For those of you who haven’t been following along, I am doing this because my up-coming novel Nora and the Werewolf Wedding features a character inspired by Deanna Troi from the Next Generation series. Deanna as an empath had a lot of power in that series, she brought to light that even the Captain of a starship sometimes needs some guidance navigating emotional waters, and the importance of confronting those emotions.
I wanted to make a story where an empath was the centerpiece instead of on the sidelines, and I fear Star Trek First Contact reinforced that desire in me. Unlike Star Trek Generations, where Deanna had a lovely scene with the Captain discussing mortality, in this next movie she is more of a backdrop character. We see she is there. She has a small scene with a drunk character where Riker is highly amused to see her in an equally drunken state, but otherwise she has nothing to do.
It is a little sad because there were a couple of opportunities in there where she might have been able to shine, but for pacing/storytelling purposes it seems she got the back seat in this one. That said, having Picard apart from Deanna, who might have been able to confront him sooner about his behavior, left some space open for Picard to have a bit of a tantrum. He got to go a little crazy precisely because Deanna wasn’t there to check him, so I can see why it was done.
I still think Deanna could have been given more opportunity to shine down on the planet’s surface with the rest of the crew and all of the stuff going on down there, but, hey, such is life. I still enjoyed the movie and the Borg Queen Lady is still creepy enough to make me squirm.
My upcoming novel Nora and the Werewolf Wedding was partially inspired by the character of Deanna Troi in Star Trek the Next Generation. Now, if you think it’s strange that a science fiction character could inspire a series of urban fantasy novels… Well, you’re probably right, but I never claimed to be normal. And really, we have my mother to blame here because she was the Star Trek fan.
I fondly remember weekends with Star Trek marathons when my mother unfolded that super-heavy and not-quite-comfortable sofa bed so that we could all camp out in the living room. She was a single mom for the majority of my childhood, so she was asleep by 10PM, but it was fun watching her pretend like she could stay awake long enough to get the full experience.
So it makes sense that an impressionable young woman like me would become captivated by a television show where a woman sat on the bridge of a starship. But Deanna Troi was not just “a woman sitting on the bridge” either. We got to see a lot of women strutting their strengths in the movies and tv shows when I was growing up, such as Ripley (Aliens), Sarah Conner (Terminator), and Princess Leia (Star Wars).
Deanna Troi stands out because her strengths are gentleness, intelligence, and empathy.
I know that there are some conversations about her costumes on the show, but I don’t want to get into that debate. We’ve all heard it before. Suffice to say, she had a major role to play in keeping tabs on the emotions of a wide variety of races living inside that fragile spaceship. So while I’m rewatching these movies – and yes, I chose the movies instead of the actual show because of time constraints, but I’ll obviously be rewatching the show as well – I am paying particular attention to Deanna.
With that in mind, let’s dive in!
Star Trek Generations Plot Blurb from IMDb: With the help of long presumed dead Captain Kirk, Captain Picard must stop a deranged scientist willing to murder on a planetary scale in order to enter a space matrix.
First observation, I forgot Malcolm McDowell was in this movie. He has a captivating voice and makes for a fun villain, even if not the cleverest scientist. Knowing what he does about the matrix and all of its strange time travel, you would think he could have anticipated resistance from Picard and Kirk.
Now, on to Deanna’s role.
Troi’s involvement at the very beginning was quite satisfying. Being the empath that she is, she’s the one who knows immediately that her Captain has been given bad news. SPOILER ALERT – His brother and nephew have died and the grief that brings to the table forces him to confront his own mortality. However, she also senses that he needs some time to grapple with the shock on his own, so it is several scenes later before she walks herself into his room to ask him if she can help.
The scene is quite lovely and while they are interrupted by PLOT happenings, it is a nice reminder that she has a true position and job to do on this ship. Her captain was in distress and she met that distress. When he tries to brush off the deaths as, “It’s alright, these things happen.” She confronts him – gently – by saying that no, it is not alright.
We as a society often believe that grieving is a weakness of some kind, but it isn’t. Grief is a part of life. It’s one more thing that reminds us we are human and alive, and while it is painful it shouldn’t be ignored. Deanna’s presence at that moment in the storyline highlights that it is not only okay to grieve, but necessary. Even for the captain of a starship.
The rest of the movie has Deanna doing starship things. She takes the helm when the helmsman gets injured during the space battle and is understandably busy while the ship (SPOILER ALERT) goes down. The one thing I do wish the movie had more time to explore was Data and his emotion chip. Deanna was an obvious choice for him to go to while wrestling with human emotions for the first time, but I suspect the pacing of the movie would have been dramatically hindered by adding such a scene.
All in all, I deeply enjoyed this rewatch. William Shatner’s Kirk was a delight from start to finish, and while there were a couple of things that made me squint – such as Klingons bothering to take Picard prisoner only to throw him right down where he wanted to be instead of, you know, holding him prisoner as a bargaining chip, and the aforementioned shortsightedness of the villain – I am enough of a fan of the characters themselves to brush these off.
