Reading minds is also infinitely useful to Picard
Reading minds
“I sense anger from the alien who just threatened your life, captain.”
My personal theory about why she would state the obvious so much is that Betazoids have a seriously low opinion of humans’ emotional intelligence. Like, “Oh, he’s furrowing his brow and pounding his fist. I better hurry and explain what this means to the bridge, because these guys will never pick up on it.”
I like how she sometimes knows when someone is lying and sometimes is totally unable to do that.
Also, without Deanna on the bridge, we wouldn’t have the regular “Deanna gets a headache but it turns out to be an alien” episodes.
I always figured that a lot of interactions with other ships/civilization/etc are very stage-managed, so sometimes anger could be a show, for diplomatic/manipulation reasons. Her saying that anger is legitimate could have benefit.
I do agree that Betazoids have low opinions of humans emotional intelligence. Lwaxana playing with/abusing Picard’s emotions is her way of demonstrating that.
That one episode where her empathic abilities stopped working prove your point. She was useless at her job without them. She could likely have adapted, sure, but over the course of years and with therapy designed to help her adjust. She was literally disabled and all the humans were like, “What’s the problem? We live like this all the time.”
Imagine if your sense of equilibrium just vanished one day and you were a professional athlete. That’s a career ending disability right there. I feel like that episode would be written very differently if it was made now.
Yup, exactly. She was basically turned autistic and completely unable to read the emotions on peoples’ faces. Because she had never needed to do so before; She had always relied on her empathic abilities.
The best parallel I’ve seen is with the Elcor in Mass Effect. Natively, they communicate using subtle facial expressions, scent, implications, etc… So when communicating with other races, they outright state their emotional tones for each sentence, because other races aren’t used to dealing with Elcor subtlety. To other races, the Elcor seem downright nonemotional, because the Elcor emotions are too subtle to catch. And the reverse is also true, where the Elcor need to learn how to interact with other races, because their first reaction is that other races are hyperemotional; To an Elcor, a slight frown would basically be a declaration of war.
Deanna is basically an Elcor living among humans. She picks up on their subtleties, and has learned how to live among them. But she also has zero faith in her crew mates being able to do the same, because they never pick up on hers. So she constantly states the obvious when dealing with her crew mates, because why would she expect them to be able to read a room when they never feel her emotions?
She’s also only half betazoid and is only an empath, not a telepath like her mother. She can only communicate telepathically with her imzadi, Riker. (Probably because she’s atuned to him).
Sure, but so is doing something about what must be the worst case of PTSD in history. Other than the other captains.
Sorry O’Brien, your counseling appointment got rescheduled again. She’ll get around to you one of these days.
Isn’t work the best therapy though?
I released some cardassian voles across the station for you, here’s a rat bashing stick, have at 'em!
Is Miles O’Brian actually Charlie Kelly, or is this just how we treat the Irishmen?
Yes.
Privileges of rank.
And DS9 didn’t even get a counselor until Ezri.
And DS9 didn’t even get a counselor until Ezri.
Pffft, they had Kai Winn. What more do you need from a counselor, my child?
Plus access to a bar with real alcohol.
What, you don’t like green?
There were probably civilian counselors though, right? I mean with that many people on the station…
Or maybe everyone just did virtual therapy like we do today 🙂
Just Morn
I just realized that can’t be the reason Deanna is on the bridge, because Dr. Migleemo is also on the bridge in LD and he can’t read minds. All he can do is make metaphors about food.
It also eliminates captain’s discretion as a reason, because as far as I know, Captain Freeman doesn’t even like Migleemo all that much.
It was such an interesting choice to put the ship’s counselor on the bridge, and I really appreciate that they did it.
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Which begs the other side of the question … what organization would place someone with so much trauma, PTSD, unresolved issues and psychological disturbances in the leadership role of a major ship that is responsible for diplomatic missions, first contact, military engagements while at the same time protecting the lives of a crew of hundreds of individuals.
It would be like having a captain of a modern aircraft carrier, who had been in the second world war, held hostage by the Japanese for months, psychologically tortured, had served in Europe and tortured by Nazis, been placed in psychotic/psychedelic testing after being kidnapped by Communist Russia … had his body surgically altered and had seen death and destruction to cause lifelong PTSD
It’s pretty wild that they kept piling on the stress after every major life event and kept putting him in the captain’s chair.
Drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.
We never hear about how the replicator can replicate lots and lots of drugs, but it clearly can replicate lots and lots of drugs.
And if you get addicted, sickbay has the cure!
Tea, earl gray, hot is vastly different from hot earl gray tea.
I’m guessing then that wasn’t a regular cup of Earl Grey Tea … it was probably just programmed code for something else
Why do I have the feeling that the cure is more drugs?
Just use the teleporter to remove the traumatized parts of his brain. Or something. They have space magic level technology. Who’s to say?
I always saw it as a spot for another executive officer or lieutenant commander, which she fulfilled from the beginning even if she didn’t make much use of the rank until a few seasons later
Because it’s impossible to psychoanalyze an Irishman, so she steers clear of O’Brien
To be fair, his life didn’t really smooth out until he moved to DS9. On the Enterprise he was just another smart guy. On DS9 he was the tech savant that couldn’t take a vacation because the day after he left everything broke.
