[QUOTE=Miller]
They’re having a hearing about revoking Data’s legal identity as a person, and they can’t just put the trial on hold until they ship some paralegals in from Betelgeuse?
[/quote]
This is easily explained. You see, the Federation Star Date system is designed to correct for the relativistic effects of travel at warp speed, and therefore accounts for displacement both in time and space. However, if legal representation travels from Betelgeuse at warp speed, they effectively arrive before they have left in the first place. This means that, technically, they are not present at the trial even after they arrive, and so are incapable of legally representing Data until after the trial is concluded.
Federation legal experts are exploring the possibility of travel through stabilized artificial loopholes to address this matter.
[QUOTE=Aesiron]
Not really. No one on the ship besides Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and *occasionally * Scotty mattered at all in Star Trek. For all its ills, at least *The Next Generation * was a true ensemble effort until the movies, when it became the Picard and Data hours.
[/QUOTE]
Say what you want about Uhura’s usefulness, she has the best line in all of TOS. In “The Naked Time,” when drunk Sulu grabs her and calls her “fair maiden,” she replies: “Sorry, neither!”
[QUOTE=Miller]
I hope it’s been obvious that I’ve been joking in my “No Star Trek lawyers” arguments, but honestly, that’s just about the lamest excuse for a plot contrivance I’ve ever heard. And since we’re talking Star Trek, that’s saying something! They’re having a hearing about revoking Data’s legal identity as a person, and they can’t just put the trial on hold until they ship some paralegals in from Betelgeuse? And everyone, including the defendent, is okay with this? “Hey, Data, we don’t have any lawyers to work on your defence. How vested are you in the idea of having someone with actual legal expertise argue that you should be granted more civil rights than a microwave oven?”
Man, I hate Star Trek.
[/QUOTE]
Star Trek: TNG had some really poorly written scripts. REALLY poorly written scripts. Worse than the lame ones from TOS. If it hadn’t been for the drought, we woulda shut the TV off numerous times. As it was, thank goodness for the Borg, which gave the series some pizzaz.
Oh, I didn’t hate her but I thought she was lame from the very first episode. C’mon, Picard was obviously a kinder, gentler, touchy-feely politically correct Kirk, but then they had to give him a counselor so he could go off to his ready room and discuss his feelings??
[QUOTE=John DiFool]
That helps to explain why (borrowing from a description of Buddy Hackett) she sounds like she has marbles in her mouth.
[/QUOTE]
The “accent”, I believe, sounds very much like someone “singing” without singing. I mean, forming words the way you’re encouraged to form them while singing in the classical style. Flat tongue, rounded oral cavity. Like you have a mouth full of marbles.
[QUOTE=coffeecat]
The more “Betazoid empathic powers” someone has, the worse their social skills. Troi is half-Betazoid and acts like your stereotypical bad therapist who couldn’t grab a clue with a tractor beam. Her mom is full-Betazoid and is an aging slut-wannabe you’d cross the street to avoid. Tam Elbrun has super-Betazoid powers, and it gives him an incapacitating disorder. What kind of empathy is that?
[/QUOTE]
In her Vaster Than Empires And More Slow, LeGuinn says that autism is actually caused by pyschic empathy. The withdrawal of autism is a defense to the constant bombardment of emotions.
Re Ferengi Waivers
IIRC “Welcome, my house is MY house as are all the contents thereof.” You also had to pay admission.
Re Louaxanna Troi
I was one of the few who actually liked her. ‘I know what you’re feeling and thinking. Now I’ll tell you exactly what I’m feeling and thinking. Life is too short to put with nonsense.’
[QUOTE=coffeecat]
The more “Betazoid empathic powers” someone has, the worse their social skills.
[/QUOTE]
I thought Lon Suder proved your point, but the serial killer on Voyager was neither empathic or telepathic, which is probably why he dropper the Trek gig and took up being a slime ball in Lord of the Rings.
[QUOTE=coffeecat]
The more “Betazoid empathic powers” someone has, the worse their social skills. Troi is half-Betazoid and acts like your stereotypical bad therapist who couldn’t grab a clue with a tractor beam. Her mom is full-Betazoid and is an aging slut-wannabe you’d cross the street to avoid. Tam Elbrun has super-Betazoid powers, and it gives him an incapacitating disorder. What kind of empathy is that?
[/QUOTE]
In addition to the ‘being bombarded by other people’s emotions all the time would suck pretty bad’ aspect mentioned by DocCathode. Betazoids, other than Deanna Troi, are telepathic, not just empathic, which is a consequence of Deanna’s half-blood status. Being bombarded by everybody’s every thought all the time would suck even worse.
Okay, everybody who’s gonna toss and turn all night thinking about Troi keeping her tongue flat while keeping her oral cavity rounded, raise your … um … hand.
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
She always annoyed me because her awareness of others’ emotions never seemed to be any more profound than your average human would have if they paid the least bit of attention to facial expression or tone of voice. “I’m sensing…frustration.” “I’m sensing…a feeling of isolation.” And everyone would nod as though they had no clue and she was giving them some deep psychological insight. GOD I found that annoying.
[/QUOTE]
Okay, so DeMarco wasn’t a counselor, but it was Troi I was thinking of when I laughed so hard I blew popcorn out my nose.
[QUOTE=Illuminatiprimus]
I know that Gates McFadden got pregnant during the show and I guess she left for that reason but the references I found about Muldaur suggests she left because of problems with her personally - what was that about?
[/QUOTE]
On a Trek board I post on a story surfaces from time to time that there was bad blood between the producers of the show and McFadden about character development, I’d not heard it was simply maternity leave.
Muldaur’s character was a pain in the rear, what that had to do with her own acting I’m not sure, but she never quite gelled as a regular member of the crew.
[QUOTE=devilsknew]
Empathy is not put up with around here, I often wonder why? This place is barren and deserves its curse.
[/QUOTE]
[bdevilsknew**: I’m not sure at what this is directed, and I’m giving you benefit of the doubt, to read that you mean “on planet earth.” Since, of course, if you mean “on the Straight Dope Message Boards,” then you are either (a) insulting other posters, which is not permitted or (b) making a comment about the boards in general. In either case, such comments belong in the Pit Forum, not here.
After watching the first episode, my friend TW called me up and said “What’s with the bullshit ship’s counselor bitch?” Then he goes into a heavy Jewish accent and says “This is Wanda Melnick, Psychic to the Stars!”
[QUOTE=TroubleAgain]
The “accent”, I believe, sounds very much like someone “singing” without singing. I mean, forming words the way you’re encouraged to form them while singing in the classical style. Flat tongue, rounded oral cavity. Like you have a mouth full of marbles.
[/QUOTE]
Of course, there’s also the question of why her mother didn’t have a similar accent …
It was more of a “call and response” traditional greeting:
Quark: “Welcome. My house is my house.”
Official: “As are its contents.”
The character seemed to become less robotic and more human as the series progressed, and getting her into a proper uniform was a nice step.
The parts I liked were when Troi’s mother visited. Troi was, for most of the series, an insufferably sanctimonious bitch, but when her Mom showed up it just completely blew her cool. It actually made her seem like a person, rather than another Roddenberry idealized future-sorta-human thing.
The truth is that the decision to make Troi psychic was a disastrous move from the get go; maybe they didn’t think they were going to get many episodes out there (I said it’d die in a year, as did a lot of folks) but still, it was remarkably short sighted to have a character on a bridge that makes it impossible for an adversary to lie. For awhile, whenever it was convenient, they either had Troi declare that the troublesome species of the week was immune to her powers, and then after awhile they just stopped using it as a plot device in hopes you’d forget about it. I can’t think of any elegant way they could have gotten out of that trap short of killing off Troi, and I guess Tasha filled the early death quota.
Amazingly, they did the same thing with Geordi; in one episode he declares he knows a person is lying because his visor picks up skin temperature and other physical cues that indicate lying that aren’t normally visible. It was an amazing thing to drop in; if Geordi can tell when a person is being deceitful, how can he possibly lose at poker? Why isn’t HE accompanying the Captain on missions? It’s a remarkable ability. They never mentioned it again.
[QUOTE=RickJay]
Amazingly, they did the same thing with Geordi
[/QUOTE]
And on other occasions, Data, and even Worf had previously (and forever after) unseen aspects that solved (or created) the problem of the week. The original series overused Spock’s mysterious Vulcan powers quite a bit, but at least it was limited to that one character. Troi, La Forge and Data all had abilities that were wildly inconsistent, and the pattern was carried through the Voyager with the Doctor, Kes and 7 of 9.
Need a crisis? One of these characters is malfunctioning in some way.
Need a solution? Alien ritual and/or technobabble your way out of it.
Personally, I think Data and the Doctor were the worst in this regard, especially the latter. It’s a crutch for poor writing and invariably, despite the huge personal drama being depicted, everything’s back to normal at the end.
