??If there???? one character whose job should suggest something about her character, it???? Uhura. If she???? the communication specialist, make her the person who knows the most about aliens, who specializes in mediating between conflicting characters, who is technically expert in modes and technologies of communication. Rather than being a switchboard operator, which is how the original show treated her.??

?? which is nonetheless superior to being Deanna Troi, which sadly is what you??re describing.

The problem with Deanna Troi is that it felt like *such* a close profession/personality match. It was this ’90s idea that if you’re an expert on psychology you must also be a natural therapist whose sole calling in life is to non-judgmentally understand all living things and lovingly seek to nurture them into health. It was actually really, really annoying that someone who was on the command crew of what was, all the BS aside, a warship frequently confronting incredible threats to the survival of civilization itself was seemingly morally committed to being wishy-washy, that we had to keep on getting the “Should I bail out my teammates even if it means betraying the trust of this complete stranger?” plot.

So not that. Hopefully we can move past that and show that being an expert on mediation and communication — and a female one, at that — doesn’t mean you’re incapable of taking sides, making judgments, having morals or a spine.

Especially because that was so central to old-school Uhura’s character — that when they bothered to use her, they used her as a voice of reason, a common-sensical person acting as an anchor for the rest of the crew’s often lofty and unrealistic ideals.

Yes, that is an annoying “mom” stereotype that gets foisted on female characters, but making it tied into her field of expertise and having it be her specific role on the crew — that would be good. Having her seek to understand all alien points of view, not out of a spiritual call to universal understanding, but because it is the *practical thing to do to not get killed*, would be nice. Having her be the one familiar enough with the vast differences between cultures and languages and the immense potential for things to go wrong when worlds collide, not as a voice of empathetic mush but as a voice of prudence, and caution — that could be pretty sweet. Warning Spock that he doesn’t understand everything, warning McCoy that his ethics don’t apply everywhere, warning Kirk that his intuition won’t save him — because aliens are scary and weird and dangerous, and the person who seeks to understand aliens the most is the one who *most understands* how scary and dangerous walking into a foreign culture either with wide-open arms or threatening clenched fists can be.

That’s my $0.02, anyway.

I think you’re being a bit hard on Roddenberry with his perfect people in a perfect future. The worst of his excesses didn’t come till the early seasons of TNG, when he’d started to believe the bunkus that people were peddling about his amazing vision. When he decided that he was speaking to the ages with his brilliant philosophy we got some of the worst weaknesses of TNG.

Oh, Jonathan, wasn’t the most charming part of TNG the way that in the end everything could be solved either by tachyons or reversing the polarity? Seriously, one of the things from which I get the greatest delight in Star Trek is the nonsense science. Granted, the nonsense science isn’t *supposed* to be funny, but that also gives it charm.

I prefer it when technology has limits and the characters have ideas and the problems require more than strafing runs and handwaving. I have a bad feeling about this.

… which is nonetheless superior to being Deanna Troi, which sadly is what you’re describing.

Once you’ve got the rationalist scientist and the feeling healer, you don’t need any more personality-and-profession matches. It’s better to take even the occasional painfully obvious expectations-reversal like Geordi the blind helmsman, rather than endless painfully obvious expectations-fulfilling roles like Worf the security officer.

(Mayweather could have been, but they never went that direction.)