ST: TNG - Lwaxana Troi

In an effort to relive my early teens, I am re-watching old episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It is both better and worse than I remembered it, as was my youth most likely.
_____________________________________

Seriesdate: 2.19
Manhunt


The episode describing the fishlike Antedean race and a gripping, convoluted cloak and dagger plot to assassinate an entire interstellar diplomatic conference.

Actually, that describes about three minutes' worth of the show, and the very cheap, stiff rubber masks worn by those alien extras in the picture ensure that even those three minutes fail to register as memorable. Not exactly breaking the costume / makeup budget. The rest is filler, courtesy of Gene Roddenberry's wife in the purple dress there.

Lwaxana Troi, Deanna's mother, jumps on board for some reason (she's an ambassador whom we never see doing any ambassadoring) and as a menopausal Betazoid has apparently turned into a raging horndog. (Hornbitch?*) She sets her perverted* eyes on Picard, who flees the dire threat* of her forwardness under a cloud of ridicule* from his crew. Lwaxana lectures Deanna that men are a commodity* and she needs to mature* and learn to treat them as such - "and the men in your life are going to bless you for it."* We sacrifice about a third of the episode's screen time to yet another holodeck adventure into the 1940s (presumably to repurpose some gangster movie sets and costumes the studio had lying around and save yet more effects cash) and Lwaxana ends up hitting on a hologram**. Then just as this nonsensical string of digressions is wrapping up, the writers suddenly remember it's supposed to be a SciFi show and have Lwaxana effortlessly prevent a major interstellar incident just by being in the same room as the aliens. All she had to do was show up.

Pretty much the only intriguing scene has Deanna sensing her mother's arrival and exclaiming "my God" - do Betazoids indulge in gods? You'd think if anyone can actually manage to get a prayer answered, it'd be the planet full of telepaths.

___________________________________________

Seriesdate: 3.24
Menage A Troi


Yeah... yeah, I know. I fancy myself a punny guy, but even I cling to standards higher than that title. It's the episode where Deanna and her mother get teleported naked

and Lwaxana masturbates a Ferengi's ears.

Sure, other stuff happens, but as with Tasha Yar's bellybutton, I'm guessing most youngsters who watched the show back then mainly remembered two women displaying their totally nude lumbar areas.

Look, we simply maintained lower expectations before the days of internet porn, alright?

Anyway. We start out with some gratuitous mother-daughter banter about grandchildren (during which Deanna somehow neglects to mention her easy-bake star child from the start of season 2.) Then they get surprise-teleported by Lwaxana's not-so-secret admirer. Watching the kidnapped Lwaxana romance the Ferengi captain and pull disgusted faces* at having to touch an unattractive male eats up a fair amount of screen time. Which is a pity because by the close of season 3, TNG had gotten good enough to supply much more Starring and Trekking than Manhunt did a year prior. Riker and the younger Troi pull off a daring jailbreak at chesspoint while Wesley solves the kidnapping mystery via reason and observation instead of nose-twitching. We get some jargon about starship engines, 3D chess, alien flora and alien erogenous zones, the works.

In fact, if you were to remove Lwaxana's sexual plot elements, I'd count this a pretty decent episode.
At least it gave us the memorable scene of Patrick Stewart belting out a sonnet medley at roughly one quarter his theatrical ability. It takes a good actor to purposely play a bad one.

_____________________________________________

Seriesdate: 4.22
Half a Life

(No, this has nothing to do with hazard suits, headcrabs or crowbars.)

Season 1 of TNG was infamously terrible. Season 2 started out much the same but gradually began turning around. First the special effects, props and costumes improved, then the writers began putting in more effort to outgrow their pulpy self-limitations, mostly plot-wise. Season 3 saw marked improvements in character writing and acting, with most of the cast at last growing into their roles. By season 4 all these elements had coalesced into the respectable high point of trekking which we all know and love. (We all know and love.) (All!)

Darling, let's you and me kill me.

Timicin the Kaelonite (a.k.a. Charles Emerson Winchester III) visits the Enterprise to blow up a star while looking for a way to re-sunnify his own solar system's aging gas bag. And speaking of aging gas bags, most of the episode's dedicated to his species' customary suicide at age sixty to make room for younger gas bags. Lwaxana, who's fallen for the big lug, is dead set against him setting himself dead. Cue many emotional dialogues.

And damnit, it's good. As before, Majel Barrett's appearance eats up most of the screen time, with the Enterprise's crew barely being accorded token walk-ons in their own show. Unlike before, the plot's course takes her from a comedic beginning as her old season 1-2-3 completely flat over-the-top narcissist to an individual with both personal desires and some understanding of the objective reality around herself.

Though slightly disappointed at solar kablooie being sidelined in favor of interpersonal claptrap, I must concede this episode retains its SF credibility through its inhumanly honest discussion of old age and suicide. Timicin's treatment of the matter approaches both the serenity and multifaceted contextualization of Heinlein's Martian discorporation. The discussion moves quickly enough to hit on most any salient point from the personal to the interpersonal to the societal and utilitarian, with Stiers skillfully acting his way through various stages of grief and Barrett having grown skillful enough in her portrayal of Lwaxana to keep up with him.

________________________________________________

Really, the character of Lwaxana's just more first-season detritus. Though being played by someone with such a long-standing presence in Star Trek almost inevitably ensured her persistence, her personality and powers had to be downgraded, much like Wesley and Q, as the show matured. SF provides precious little justification for flamboyant grandes dames.

Her season 1 appearance in Haven mostly revolves around her overbearing, invasive use of her Betazoid telepathy.
By Manhunt, the writers must have come to the inevitable realization of what a game-breaker telepathy would prove for any sane sentient interactions and menopausally hobbled it.
Menage a Troi revolves around Ferengi being immune to Betazoiding and thus allows for her to display a modicum of rational problem-solving.
Half a Life casually expands this Betazoid telepathic incompatibility to some unspecified wide range of species then makes no further mention of it throughout her emotional displays versus Timicin or the ship's crew. Just as with the Lascar's helm in Torment: Tides of Numenera, the more thorough intimacy this accomplishes only underscores telepathy's unscientific unsuitability for Science Fiction. Her rational choice to share Timicin's ritual suicide with him and his family would have seemed completely out of character for the voyeuristic diva first appearing in season 1-2.

Sometimes, growth is best achieved by subtraction.

__________________________________________________
* - while gender relations are not a main point here, it pays to imagine the roles reversed. How would these situations and attitudes have been presented or received by the audience had Lwaxana been male and her targets female?
** - quite a few lines of dialogue are dedicated to Picard and the rest of the crew accommodating both Lwaxana's need for a bit of flirtation and the need to prevent her embarrassment at not realizing she's flirting with a hologram, plus her righteous indignation at the discovery. Compare to the snide, condescending attitudes written into Geordi (m) or Barclay (m) and their holographic interactions, a whole season after Lwaxana's allotted her high horse.