a check on the captain's judgment and an advisor in diplomatic and contact situations. Understanding the psychology of an alien race or a hostile captain can be essential to resolving a situation peacefully and safely, so I can certainly see the value of having a psychologist as a regular advisor. The show just didn't do a very good job of depicting how that would work beyond having her say "I sense anger from the guy who's shouting and pointing big guns at us." But we did see her utilized more usefully in some contacts, like advising Picard on how to address the Jarada and avoid a diplomatic screwup in "The Big Goodbye," or explaining what was known about Romulan culture and psychology in "The Neutral Zone."