December 31, 1990, "The Loss"
Ugh. A bad example of a Troi episode. I have to imagine that there are diseases that can take away a Betazoid's telepathy and she'd be trained to deal with this scenario.
Fiver (by Kira)
The Episode
BROOKS: It's been five months since Marc's accident. I haven't missed a single hour of my duties. I volunteered for extra time in the nursery. My language studies are better than they've ever been. Somebody else might have given in, but I didn't.
TROI: Given in to what?
BROOKS: Death is a normal part of life. Maybe some of us are better at facing that than others.
Ugh, stupid Gene and his "humans don't grieve" nonsense.
DATA: An aggregate field of plane-polarised objects has just appeared. And disappeared.
A what? Can asteroids generate a magnetic field large enough to align all of the rocks in the same direction? Weird...
DATA: A resumption of our present course at warp six will place us in the T'lli Beta system in six days, thirteen hours, forty seven minutes.
RIKER: What, no seconds?
DATA: I have discovered, sir, a certain level of impatience when I calculate a lengthy time interval to the nearest second. However, if you wish
RIKER: No, no. Minutes is fine.
I get the idea, but actually at this scale "almost six days and fourteen hours" would be fine. Do the official records rely on bridge dialogue for stuff this important, rather than the helm display?
PICARD: Full impulse. Rotate heading in five degree increments.
You do know that headings consist of TWO angles, right Jean-Luc? "His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking."
DATA: Integrity field stress exceeding eighty two million kilodynes.
The dyne is the unit of force for the cm-g-s system. Why Data doesn't use 820 kilonewtons is beyond me. Incidentally, the episode "Gravity" introduces the isodyne, which the Star Trek Encyclopedia calls a unit of measure for the energy of warp particles.
TROI: No, I don't think so. No. There's nothing. Nothing. I sense nothing.
PICARD: It's alright, Counsellor. Perhaps there's nothing out there to sense.
DATA: Indeed, there are many races that are not empathically detectable. The Breen, the Ferengi, the
TROI: No, you don't understand. I don't sense anything. Not out there, not in here. All of you, you're all blank to me.
Listing species that are likely immune to telepathy would be interesting. Tholians come to mind immediately. It would be interested to see what races a full Betazoid can read but Troi's weaker powers can't.
I don't understand the "blank" comment. This field is overloading her mind with physic static, she shouldn't detect anything. "Blank" implies she can read everything except the holes occupied by people.
CRUSHER: And you may not. Now, I'll do my homework. I'll see what I can do to regenerate those cells. In the meantime, I want you to talk to someone. There are several people on board who have degrees in psychology, who are qualified therapists.
Troi has to be TOLD this? Aren't they members of her staff? Doesn't she have an assistant counselor to go to?
TROI: You know what the worst part of this is? And I've seen it happen to so many patients.
RIKER: What?
TROI: The way other people change. How they start to treat you differently. They walk on eggshells around you. Sometimes they avoid you altogether. Sometimes they become overbearing, reach out a helping hand to the blind woman.
RIKER: I'm sorry if I
TROI: I will not be treated that way!
RIKER: Hey! Imzadi.
TROI: Oh, please.
RIKER: Deanna, I've never seen you quite so scared.
TROI: I'm fine. If I get better, I get better. If I don't, I'll adapt. Life goes on.
I don't like this exchange. I get the parallel with Brooks, but it doesn't work like this. Troi is acting like she can be perfectly fine without her powers, but she should know that denial can't be encouraged.
TROI: Because I can't tell how you're feeling this morning, but it seems to me that one night of crying can't make up for months of denial.
BROOKS: No. You're wrong. I feel better today than I have in ages. You're absolutely wrong, Deanna.
Troi will tell Guinan later that there are other ways to gauge the emotional state of a person, is she just having a brain fart right now? There's denial and there's refusal to accept the truth.
DATA: The probe's point of view reveals that the objects exist entirely in two dimensions, on a single plane.
LAFORGE: They have length and width, but not height. Virtually flat.
"Virtually" flat implies a very small third dimension. This is a problem that I always had with Flatland. A line has no width, we just represent it with a very small width to be able to see it. These "border lines" don't exist in the real world unless there is a small third dimension.
DATA: That is why the ship's forward sensors did not detect them initially. We were looking at them along their edge. There was no surface to read.
I get that the lateral sensor array is aligned on the saucer's perimeter and would imply a planar scanning region, but there have to be other sensor arrays to make things three-dimensional. Even IF the saucer equator happens to lie on the same plane as these things, the stardrive sensor arrays AREN'T.
RIKER: Can you explain why they're pulling us along with them?
LAFORGE: Somehow, they're able to polarise the graviton field as they move about. We're caught in the wake.
Polarize? They turned the Enterprise into a magnet that's being attracted to the magnetic field of these guys? This is exactly the sort of thing that a warp field should be able to sidestep!
LAFORGE: It's a shame we can't tell if they're sentient.
TROI: What do you mean by that? I'm doing the best that I can.
Ugh! We've seen plenty of sentient life-forms with brains sufficiently different than humanoids that I wouldn't expect a Betazoid to understand. In fact, I wouldn't expect the Betazoids to be able to read anything other than similar humanoids (decedents of the Preservers) Even Q should be a blank.
TROI: How do you people live like this?
Like I said, I hate this episode. It makes Troi less likeable, which is a stupid idea when a lot of the viewers already don't like her. Furthermore, it's like I said earlier, both as a Betazoid and as a counselor she should be trained for this. At this point in the episode Deanna really is acting like she needs to be empathic to be a counselor, which is ludicrous.
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