Why didn't they make Troi the communications offcier?

[Solarbaby]

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?

 

[sonak]

I like your idea-a secondary position would have made her a slightly more useful character.

 

[MikeH92467]

I think it was simple case of GR over-thinking things. I guess that he was looking for a different dynamic between the bridge crew and didn't want to be accused of creating a "token" female role in the person of a communications officer. In one sense, the idea of ship's counselor is a realistic one: space is dangerous, scary and long service "out there" is bound to take a toll on crew and families. On the other hand, making her a senior officer with a constant bridge presence really makes no sense to me at all. Putting her in non-standard uniforms was the worst mistake of all, IMHO, because I can't think of anyone who doesn't think she looked sharp, professional and devastatingly attractive in the regular uniform. I guess the "cheerleader" type unis were a reflection of Roddenberry's vision that Star Fleet wasn't "really" a military outfit.

 

[Christopher]

The intent of TNG's developers was that the technology had become so much more advanced that the ship itself could do more of the things that crewmembers had to do in the previous century, like handling communications. Remember, originally they didn't have a regular chief engineer character because they figured the ship was advanced enough to repair itself and so engineering wouldn't be a major part of the stories. And they combined helm and navigation into one "conn" officer and put all the back-of-the-bridge consoles under just one person's supervision as needed, with the bridge designed to be more of a conference lounge than a computer center. Overall, they just wanted to have fewer people needed to do the work of running the ship. All of these were decisions that later producers pretty much reversed, although they never did get around to restoring communications officers as a distinct position.

It is odd that TNG had the security chief handle communications, though. In VGR that was Harry's job as ops manager, I believe, so by analogy it would've been Data's responsibility on the Enterprise. Maybe they just wanted communications in both cases to be handled by the person standing behind the captain's chair so they could easily fit the person saying "Incoming communication" and the captain saying "On screen" in the same shot.

 

[UnknownSample]

One thing, that bridge design didn't allow for specialized experts to be at the captain's elbow, advising him/her. Either you were standing behind the big wooden curved thing, or you were operating a science station back behind Yar and Worf, where no one could see you.

I thought at first that the idea of this thread was supposed to be that Troi could have handled communications via telepathy, but of course she couldn't have. I'll throw in my chief complaint about Troi's most important job, to read empathically the aliens they confront, as a sort of lie detector... my complaint is that usually she establishes "contact" through a viewscreen image. The new alien may be hundreds of miles away, in a ship or on a planet, and that's too far for contact of course... unless they establish a communications link, and she gets to look at a big, live talking head on the Bridge viewscreen. Why would that help? Is the person any closer than she/he was? Really, they're telling us she can make mind contact with a picture.

 

[Vanyel]

One thing, that bridge design didn't allow for specialized experts to be at the captain's elbow, advising him/her. Either you were standing behind the big wooden curved thing, or you were operating a science station back behind Yar and Worf, where no one could see you.

I thought at first that the idea of this thread was supposed to be that Troi could have handled communications via telepathy, but of course she couldn't have. I'll throw in my chief complaint about Troi's most important job, to read empathically the aliens they confront, as a sort of lie detector... my complaint is that usually she establishes "contact" through a viewscreen image. The new alien may be hundreds of miles away, in a ship or on a planet, and that's too far for contact of course... unless they establish a communications link, and she gets to look at a big, live talking head on the Bridge viewscreen. Why would that help? Is the person any closer than she/he was? Really, they're telling us she can make mind contact with a picture.

I figured the more people on the ship the bigger the emotional impression they give off. So if the ship has a few hundred people she could easily read it. It's crew would know something, be on edge or calm, angry or curious. She'd read that compare it to how the person on the view screen is reacting and give her opinion.

Counseling, theoretically, should be under medical, therefore under Crusher's command. Shouldn't her secondary training be as a medic or nurse and be in Sickbay during battle?

 

[Shon T'Hara]

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.

 

[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.

 

[T'Girl]

I sometime think that what Troi is, is a "organic scanner." She exists outside of all the technology.

 

[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.

 

[Merlanthe]

I believe Troi would have done better in a different position than councillor. I remember a couple weeks ago i was discussing Troi with my brother and how she had potential, especially with her empathic abilities, but that it was never followed up on and her attempts to help others in her role of councillor more often served to exacerbate the situation making her seem unnecessary and ineffectual especially once Guinan was introduced.

His response was that she should have been the tactical officer becasue apparently in Nemesis there is a scene where she has to take charge of tactical and manages to hit a cloaked ship because she was able to sense the feelings/minds? of those onboard.

I must admitt i dont remember Nemesis very well so if my brother was wrong about that then feel free to correct me but either way a Betazeds empathic/telepathic abilities would be very effective for a tactical officer. Though i do agree with the op that comm officer would have been a good role for her

 

[F. King Daniel]

I the bizarro early draft of First Contact on IMSDB, Troi is the communications officer of the Enterprise-E. So, at some point, someone thought it was a good idea.

 

[Christopher]

I'll throw in my chief complaint about Troi's most important job, to read empathically the aliens they confront, as a sort of lie detector... my complaint is that usually she establishes "contact" through a viewscreen image. The new alien may be hundreds of miles away, in a ship or on a planet, and that's too far for contact of course... unless they establish a communications link, and she gets to look at a big, live talking head on the Bridge viewscreen. Why would that help? Is the person any closer than she/he was? Really, they're telling us she can make mind contact with a picture.

I always figured she was just very good at reading their subliminal nonverbal cues, body language, microexpressions, and the like. To some extent, that's all empathy is in the real world -- the ability to register other people's nonverbal cues and recognize what they're feeling. People who lack empathy, like psychopaths, are unable to notice other people's emotional responses. So it stands to reason that it could go the other way -- that you could augment the empathic part of the brain to be even better at recognizing and processing those emotional cues so that you could read people's expressions and body language and tell what they were feeling even better than normal people could, or even see through their attempts to hide their emotions.

Of course we know Betazoid empathy has a psionic component, but I'm thinking that a brain structure attuned to read emotions psionically could just as well be attuned to recognizing emotional cues on all levels, including through more conventional senses. In "The Loss," maybe it wasn't just Deanna's psi ability that was suppressed, but the whole emotion-processing part of her brain, which could explain why she was so mean to everyone and so paranoid about whether they thought less of her.

 

[BillJ]

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.

Except according to The Drumhead, Picard broke the Prime Directive nine times his first four years in command. If that was Troi's job, she wasn't doing it very well.

 

[C.E. Evans]

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."

I thought Sato started strong in ENT, but towards the end of the series, she started to become window dressing in many episodes (with a few notable exceptions).

 

[SchwEnt]

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).

 

[MikeH92467]

There could be some leeway for different command styles and situations. Picard was in command of the Federation Flagship and the Galaxy class was really kind of a spacegoing symbol of peaceful exploration and friendship. Thus, it might make sense for him to have a counselor at his hand since he would be dealing with a lot of diplomatic situations. Someone like Jellico, in a much more warlike setting would probably be just as happy to have the counselor stashed somewhere below decks and out of his hair.

 

[Unicron]

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.

 

[SchwEnt]

Like a diplomatic officer? First contact specialist?

For a ship like the Enterprise, flagship for the Federation, making contact with new civilizations and all that, there really should have been a dedicated Federation diplomat/representative on board. Surely the ship and mission could accommodate it.

I know Picard and starship captains in general are tasked with being Federation reps when making first contact and serving as diplomats when required. But you know what I mean. Maybe ship's counselor position should have been expanded in this role. It worked out that way sometimes, but maybe make it more explicit.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

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.

Sounds interesting. First I've heard of this. Perhaps it was modified because an explicit "political officer" would have evoked the Soviet Union a tad too much?