That one episode where her empathic abilities stopped working prove your point. She was useless at her job without them. She could likely have adapted, sure, but over the course of years and with therapy designed to help her adjust. She was literally disabled and all the humans were like, “What’s the problem? We live like this all the time.”
Imagine if your sense of equilibrium just vanished one day and you were a professional athlete. That’s a career ending disability right there. I feel like that episode would be written very differently if it was made now.
Yup, exactly. She was basically turned autistic and completely unable to read the emotions on peoples’ faces. Because she had never needed to do so before; She had always relied on her empathic abilities.
The best parallel I’ve seen is with the Elcor in Mass Effect. Natively, they communicate using subtle facial expressions, scent, implications, etc… So when communicating with other races, they outright state their emotional tones for each sentence, because other races aren’t used to dealing with Elcor subtlety. To other races, the Elcor seem downright nonemotional, because the Elcor emotions are too subtle to catch. And the reverse is also true, where the Elcor need to learn how to interact with other races, because their first reaction is that other races are hyperemotional; To an Elcor, a slight frown would basically be a declaration of war.
Deanna is basically an Elcor living among humans. She picks up on their subtleties, and has learned how to live among them. But she also has zero faith in her crew mates being able to do the same, because they never pick up on hers. So she constantly states the obvious when dealing with her crew mates, because why would she expect them to be able to read a room when they never feel her emotions?
That one episode where her empathic abilities stopped working prove your point. She was useless at her job without them. She could likely have adapted, sure, but over the course of years and with therapy designed to help her adjust. She was literally disabled and all the humans were like, “What’s the problem? We live like this all the time.”
Imagine if your sense of equilibrium just vanished one day and you were a professional athlete. That’s a career ending disability right there. I feel like that episode would be written very differently if it was made now.
Yup, exactly. She was basically turned autistic and completely unable to read the emotions on peoples’ faces. Because she had never needed to do so before; She had always relied on her empathic abilities.
The best parallel I’ve seen is with the Elcor in Mass Effect. Natively, they communicate using subtle facial expressions, scent, implications, etc… So when communicating with other races, they outright state their emotional tones for each sentence, because other races aren’t used to dealing with Elcor subtlety. To other races, the Elcor seem downright nonemotional, because the Elcor emotions are too subtle to catch. And the reverse is also true, where the Elcor need to learn how to interact with other races, because their first reaction is that other races are hyperemotional; To an Elcor, a slight frown would basically be a declaration of war.
Deanna is basically an Elcor living among humans. She picks up on their subtleties, and has learned how to live among them. But she also has zero faith in her crew mates being able to do the same, because they never pick up on hers. So she constantly states the obvious when dealing with her crew mates, because why would she expect them to be able to read a room when they never feel her emotions?