Straight from the beginning I noticed that her telepathy with the only thing keeping her from being entirely useless.
It ironically had value in "Encounter of Farpoint", where only she could pick up on things that no human there possibly could begin to do. However, 178 episodes of faceless space mushrooms and galactic squids with tentacles made from a disused cat toy with all those frayed strand edges would get repetitive way too fast.
On the flip side, having her teach to Picard in every episode how it's a miracle species can communicate as she asks him to describe what the mug of steamy piping hot brown liquid tea may or may not have been ("Ensigns of Command") isn't much better, but the occasional use is great. I'd have to see "Loud as a Whisper" again, I think she had a decent moment in that one...?
Then you have these goofy middle ones where she loses her powers or wakes up as a Romulan and never manages to stumble or have the universal translator recognized...
Then the "it's obvious, captain" shtick, the ever-used crutch when it wasn't the Troi-centric episode of the season.
Troi's based on an interesting idea, popular for the era, rarely used well, often misused, and without enough knowledge in other areas as a backup.
Then she is stuck in an episode sitting awkwardly on a blue chair with a blue drape in front of her and having to say the react to the same silly line over and over. Oh wait, wrong episode-- she's now the antithesis of Tam Elbron, because if he was interesting than doing the opposite condition into Troi for a very special one-off episode is going to be a dozen times better... or not.
Maybe it's brave to re-frame Troi as the "layperson" trope, how we the audience would feel if it happened to us.
It was worse, since I got the impression that Guinan ended up being "what Troi would have been". So now they're stuck with Troi doing the same things they never quite figured out how to make consistent use of, never mind the few times they were onto something they were generally in episodes deemed "average" or otherwise "not well-received". Tea cup scene aside, it never got any better.
Even worse, when she and her mom were kidnapped by Ferengi, even her mom knew how to turn a basic green bedsheet into a well-tailored dress, but Troi still had the frumpy blanket on until they allowed her to put that puce puke-hued garment back on.
As a counselor she appears to have only a (at best) superficial knowledge of psychiatry and for an empath she isn’t very empathetic for there are plenty of times she completely fails to understand basic human emotion and action.
It seemed an easy way for writers to shore up a script on time, if nothing else.
Plenty of times her moral grandstanding seems to obscure any cognitive function she has. And then along comes the episode “The Loss” where she loses her powers causing her to have a mental breakdown showing us exactly who she really is. Her entire self-worth revolves around her (limited) telepathic ability and she sees humans without it as lesser beings.
She became the TNG equivalent of Arnold Rimmer, I'd guess? TBH, it's bold to show someone being so continually perfect to have a big stumble. Yeah, it was a trope and by the end all would be perfect again. At the time, it was more daring. But was it successful?
"Lesser" because nobody else had the empathic ability?
It is said that when one sense is lost, others make up for it. Is Troi really showing "true colors" or is the RGB wheel now showing a brighter GB because R vanished?
Could a possible plot point be in how others respond as much as the one who lost theirs is reacting?
Dare I say it - is this episode worth a rewatch, not because it's been forever but because there may be a spark of an idea that should have been explored but didn't?
The episode reveals that she’s bigoted, has no introspection what so ever and overly relies on her ability to the point where she felt unable to perform her duties as a counselor, which doesn’t require telepathy… Personally I’d prefer a psychiatrist that couldn’t read my emotions just to inform me that I needed to figure it out on my own. Seriously though, most of the time she just points out the obvious! “Hmm… that mean looking alien over there with the battle axe wants to behead you.” Thanks Doc!
That's an entertainingly creative way to put it.
But Troi did get the short shrift as characterization goes and it's all down to the scripts dropping the ball.
