Picard’s first season was especially egregious in its lack of any mental health awareness. It was stunning and threw me out of the story. We’ve invented transporters, but forgotten family therapy?!
You're right: in the very last season of the show they finally furnish the station with a counselor. But that leaves six, very traumatic series without one.
It was contentious in its era, too: much of the Sybok plot in THE FINAL FRONTIER (including Kirk's famous "I need my pain!") represents an obvious internal backlash to Troi's presence on the bridge in TNG.
Yes: the masculinist "feelings are for cissies and girls", linked to a paranoid "mental health is a conspiracy to emasculate and take control", storyline.
To that point we might perhaps draw in Jellico's contempt for Troi, particularly her lack of proper uniform, which results in a mostly permanent costuming change for the character. I've always wondered what we are to make of this; in universe, are we supposed to conclude that Picard is a lech for allowing this for so long? It's odd to give Jellico the win here, but they did.
Picard does not strike me as the kind of guy who would revel in being able to check out the cleavage of his first officer's ex (and ambiguous long-simmering something).
If you pair that episode with Disaster and others my conclusion is two things:
1. The writers were trying to make her a more serious, well-rounded character and get away from her sensing-things gimmick, and used Jellico as a vehicle for that.
2. In universe, they were portraying her as being too complacent - she's a bridge officer who doesn't know much about the operation of the Enterprise, is not well-equipped for command, etc. I don't think the implication is Picard liked looking at her low cut dresses, it's that they let her wear what she wanted and she wore those outfits because she had pigeonholed herself. Jellico correctly identified that she wasn't taking her job as seriously as she should, and that others had allowed that to slide. And I think, in a way, chastising the show for letting the character persist in that state for so long.
A generous interpretation that still seems to leave Picard and his leadership style having come up short (in a surprisingly similar way to his apparent failing in never pushing Riker out of the nest into his own captaincy).
Which is not to say it's wrong! It's just interesting to me how the show seems to land on some serious critiques of Picard in its final seasons (I've noted in other posts, I think, how odd it is that both Ro and Wesley, his major mentees, turn their backs on Starfleet in S7), which extend into the much more sour, bitter figure we see in the opening season of PICARD as well.
I'm actually inclined to ask if Quark's stocks synthehol at all! We routinely see people getting hammered there (Morn, O'Brien, Damar, Damar, Damar) but I don't remember any scene where someone was served synthehol.
Do we know what Synthenol actually *does*? I speak as a man with a fondness for whisky -- do I drink synthesky, get intoxicated, but "don't lose control" (this is what Picard's brother says in "Family", the "Best of Both Worlds" episode follow up where Jean-Luc hangs out in an actual old-school vineyard) and, one would hope, don't endure any hangover? I'd quite like that. Or is Synthenol, in effect, alcohol-free beer?
In the season six DS9 episode The Sound of Her Voice O'Brien and Lisa have a conversation which directly states that ships counselors would seem to be a universal thing in star fleet so at least well into the 90's in our time.
Yeah, as noted elsewhere, DS9 got Ezri as a counselor in season 7. And she helped Garak with some trauma in... one episode. And then she was some sort of criminal psychologist in another episode, trying to get into the mind of a serial killer, because I guess that's the same.
Back to Troi. It was never super-clear -- and, actually, a bit contradictory -- where Troi fitted in the chain of command on the Enterprise. She was a bridge officer, but also had her 'counselor office hours'. The episode 'Conundrum' established her as high up the hierarchy -- higher than, say, Head of Security -- but then we also saw her studying to become a 'real' command officer. ("Sorry, hologram Geordi -- the wellbeing of the ship must come first.")
Always a bit vague. I wonder how much of her role on the ship was because Roddenberry just wanted an excuse to put a pretty lady in a low-cut top on the bridge.
Well, yes: the eye-candy aspect certainly determined the character, at the beginning. I'd say the character put a little distance between that origin-point and where the show went.
The "bridge officer" thing was odd I agree -- there was never a question of McCoy, or the Emergency Hologram Doctor, being given actual command of a starship, after all.
Also, in Voyager, in the episode 'Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy,' the Doctor requests to be allowed the position (and programming) of 'Emergency Command Hologram,' in case it should become necessary to allow him to take command of the ship. Janeway refuses.
... Though this does actually become necessary later in that same episode. Who'd've thought?
There's this weird thing going on in TOS about mental health. On one hand, we're told on two occasions ("Dagger of the Mind" and "Whom Gods Destroy") that severe mental illness is readily curable in most cases and thus there are only a few facilities for the rare instances of incurable cases. On the other hand, it's not as if we get any feeling from either episode that the Federation has a sure hand in dealing with psychiatric dysfunction--"Dagger of the Mind" has an unprincipled maniac who seems to have a free hand in experimenting on patients who is putatively famous for advocating for more humane approaches to mental illness. (Which implies that there are people he's arguing against--I'd hate to know what they want instead.) We do find out in "Dagger" that the TOS Enterprise has an actual psychiatrist on board--perhaps a "ship's counselor" by another name--only Dr. Noel seems to have almost no psychiatric expertise of note. The facility in "Gods" is if anything even more bleak and less devoted to anything like therapy--its closest analog might be Arkham Asylum.
Which would all be fine if we bought that Federation psychiatry was so good that the only professionals specializing in it are fringe thinkers dealing with mere hundreds of cases out of trillions of sapients. But in TOS alone we encounter lots of people who have serious mental health issues--Ben Finney, about 90 percent of the Starfleet admirals we meet, Professor Robert Cramer, on and on and on. That hasn't changed by TNG's time, where both Starfleet personnel and civilians (especially scientists) exhibit serious mental health problems.
As others have noted, DS9 did have a counsellor before Ezri. Remember, the Voyager initially departed with a skeleton’s crew on a short discrete mission. Had it not been flung into the Delta Quadrant, doubtlessly a ship’s counsellor would’ve been assigned.
As others have said, a ship's counselor in some sense "exists" in other shows, but is not centered as a character. To me, this suggests that they learned a valuable lesson from the difficulty of giving Troi plots: *therapy is not interesting*. It is crucial for well-being in many cases. It's great that therapy exists and people have access to it. But it does not make for a good story. And unfortunately, more recent Trek has forgotten that -- though not to the same degree as contemporary television in general, which I have complained about elsewhere:
And, more so than the endless scenes of Tony Soprano with Dr Melfi, the episode where Carmela visits Dr Krakower, hoping to get exactly the kind of positive affirmation Adam K finds so objectionable, but is instead rebuked, is superbly dramatic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzVeLjj6Ao8
Sully Boya, playing the psychiatrist here, recorded his scenes shortly before his death; and Edie Falco had to record her half of the exchange to an empty chair, which makes her amazing performance even more amazing.
That's a phenomenal piece of writing and performing. I think what makes it so strong is that you don't actually need any context. You can watch that without knowing anything about The Sopranos and take away everything from it. You'd use that in a creating writing class.
I assumed voyager's counselor was killed inthe initial attack and his role was taken over by Tuvok. " My mind to your mind and my mind says you should shut up and get back to work."
Also? quark serves everything but it's all watered down. I can see sisko as a performative tea totaller. Plus, he hates quark.
An excellent thought, Adam. Guinan completes the surfiet of empathy in those series. The amount of homespun in all ST lives seems to indicate the kind of utopia we're in. The imagination ought not boggle at available tech but it is of course stuck in its period of origin, even with holographic assistance etc. Vulcans only seem to help when you're in dire straits, but would be as good or better than fluffy Betazoids.
I always ponder the relationship of psychological malaise to trauma of greed and generational stress in utopias, but the brain seems to glide off the thought. Wars of course in Strange New Worlds are more explicit than in ST of previous eras and not as hung up on forgiveness or resolution.
I always assumed that the position of “ship’s councilor” was a kinder, gentler Starfleet version of the old Soviet “political officer” kept aboard to ensure the ship’s loyalty to the Motherland. No wonder Troi sat at Picard’s left hand while Number One Riker was at his right.
I'm sure that was part of the original conception. especially as Troi is often the voice of liberal conscience restating Starfleet orthodoxy when the commanders stray...
I wish Culber had been a counselor from the start. It seemed a better fit for him. To the point that I’m always like “oh yeah right he does that too” when I see him practice medicine.
Picard’s first season was especially egregious in its lack of any mental health awareness. It was stunning and threw me out of the story. We’ve invented transporters, but forgotten family therapy?!
Doesn't affect the main point, but just for the record: wasn't Ezri Dax a ship's counselor? So DS9 had one for one season
You're right: in the very last season of the show they finally furnish the station with a counselor. But that leaves six, very traumatic series without one.
Don’t forget Counselor Telnorri on DS9! Only mentioned in dialogue. Handles O’Brien’s prison trauma in Hard Time.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Telnorri
Excellent geekery ... I'd forgotten him.
It was contentious in its era, too: much of the Sybok plot in THE FINAL FRONTIER (including Kirk's famous "I need my pain!") represents an obvious internal backlash to Troi's presence on the bridge in TNG.
Yes: the masculinist "feelings are for cissies and girls", linked to a paranoid "mental health is a conspiracy to emasculate and take control", storyline.
To that point we might perhaps draw in Jellico's contempt for Troi, particularly her lack of proper uniform, which results in a mostly permanent costuming change for the character. I've always wondered what we are to make of this; in universe, are we supposed to conclude that Picard is a lech for allowing this for so long? It's odd to give Jellico the win here, but they did.
Picard does not strike me as the kind of guy who would revel in being able to check out the cleavage of his first officer's ex (and ambiguous long-simmering something).
The quest to account for this anomaly continues...
If you pair that episode with Disaster and others my conclusion is two things:
1. The writers were trying to make her a more serious, well-rounded character and get away from her sensing-things gimmick, and used Jellico as a vehicle for that.
2. In universe, they were portraying her as being too complacent - she's a bridge officer who doesn't know much about the operation of the Enterprise, is not well-equipped for command, etc. I don't think the implication is Picard liked looking at her low cut dresses, it's that they let her wear what she wanted and she wore those outfits because she had pigeonholed herself. Jellico correctly identified that she wasn't taking her job as seriously as she should, and that others had allowed that to slide. And I think, in a way, chastising the show for letting the character persist in that state for so long.
A generous interpretation that still seems to leave Picard and his leadership style having come up short (in a surprisingly similar way to his apparent failing in never pushing Riker out of the nest into his own captaincy).
Which is not to say it's wrong! It's just interesting to me how the show seems to land on some serious critiques of Picard in its final seasons (I've noted in other posts, I think, how odd it is that both Ro and Wesley, his major mentees, turn their backs on Starfleet in S7), which extend into the much more sour, bitter figure we see in the opening season of PICARD as well.
I'm actually inclined to ask if Quark's stocks synthehol at all! We routinely see people getting hammered there (Morn, O'Brien, Damar, Damar, Damar) but I don't remember any scene where someone was served synthehol.
Do we know what Synthenol actually *does*? I speak as a man with a fondness for whisky -- do I drink synthesky, get intoxicated, but "don't lose control" (this is what Picard's brother says in "Family", the "Best of Both Worlds" episode follow up where Jean-Luc hangs out in an actual old-school vineyard) and, one would hope, don't endure any hangover? I'd quite like that. Or is Synthenol, in effect, alcohol-free beer?
The idea seems to be that it acts like alcohol (possibly to a lesser degree), but you can dismiss the effects mentally.
In the season six DS9 episode The Sound of Her Voice O'Brien and Lisa have a conversation which directly states that ships counselors would seem to be a universal thing in star fleet so at least well into the 90's in our time.
Yeah, as noted elsewhere, DS9 got Ezri as a counselor in season 7. And she helped Garak with some trauma in... one episode. And then she was some sort of criminal psychologist in another episode, trying to get into the mind of a serial killer, because I guess that's the same.
Back to Troi. It was never super-clear -- and, actually, a bit contradictory -- where Troi fitted in the chain of command on the Enterprise. She was a bridge officer, but also had her 'counselor office hours'. The episode 'Conundrum' established her as high up the hierarchy -- higher than, say, Head of Security -- but then we also saw her studying to become a 'real' command officer. ("Sorry, hologram Geordi -- the wellbeing of the ship must come first.")
Always a bit vague. I wonder how much of her role on the ship was because Roddenberry just wanted an excuse to put a pretty lady in a low-cut top on the bridge.
Well, yes: the eye-candy aspect certainly determined the character, at the beginning. I'd say the character put a little distance between that origin-point and where the show went.
The "bridge officer" thing was odd I agree -- there was never a question of McCoy, or the Emergency Hologram Doctor, being given actual command of a starship, after all.
In the novels, there's Dian Duane's DOCTOR'S ORDERS where Kirk leaves McCoy in command (after getting tired of comments on his command style)
I really like the covers on those tie-in novels.
Also, in Voyager, in the episode 'Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy,' the Doctor requests to be allowed the position (and programming) of 'Emergency Command Hologram,' in case it should become necessary to allow him to take command of the ship. Janeway refuses.
... Though this does actually become necessary later in that same episode. Who'd've thought?
Ezri treats Garak in “Afterimage” and it’s a bit of a shocker.
There's this weird thing going on in TOS about mental health. On one hand, we're told on two occasions ("Dagger of the Mind" and "Whom Gods Destroy") that severe mental illness is readily curable in most cases and thus there are only a few facilities for the rare instances of incurable cases. On the other hand, it's not as if we get any feeling from either episode that the Federation has a sure hand in dealing with psychiatric dysfunction--"Dagger of the Mind" has an unprincipled maniac who seems to have a free hand in experimenting on patients who is putatively famous for advocating for more humane approaches to mental illness. (Which implies that there are people he's arguing against--I'd hate to know what they want instead.) We do find out in "Dagger" that the TOS Enterprise has an actual psychiatrist on board--perhaps a "ship's counselor" by another name--only Dr. Noel seems to have almost no psychiatric expertise of note. The facility in "Gods" is if anything even more bleak and less devoted to anything like therapy--its closest analog might be Arkham Asylum.
Which would all be fine if we bought that Federation psychiatry was so good that the only professionals specializing in it are fringe thinkers dealing with mere hundreds of cases out of trillions of sapients. But in TOS alone we encounter lots of people who have serious mental health issues--Ben Finney, about 90 percent of the Starfleet admirals we meet, Professor Robert Cramer, on and on and on. That hasn't changed by TNG's time, where both Starfleet personnel and civilians (especially scientists) exhibit serious mental health problems.
So yeah, they need counselors.
As others have noted, DS9 did have a counsellor before Ezri. Remember, the Voyager initially departed with a skeleton’s crew on a short discrete mission. Had it not been flung into the Delta Quadrant, doubtlessly a ship’s counsellor would’ve been assigned.
As others have said, a ship's counselor in some sense "exists" in other shows, but is not centered as a character. To me, this suggests that they learned a valuable lesson from the difficulty of giving Troi plots: *therapy is not interesting*. It is crucial for well-being in many cases. It's great that therapy exists and people have access to it. But it does not make for a good story. And unfortunately, more recent Trek has forgotten that -- though not to the same degree as contemporary television in general, which I have complained about elsewhere:
https://itself.blog/2023/01/08/the-culture-of-therapy-or-men-will-literally-write-a-whole-long-blog-post-instead-of-going-to-therapy/
Does The Sopranos disprove the argument that "therapy is not interesting" or is it the exception that proves the rule?
Hmmm....
Oh but that episode of The West Wing where Josh has therapy is a banger.
And, more so than the endless scenes of Tony Soprano with Dr Melfi, the episode where Carmela visits Dr Krakower, hoping to get exactly the kind of positive affirmation Adam K finds so objectionable, but is instead rebuked, is superbly dramatic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzVeLjj6Ao8
Sully Boya, playing the psychiatrist here, recorded his scenes shortly before his death; and Edie Falco had to record her half of the exchange to an empty chair, which makes her amazing performance even more amazing.
That's a phenomenal piece of writing and performing. I think what makes it so strong is that you don't actually need any context. You can watch that without knowing anything about The Sopranos and take away everything from it. You'd use that in a creating writing class.
Wow, that is indeed an amazing thing!
I assumed voyager's counselor was killed inthe initial attack and his role was taken over by Tuvok. " My mind to your mind and my mind says you should shut up and get back to work."
Also? quark serves everything but it's all watered down. I can see sisko as a performative tea totaller. Plus, he hates quark.
It also seems relevant that he's the Captain.
HR is not on the side of the employee! Troi is not to be trusted!
An excellent thought, Adam. Guinan completes the surfiet of empathy in those series. The amount of homespun in all ST lives seems to indicate the kind of utopia we're in. The imagination ought not boggle at available tech but it is of course stuck in its period of origin, even with holographic assistance etc. Vulcans only seem to help when you're in dire straits, but would be as good or better than fluffy Betazoids.
I always ponder the relationship of psychological malaise to trauma of greed and generational stress in utopias, but the brain seems to glide off the thought. Wars of course in Strange New Worlds are more explicit than in ST of previous eras and not as hung up on forgiveness or resolution.
I always assumed that the position of “ship’s councilor” was a kinder, gentler Starfleet version of the old Soviet “political officer” kept aboard to ensure the ship’s loyalty to the Motherland. No wonder Troi sat at Picard’s left hand while Number One Riker was at his right.
I'm sure that was part of the original conception. especially as Troi is often the voice of liberal conscience restating Starfleet orthodoxy when the commanders stray...
Watching Galactica right now and I've spent the entire show thinking how much they need a Troi
I wish Culber had been a counselor from the start. It seemed a better fit for him. To the point that I’m always like “oh yeah right he does that too” when I see him practice medicine.