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LT. COMMANDER DEANNA TROI

Deanna Troi is the ship’s counselor. This position didn’t exist during the time of the first starship Enterprise seventy-five years before. In the twenty-fourth century it has been realized that the success of a starship’s mission depends as much on efficiently functioning human relationships as it does on the vessel staying in one piece and having fully functional warp drive.

Counselor Troi is fully trained in human and alien psychology. When a starship encounters alien life forms, the counselor is crucial to the captain and Number One.

While twentieth-century psychiatry and psychology are considered to be more arts than empirical science, in the twenty-fourth century, solid evidence and medical research have radically changed things. Psychiatry has become a field of applied science in which hard evidence has replaced guesswork, supposition, and mere practiced insight. Command ranks aboard starships both respect and actively make use of the skills of the counselor in much the same way that they solicit advice from the medical officers, chief engineer, and other shipboard specialists. With the commissioning of the Galaxy-class starships, with the added complexities of families and the presence of children, the Counselor is in even more demand.

A Starfleet graduate, Deanna is half human and half Betazoid. Her father was a Starfleet officer who lived on Betazed with one of that world’s humanoid females. Her mother Lwaxana is an aristocratic eccentric who provides Deanna with acute embarrassment whenever she appears onboard the Enterprise. She is insistent on pursuing Captain Picard (she thinks he has great legs), or whatever other male she sets her eyes on.

While Lwaxana and all other full Betazoids are fully telepathic, Deanna has telepathic abilities limited to the emotional range; she can “read” feelings and sensations, but not coherent thoughts. Another extreme example of Betazoid ability is the hypersensitive Tam Elbrun, who vanished with the space-faring being dubbed “Tin Man” by the Federation. While most Betazoids develop their full telepathic abilities during adolescence, Elbrun was born with them fully functional, which led him to seek the solitude of space. He was, in fact, Deanna’s patient at one time, but she was not able to do much for him.

OFTEN AWAY

Due to her particular training and inherent abilities, Counselor Troi is often selected as an Away Team member, as she can provide important insights into the motives and feelings of the beings they must deal with.

(Some beings, notably the Ferengi, are impervious even to full telepaths. While some races may be able to intentionally block their minds, the Ferengi probably are resistant due to peculiarities of their brain structure.)

Generally, when dealing with alien life, Deanna can sense something of the moods or attitudes that a being harbors toward Federation representatives. In the case of the Traveler (“Where No One Has Gone Before”) she could detect nothing from him, as if he wasn’t even there. With humans she is able to sense more when it is a person she has some sort of rapport or relationship with.

For instance, Troi was acquainted with William Riker before either was posted to the Enterprise. Neither knew the other had been assigned to this starship until they first encountered one another on board. While Troi did no feel she could become deeply involved with Riker again, she did find their affair meaningful and pleasant. It has not progressed any further, as each feels honor bound to maintain a disciplined and professional status while aboard ship.

MARINA SIRTIS

A British actress, Marina Sirtis worked in various roles in England for years before she decided to give the colonies a try. She landed the continuing role of Deanna Troi after being in America only six months. “It’s taken me years to become an overnight success,” she quips. “I had a six-month visa, which was quickly running out. In fact, I got the call telling me I had the part only hours before I was to leave for the airport to return home.”

Marina enjoys the irony of being a British actress playing an alien on American television But viewers won’t notice a British accent coming out of an alien being, as she’s devised a combination of accents for the character to use. Sirtis states, “In the twenty-fourth century, geographical or national barriers are not so evident. The Earth as a planet is your country, your nationality. I didn’t want anyone to be able to pin down my accent to any particular country, and being good at accents, the producers trusted me to come up with something appropriate.”

Sirtis initially auditioned for the role of Security Chief Tasha Yar. “After my third audition for Tasha, I was literally walking out the door when they called me back to read for Deanna. While I was looking at the script, director Corey Allen came in and said, ‘You have something personally that the character should have … an empathy, so use it.’ I love being able to play someone who is so deep with that kind of insight into people, particularly since I usually get cast as the hard 1980s stereotype.”

Born to Greek parents in North London, Marina demonstrated an inclination toward performing at an early age. “My mother tells me that when I was three, I used to stand up on the seat of the bus and sing to the other passengers.” However, her parents wanted their daughter to follow more “serious” pursuits, so after finishing high school, Marina had to secretly apply to the Guild Hall School of Music and Drama, where she was accepted. “My first job after graduating was as Ophelia in Hamlet for the Worthing Repertory Company.”

A BIG MTV FAN

Following that, she worked for a few years in British television and musical theater, and in other repertory companies throughout England and Europe. She landed some supporting roles in features, such as The Wicked Lady with Faye Dunaway and Deathwish III opposite Charles Bronson.

She decided to stay on in the United States and has settled in Los Angeles, where she watches “far too much MTV” and keeps track of her local soccer team in London, in which she owns a few shares. Her brother is a professional soccer player.

Marina has always been interested in the stars and space exploration and believes that she once saw a UFO. “I was working with a repertory company in Worthing, a seaside town in England. One night as I was walking down the street, I saw this huge orange thing in the sky. At first I thought it must be the moon, but it was very off color. It was very close, but too high to be a balloon. Apparently a lot of other people saw it too.”