beccaelizabeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccaelizabeth) wrote2010-10-22 11:55 pm
beccaelizabeth) wrote2010-10-22 11:55 pm
Entry tags:
ST:TNG The Loss
This probably started out as one of those stories where you strip the crew of their technology, or strip the slayer of her physical strength, and watch them prove their skills are made of knowledge and choices. It does that part pretty well. Deanna gets an actual plot where she does Counseling work and applies knowledge of how minds work, rather than just being one more of the ships sensors, 'I feel xyz' all the time. She has skills. Is of the good.
But because her empathic powers are built in it's a temporary disability story, or a becoming disabled story since she doesn't know it's going to be temporary. And from that angle I'm not quite sure what to make of it. I did like the bit where she was all spare me your inspirational stories, and actually the other senses don't get sharper people just make that up to feel better. And she said that developing her human side to learn how to read people without that particular sense was going to take time, which seems quite right. Except in the next sentence she's showing she's already got keen reading people senses, and while I can see how she would because she has in fact been seeing the outsides as well as teh empathy that whole time so she can read the body language same like I can on TV, it's a bit annoying for her other point, the one that keeps comparing it to being blind. Could she be a blind Counselor? Yes, but she'd have to learn a bunch before she'd be just as good at it. She just said so. Why they undo that?
So then there's Riker's little speech to her, and that's the crunch of the problem. Because he's not being nice to her at all. Instead of listening to her and accepting she's accurately telling him her new perceptions and problems, he just says no, she's stuck being equal with everyone now, and it's only losing her advantage that she's complaining about. Goes on about her being aristocratic. It's like he's smug she's lost something. It's ugly. She's standing there telling him it's like she's suddenly surrounded by unreal people, like she's trapped on the holodeck, no real people any more, and he just tells her she doesn't feel like that. What, he knows this from his learnings? From having dated her he knows what is in her mind? There's some kind of wrong in there. She's saying a thing that feels true, you can't just splat it back like tennis and say no, really you're fed up because you're no aristocrat any more. There's an element there with some powers being things you are born to, but it combines very poorly with the disability plot. It's like, hai, have a disability, we smug now. Creepy.
But Riker gets told off for it at the end. Also, no kissing. So he doesn't get rewarded for that creepy speech.
It feels like the good bits of this plot were threaded together with the bits that feel off or wonky. And then it was all wrapped up in one episode, so it's not feeling like a disability story at all anyway, even when they used the words.
Deanna talking about feeling like everyone is flat and not proper real is sort of familiar. When my head goes wrong that's a perception I have had. It makes it very difficult because how can people help when they're not properly there? ... it also sounds very crazy. Also also I suspect people would react badly to being told they're not real. I mean it's not very nice to say. Even if you only mean your head is wrong and people seem far away and the other side of glass. But I think that description applies not just to when you lose empathy reading but also to when you're in so much pain or distress you can't see past it. She was having a very bad day right then, so it works either way.
It's also a story where people make up a superpower not to have rather than have an actual disability. Why is the story about the Counselor losing her empathy? (I know I noticed why, it's what they want to explore to prove she is more than her superpower, but) Why not about actually going blind? Or deaf? Someone who has the job of getting people to tell her things would have a Thing if she went deaf. But it's talking about disability without having actual disability around, and that invisibles disability even more. Losing a superpower is not disability. Even if in world it would be reacted to that way, out here we're waiting on seeing ourselves on TV.
Plus it was all about her emotional reactions and the emotional reactions of others. There wasn't a single ounce of practical help. Even when Guinan gave her a prod Deanna talked about instinct and intuition. Speaking as someone who had to learn body language out of book I can tell you it's possible to bring to conscious knowledge the cues that most people are working off when they have those 'intuitive' readings of others. If Deanna can't empathically sense what others are feeling she needs to concentrate on what her other senses are picking up and how those cues, body language, facial expression, tone of voice, convey emotional states. Study with her thinking instead of sense with her feeling. But nobody mentioned that. Neither did Data tell her that he lacks intuition but he can still figure out human reactions, albeit canonically not with as much nuance. I know they had a story they wanted to tell with lots of drama, but it's part of a pattern in disability stories, they're all about 'oh no! the loss!' and not getting around to 'and here are some wheels and a reacher and a hearing aid and something that auto subtitles through the universal translator and a clever set of computer commands that mean you don't have to speak' etc etc. All woe and no help. Makes the story say there is no help. Is no helpful.
I pretty much liked the story they set out to write, the look she has skills as well as powers story, but it crunched into some other stuff along the way I'm not so happy about. Still had good bits there though.
But because her empathic powers are built in it's a temporary disability story, or a becoming disabled story since she doesn't know it's going to be temporary. And from that angle I'm not quite sure what to make of it. I did like the bit where she was all spare me your inspirational stories, and actually the other senses don't get sharper people just make that up to feel better. And she said that developing her human side to learn how to read people without that particular sense was going to take time, which seems quite right. Except in the next sentence she's showing she's already got keen reading people senses, and while I can see how she would because she has in fact been seeing the outsides as well as teh empathy that whole time so she can read the body language same like I can on TV, it's a bit annoying for her other point, the one that keeps comparing it to being blind. Could she be a blind Counselor? Yes, but she'd have to learn a bunch before she'd be just as good at it. She just said so. Why they undo that?
So then there's Riker's little speech to her, and that's the crunch of the problem. Because he's not being nice to her at all. Instead of listening to her and accepting she's accurately telling him her new perceptions and problems, he just says no, she's stuck being equal with everyone now, and it's only losing her advantage that she's complaining about. Goes on about her being aristocratic. It's like he's smug she's lost something. It's ugly. She's standing there telling him it's like she's suddenly surrounded by unreal people, like she's trapped on the holodeck, no real people any more, and he just tells her she doesn't feel like that. What, he knows this from his learnings? From having dated her he knows what is in her mind? There's some kind of wrong in there. She's saying a thing that feels true, you can't just splat it back like tennis and say no, really you're fed up because you're no aristocrat any more. There's an element there with some powers being things you are born to, but it combines very poorly with the disability plot. It's like, hai, have a disability, we smug now. Creepy.
But Riker gets told off for it at the end. Also, no kissing. So he doesn't get rewarded for that creepy speech.
It feels like the good bits of this plot were threaded together with the bits that feel off or wonky. And then it was all wrapped up in one episode, so it's not feeling like a disability story at all anyway, even when they used the words.
Deanna talking about feeling like everyone is flat and not proper real is sort of familiar. When my head goes wrong that's a perception I have had. It makes it very difficult because how can people help when they're not properly there? ... it also sounds very crazy. Also also I suspect people would react badly to being told they're not real. I mean it's not very nice to say. Even if you only mean your head is wrong and people seem far away and the other side of glass. But I think that description applies not just to when you lose empathy reading but also to when you're in so much pain or distress you can't see past it. She was having a very bad day right then, so it works either way.
It's also a story where people make up a superpower not to have rather than have an actual disability. Why is the story about the Counselor losing her empathy? (I know I noticed why, it's what they want to explore to prove she is more than her superpower, but) Why not about actually going blind? Or deaf? Someone who has the job of getting people to tell her things would have a Thing if she went deaf. But it's talking about disability without having actual disability around, and that invisibles disability even more. Losing a superpower is not disability. Even if in world it would be reacted to that way, out here we're waiting on seeing ourselves on TV.
Plus it was all about her emotional reactions and the emotional reactions of others. There wasn't a single ounce of practical help. Even when Guinan gave her a prod Deanna talked about instinct and intuition. Speaking as someone who had to learn body language out of book I can tell you it's possible to bring to conscious knowledge the cues that most people are working off when they have those 'intuitive' readings of others. If Deanna can't empathically sense what others are feeling she needs to concentrate on what her other senses are picking up and how those cues, body language, facial expression, tone of voice, convey emotional states. Study with her thinking instead of sense with her feeling. But nobody mentioned that. Neither did Data tell her that he lacks intuition but he can still figure out human reactions, albeit canonically not with as much nuance. I know they had a story they wanted to tell with lots of drama, but it's part of a pattern in disability stories, they're all about 'oh no! the loss!' and not getting around to 'and here are some wheels and a reacher and a hearing aid and something that auto subtitles through the universal translator and a clever set of computer commands that mean you don't have to speak' etc etc. All woe and no help. Makes the story say there is no help. Is no helpful.
I pretty much liked the story they set out to write, the look she has skills as well as powers story, but it crunched into some other stuff along the way I'm not so happy about. Still had good bits there though.
no subject
says stuff in the production and reception that's a bit more illuminating
the core of their idea was that she had lost something nobody else understood in the first place, like if she'd been the only sighted person and she suddenly went blind. So that would be why Riker is an arse and nobody helps, they started with the idea nobody could understand it. But the problem is her sense is *empathy*, at least once it's back in English words, and figuring out the emotions of others is in fact something most neurotypical people do a whole bunch.
I like that handicapped people at conventions say they like this episode and it says a lot of their true things, I felt it said a lot of true things too. It just got a bit muddled or muddied or something by the SF elements.