What was with Troi in "Encounter at Farpoint"?

[Neo]

i just saw "encounter at farpoint", and i must admidt i found troi to be extremely annoying. don't get me wrong, throughout the rest of the series i thought she was great, but in the pilot she spoke with some phoney eastern european or italian accent and every other line to come out of her was "i feel pain...great pain..". she actually reminded me of delenn from B5 more than she reminded me of the later Troi.
and that "cheerleading" outfit...i don't quite know what to say about that.

i'd say that troi changed more than any other character after season one. she was so more natural-seeming later in the series, as opposed to her phoney over-acting in the pilot

 

[Aing-Tii]

I don't think they gave her much to work with, did they? Her lines were pretty insipid. And she was supposed to be the "sexy one" hence the ridiculous cheerleading outfit!

I agree she grew a lot over the series in lots of good ways. I never much cared for her outfits they were just so she'd look "sexy" I guess. They never made sense! And she was plenty attractive without the costumes and wigs! (I was so happy when she finally got to wear her OWN hair in the movies! :laugh2

But later on she got some great eppy's like the Romulan one (Faces?), etc. I loved it when she became a Commander, finally. And she looks just fine in her Starfleet uniform!


:star::star::star:

 

[Dave]

I think that you both summed up what I would have said.

Interestingly though, originally Denise Crosby went for the Deanna Troi role, while Marina Sirtis auditioned for Natasha Yar! Now it would have been really strange if they had changed places!

 

[Neo]

Really Dave.... could not have seen that..... oooo spooky

 

[imported_Data]

I'm trying to picture those two switching places, and I must say, it's extremelly odd! I'd have to agree with Neo, it's spooky!

 

[Boranon]

Troi and the Encounter

If you think about it- everyone looked stiff or odd in Encounter at farpoint, not just Troi.

It was, after all the pilot episode- and needless to say STTNG worked out many of the bugs they first Encountered! lol and created a superb show!

 

[RationalLunacy]

I met Marina Sirtis several years ago in San Francisco. She explained the "phony" accent as her attempt to make Betazoids sound "different" from humans. In actuality, Marina is the daughter of Greek immigrants to the United Kingdom. Her accent was derived from her parents' Greek accent, combined with her own natural British accent.

Marina gradually toned down the accent in the next few episodes. Finally, when Gene Roddenberry cast Majel Barrett to play Lwaxana Troi, the accent quickly disappeared, because it would have been incongruous for Deanna to have such a heavy "Betazoid" accent while her mother had none.

Occasionally, vestiges of that accent resurface throughout the series, but only because it is Marina's true speaking voice.

 

[Picard67]

You MET her?!?! No freaking way. How cool.

lol, Troi really pis..bothered me in encounter at farpoint. he,he.

I think that the directers made a big mistake trying to make her 'the sexy one'.

If I was a male (which I am not) then I would have been far more attracted to Tasha anyway, dude, esp in the episide where the whole crew went wako and Tash and Data...well...you get the picture. YOW!

 

[lordoftime]

Again it was too early for the actors to all have nailed down how they were going to play their roles, as they would in the seasons that followed.....

 

[Whitestar]

Personally, I don't think the character of Troi was very well developed in the seven seasons where the writers had plenty of opportunity to do so, let alone the rest of the Next Gen cast, except for maybe Picard and Data. Plus, it didn't help the fact that Marina Sirtis is a not a very good actress either. Her only capable emotions were looking cold and concerned. If I had it within my power to remake Next Gen, the character of Troi would have been changed to a human with no telepathic/empathic abilities and be reduced to a recurring character, followed by a senseless death scene.

 

[lordoftime]

Mostly Troi said she felt something or couldnt sense anything. Riker had great episodes where something new was convincingly added to his backstory. Worf suffered thru most of TNG and Ds9 conflicted over his heritage. Sad really they never fiound something more for him. And they tried some new ground for Dr Crusher as well. Geordie not sure about. There were two or three episodes that used him, but then of course they made matters worse by bringing in the Ensign Ro character, as well as taking time on Chief O'Breien that should have been on the regular cast.

 

[Protectobot]

I met Marina Sirtis several years ago in San Francisco. She explained the "phony" accent as her attempt to make Betazoids sound "different" from humans. In actuality, Marina is the daughter of Greek immigrants to the United Kingdom. Her accent was derived from her parents' Greek accent, combined with her own natural British accent.

Marina gradually toned down the accent in the next few episodes. Finally, when Gene Roddenberry cast Majel Barrett to play Lwaxana Troi, the accent quickly disappeared, because it would have been incongruous for Deanna to have such a heavy "Betazoid" accent while her mother had none.

Occasionally, vestiges of that accent resurface throughout the series, but only because it is Marina's true speaking voice.

My Mom was on a plane with the TNG cast once, but she wasn't sitting near them: DOH! I heard that Marina Sirtis used a voice modulator or something, to make her voice have a sort of echo to it? I'll ask my mom again about how she heard that, cos so far, I'm getting nothing from wikipedia or google searches to corroborate this

 

[BolianAdmiral]

I didn't have a huge problem with Troi in the TNG pilot, but then again, as has been pointed out, it was after all, the very first episode. What bothered me the most about Troi was how they never gave her a regular proper Starfleet uniform until after Captain Jellico ordered her to wear one.

I like her fine in her "sexy" outfits, but I am one who prefers a uniformity to the outfits people wear on the ship... I very much dislike when one character has to avoid wearing a standard uniform for the sole purpose of "standing out" or "being a rebel because not wearing a uniform is a middle finger to conformity"... I just really hate that kind of garbage. Starfleet is a quasi-military organization, and thus, all crewmembers ought be wearing the same standard uniforms.

 

[Atelier182]

I noticed in the pilot episode everyone seemed wooden especially picard,to be honest the only one i thought was ok was data.

 

[Huttman]

The thing that bothered me about Troi at the start and for a season or two was not her inexperience of acting or her outfits (my favorite was the teal colored one right before her 'official uniform' became the norm), it was the writers insistence the audience had no idea what was going on or the other characters for that matter. They were playing to us (and them) like we were idiots. She would constantly explain things that I always said to myself, well duh, that was obvious. That annoyed me more than her overflow of emotion at times as I could justify that as her species is very sensitive, that's why she makes a good ships counselor. I am happy to say though, yes, her character did grow very nicely over the seven years and four movies.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Not a Troi fan.

Her character always makes me think of a scene like this:

Klingon Captain [via-screen]: I spit on the festering corpse of your daughter! You will bathe in a sea of fire! DEATH TO YOU ALL!

Troi: Captain, I'm sensing... hostility.

 

[Ursa major]

Sounds as if Troi was sensing hostility from the audience.

I always wondered how Troi could sense things about a person on the other end of a subspace comms link. That would suggest that the emotion (or whatever) was being carried over the link. In which case, why couldn't the Enterprise's computer analyse the "emotion"? And if it couldn't, how could the comms equipment capture and transmit it? (And why would anyone use equipment that told the Universe their emotional state?)

 

[thaddeus6th]

[I was] Not really [into Troi], to be honest.

I just found the character irritating. Even if I did, she'd kill the mood.

[Halfway through an intimate rendezvous]

Troi: Thaddeus, I'm sensing... arousal. Arousal and passion. Arousal, passion and increasing annoyance.

 

[Mr. Aware Eagle]

I have to say, Troi is easily my least favorite character of TNG. In fact, she's the only character I truly dislike.
Someone else mentioned the faux-accent, and I have to agree that it's pretty distracting. In addition to that, the episodes centered around her are generally pretty uninteresting.
However, I've only seen the series through the fourth season. From what I understand, Troi becomes much more tolerable later in the series. Can anyone confirm?

 

[Dave]

Troi becomes much more tolerable later in the series. Can anyone confirm?

She goes on to have a very unlikely relationship with Worf, and I don't think it is a spoiler to say that while piloting she crashes the Enterprise. The only redeeming feature is that compared to her mother, she is not quite as bad. Her appearances become increasingly more ones of comic relief. Except that they are not particularly funny, except the wild west holodeck episode.

Troi: Captain, I'm sensing... hostility.

Wasn't it usually:

Troi: Captain, I'm sensing something but I don't know what!