DEANNA TROI Page 4

Ship's Counsellor, and Lieutenant Commander then Commander on USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D and -E

Appears in [#130 Pathfinder] [#144 Life Line] [#152 Inside Man]

Article by ST:M with considerable additional text by Janet. The ST:M article does not cite episode references. The screenshots, which are not the same as the few in ST:M, were done by Janet.

CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE

Deanna's strength of character was severely tested in 2367 when she lost her empathic powers after the Enterprise became caught in the wake of a group of spaceborne two-dimensional creatures. Her experience is depicted in [TNG: The Loss]. The creatures resembled bio-luminescent plankton, floating freely in interstellar space, much as fish swim in Earth's oceans. Without her telepathic abilities, Deanna suffered denial, panic and even anger at her friends as she felt she could not perform her duties properly. Deanna even resigned as Ship's Counsellor but when the creatures started heading for a cosmic string which would doom the ship a desperate Picard turned to her for help, and it was her quick thinking that led to a solution. The creatures, attempting to return to their own space through a cosmic string fragment, had lost their way. The Enterprise crew used the ship's main deflector to generate the appropriate subspace harmonics to guide their return. The strength of the creatures' feelings had overwhelmed her powers. But she still proved capable in the role of counsellor. Ensign Janet Brooks, recently widowed when her husband Marc died in an accident in 2366, five months before his 38th birthday, was under Deanna's care and felt that Deanna helped her to deal realistically with her bereavement despite being temporarily without her empathic powers. Once the lifeforms had been guided back to their own continuum Deanna's empathic abilities returned and she resumed her job with renewed confidence.

An incident which illustrates the double-edged nature of her telepathic powers occurred in 2369 when she was kidnapped by an underground group of Romulan dissidents. They targetted her because they felt her empathic abilities were ideally suited for espionage. They surgically altered her to look like a Romulan so she could pose as a member of the Tal Shiar aboard a Romulan Warbird. Her mission was to help smuggle out three high-level Romulan defectors to the Federation. She employed bluff and her ability to read the intentions of others, and thereby succeeded in her mission. [TNG: Face Of The Enemy]

BROADENING HORIZONS

The mission in [TNG: Face Of The Enemy] showed that Deanna was much more than just a counsellor and could make life and death decisions under extreme pressure. She had earlier experience of this type of situation in 2368, on stardate 45156, when she found herself to be the most senior officer, as lieutenant commander, on the Bridge when the Enterprise was damaged in a collision with two quantum filaments [TNG: Disaster]. Her decisions, including the use of Emergency Procedure Alpha 2, which disengaged all shipboard computer control and placed the ship's systems on manual override, helped to save the lives of everyone in the stardrive section. This experience, along with a class reunion in 2370 that revealed how far her contemporaries had progressed, prompted her to take the field training programme for advancement to the rank of commander. Deanna passed the Starfleet Bridge Officer Examination on stardate 47611, [TNG: Thine Own Self], meeting qualifications in bridge operations, diplomatic law, first contact procedures and command situations. Her qualifications were tested in 2371 when, as depicted in [Star Trek VII: Generations], she took the conn during a battle with a renegade Klingon ship commanded by the Duras sisters. After a disastrous warp core breach she managed to land the saucer section on Veridian III and although the ship was lost there were no fatalities.

blueprint diagram layouts of the private quarters of Deanna and certain other officers aboard the USS Enterprise-D

Next page: CONTINUING MISSIONS

TOP BACK PREVIOUS NEXT DEANNA TROI INDEX SITE HELP BRIDGE