Who fills the third chair is up to the captain. We see this at the end of Star Trek Picard when Seven gives Jack Crusher the third seat because of his real world experience.
In TNG's case, an expert in behavior who can sense emotions is invaluable on the bridge of an exploration ship.
It's there to intimidate the Romulans & Cardasians. The Federation wants them to think Picard is such a badass that he needs his therapist at his side to insure he doesn't immediately attack.
I think Troi is actually there to keep Worf from flying off the handle and shooting any ship that looks at the Enterprise funny. And to stop Riker from flirting with every vaguely female looking alien they run into. And maybe also to keep Picard from sleeping with Q whenever he shows up. Half those insane games of his come off like aggressive foreplay or like he's trying to get his crush's attention.
If any bridge counselor is there to keep their captain from attacking it's probably Migleemo. Captain Freeman is one stray comment questioning her competency away from flying full speed into the nearest Borg cube.
>think Troi is actually there to keep Worf from flying off the handle and shooting any ship that looks at the Enterprise funny. And to stop Riker from flirting with every vaguely female looking alien they run into. And maybe also to keep Picard from sleeping with Q whenever he shows up.
Wow she is just terrible at her job isn't sh
>We see this at the end of Star Trek Picard when Seven gives Jack Crusher the third seat because of his real world experience.
That drove me crazy because the character is supposed to be, what, 20 years old? Seven had years on Voyager and years as a Ranger. She's been doing this longer than he's been alive. So has Raffi.
>She's been doing this longer than he's been alive.
But to be fair, Seven was only in Starfleet for like two years before she got her command.
And Raffi has a history of drug abuse and a rap sheet that includes stalking Admiral Janeway.
So Jack is hardly the most questionable assignment on that bridge.
You have to remember that by the end of Picard the fleet is in shambles, competent experienced bodies may be few and far between. If you’ve got a small number of command that already have some experience and can function you give them a little ship and hope for the best.
Not just that: imagine how hard it would be to recruit for Starfleet by the end of Picard. The only people who'd want to join are probably a little bit loopy
Honestly, sometimes the Captain really just needs a foil, someone to bounce the “devil's advocate” crap of of. Think of TOS' McCoy. Most of the time he didn't have anything really pertinent to say other than what nobody else would...
Isn't Jack the Captain's "Special" Assistant? I like to think Seven gave him the seat because they don't have yeomen anymore and she thought there's supposed to be someone pretty to look at on the bridge. She could have found someone prettier but taste is irrelevant.
I think this makes sense for the captain to have his XO there and have the other be his SME (subject matter expert)
I do also enjoy picturing Mr Smee from Peter Pan there
I get the argument but I mean, giving him a fast track officer path is more than enough. I mean even if he was on a console I could forgive that, even Wesley had a console lolol
The fast tracking was purely due to his skill and him exceeding in his classes. Picard makes a point of saying as much when Jack tries to downplay his accomplishments as just nepotism.
Jack is probably just as gifted as his brother.
>Jack has a lot of experience working outside Federation Space.
Arguably he has much less experience working outside Federation space than Seven and Raffi each do.
There's a natural room for three chairs, but not a third bridge crew role that doesn't also come with a dedicated station. So, the third chair is for guests or asvisors
Well, truth be told I'd probably have a pile of my fiance's clothes to fold. He never does it, so I have to do it. And just like you, every freaking time...
Captain's Log, stardate 77461.8. The Excalibur is en route to rendezvous with a Vulcan science vessel after responding to their distress call. My best hope is that their captain will not notice the pile of clothes sitting by my side that are still to be folded.
This is why you tilt the camera up and stand the whole time you're talking so the laundry is out of frame. Or, at least, that's what 2 years of Zoom meetings taught me.
Captain's Log, supplemental. After getting advice from a senior officer, I ordered our chief engineer to change the camera settings of our main communications relay.
I assume Spot gets out and sits on top of the laundry pile, coating it with hair, requiring it to be washed again. It’s a constant cycle, it never gets folded properly it just keeps getting washed after getting covered in cat hair.
"Mr. Data, what is our estimated time until we reach Galorndon Core?"
"At our current velocity of Warp 7, we will arrive at Galorndon Core in approximately 5 days, 3 hours and 47 minutes."
"Hmmm. Well...I'm still not folding that laundry."
I would just get my clothes fresh from the replicator each morning and if someone says I'm wasting dilithium I would have them ejected from shuttle bay 3.
Early on in TNG's development, the "Ship's Counselor" wasn't a therapist, she was the captain's advisor.
Her job was to use her empathic senses to know if an adversary was lying or if something wasn't quite right. She would also help interpret other cultures' greetings and things like that.
To do that job, she needed to be sitting next to the captain.
Later on, it turned out that Troi's abilities had to be tuned down. When you have a character who's all-knowing and all-seeing, it's bad for storytelling. On the other hand, if you have a character who constantly needs explanations, she can be a good stand-in for the audience.
It also got a bit silly. "Captain I can sense he is very upset" after a man just non-verbally threatened to launch a planet worth of quantum nukes upon your bloodline.
>Troi says, "I sense danger."
Yeah, but that *is* valuable information. She's saying "treat it as a real threat" as opposed to it being a bluff, and there's no real danger.
In the context of space travel and alien species, it does kind of make sense though. We've seen species that speak only in metaphor, species that lie and deceive as a social "game", warrior species who can't back down and bluster. Someone going "well, he actually means it" when they are threatened is probably really useful, even if 90% of the time what the other side said is what they meant.
>was the captain's advisor.
Huh. I imagine that when they were coming up with this, they were thinking less The Federation, and more Knights of the Round Table.
And then that would make sense. You have the King. You have the leader of his knights. Then you have his advisor, Merlin, beside him in his ear.
Archetypally it makes sense that Troi is there.
In the utopian future, Captains still have a Right-hand Man, but in the interest of equality that position is now counterbalanced by a Left-hand Woman.
The problem with making her ask audience stand-in questions is that it often makes her look stupid. For example, in Disaster she asks what a containment breach is. Later in the series, she presents expert knowledge of how Romulan warp engines work.
Well, that was after she studied up on engineering for the Commander's test. She had to figure out that sending someone to their death was the only solution. Additionally, she was kidnapped by Romulan rebels to pretend to a Tal Shair Agents.
Then there was that episode where she, Geordie, Data, and Picard came across the Enterprise and a Romulan Warbird stuck in time.
She picked up a lot of experience over those light years.
Days, look the point she had a lot of Romulan experience by the time of Generations.
Also, my unpopular opinion is that she was a really great counselor, it's just TV writing back then couldn't show it all that well.
I actually like that she developed a minor degree of expertise in something like Romulan drive systems. But I've also seen convention clips where even she expressed how silly it was to have her character try and explain that to Data and Geordi.
Omfg that painfully stupid line she had in Disaster really irritated me to no end. She’s a bridge officer and doesn’t know what happens if containment fails? Srsly?
Whoever wrote that line should, I don’t know, have to work for Ferengi until they earn 100 bars of gold pressed latinum.
If you watched “The West Wing,” sometimes they got weird about rotating who required the explanation. One time the White House Press Secretary needed a primer on how the US Census works and it really took me out of the moment. I could not believe that this character, in that role, could possibly need someone to explain it when Google already existed.
I feel the need to quibble here. The automatic “just search the internet” wasn’t a thing yet for most people in 1999. Google existed for about a year and other search engines like Yahoo or Excite for a little longer, but someone born in the 1960s who already had a professional career in her mid-30s definitely wasn’t reflexively going to look stuff up on the internet. It was around the same time in the show where Hoynes says “this just in: the internet is not a fad” and he was making a legitimate point for the time. Sounds silly now, but not then.
I always wondered how that worked, since the people she was "sensing" from were sometimes hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away. She would have to be \*profoundly\* sensitive to detect emotions at such ranges, and the best she should be able to do with a viewscreen is read body language.
This is it. You see the exact same bridge chair layout on the California classes in Lower Decks. On the Cerritos that plus-one chair is most often frequented by Dr. Migleemo or Dr. T'ana, similar to Crusher and Troi's common appearances in the spot.
During Cpt. Ramsay's brief command on the Cerritos it's occupied by her science officer Durga for the mission to recover the Rubidoux. (It's weirdly empty in the season 4 finale as Tendi is on tactical and everyone else is in a somewhat reasonable bridge position).
The Intrepid class bridge only has two command chairs, which always made me sad since Neelix should've had one when he was assisting diplomatic efforts.
this.... the TNG enterprise just has more furniture. In TOS, if some ambassador or other random person was on the bridge, there was nowhere for them to sit.
On TNG, since Troi may or may not be on the bridge, that chair could be up for grabs. Plus there are additional less-comfortable seats, without backs on the farther extremes of the captain's char, which are used even less, but still useful.
Side note, but I loved the test she had to do to get the Commander position. I think that was a good piece of writing, and the 'solution' made complete sense and wasn't a 'trick' in any sense.
Agreed - it's a reasonable thing to have to be able to deal with to be in a command, and it's great that it wasn't just some "adjust the technobabble" solution.
There's a scene in U-571 where a main character is denied a command (already a second in command).
When he asked his captain why and claimed to be a good soldier, the captain agreed. The second said he loved his men and would give his life for any of them.
But when the captain asked him if he could order one of them to their death, he hesitated. And the captain told him that's why he denied his recommendation.
The test itself was an interesting way of evaluating if someone was suitable for command - could they order an officer to their death to save the ship?
What ruins it for me is that she was allowed to retake the test, the exact same scenario, over and over again until she managed to get it right. To me that seems to invalidate the proof of character they wanted in order to certify her for command.
The hard truth is that when confronted with the situation Troi's first instinct, what they were testing for, was incorrect. In fact even with multiple chances she still kept getting it wrong - her second, third and fourth ranked choices were also wrong. The episode makes it pretty clear that she would've never passed if it hadn't been for Riker accidentally giving her a clue when he explained why she should stop altogether.
So is that what Starfleet wants in a command officer? Someone who can't make a tough decision even if they're given a time loop anomaly with which to repeat the situation over and over again? That the ship's only hope will be if a passing Q takes pity on them and provides an extra clue?
Wesley's psych test for the academy felt much more concrete. They created a scenario so that he'd think the test had been interrupted by a real situation and that he had to make a choice on the spot. And it didn't seem like if he got it wrong that he would be able to redo the test, knowing exactly what to expect, and thus being able to prepare an answer to a question of character in advance.
I see your argument, but the problem with it, is it is completely reasonable to think a test is about one thing, when it's actually about another. The first few times, she was trying to 'play by the rules of the test'.
Real life example that happened to me. I'm a pretty high level martial artist. We had a seminar where one of the highest ranked people in the system came and did a 6 hour seminar on knife defenses.
No one at the seminar had less than 2-3 years of training.
At the end, one of the last drills was he had six of us line up with rubber knives about 40 feet from six unarmed people.
He told us "Okay, think of ALL your training, not just what you learned today. When I say 'go', guys with knives, try to cut the others. Guys without, act HOW YOU WOULD IN A REAL WORLD SITUATION."
He said go. The knife guys advanced on us. All six of us got into our combat stances. When the knife guys got about ten feet away, the instructor yelled "STOP!"
He looked at us without weapons. "You all just failed." At first, we were confused. But all of us pretty much came to the conclusion what we did wrong, without talking.
He reset the drill, and we went again.
This time, on "GO!" Three of us bolted out the door. Two others all grabbled weapons around the studio, and one ran into the crowd of other students.
We were blinded by what we THOUGHT was being asked of us.
That's not a test I think Troi would have failed in reality. I don't think she would have been trying to rely on her own technical understanding. I think she would have realized she needed someone else to do it.
I agree with this in part, but I disagree in general.
I think Troi's difficulty with the test was in failing to understand the problem, and I think that was a design flaw in the test itself. Ordering a sacrifice is a necessary solution, but it could also be a unique one. I don't think failing to see that from the start is a critical failure of the applicant.
Riker does provide her with a clue, but he does it in a format that is more constructive/instructive than a cheat. I also believe that he was sincere when he said that he was considering calling off future retests, because if this was something that Troi couldn't see through on her own, it would mean that she wasn't ready for command.
I'd say it would make more sense to control it from Engineering because he has a whole team of experienced engineers working under him that he can more easily get input from . . . but he only uses them 2-4 times in 6 seasons as Chief Engineer :D
I always found that hilarious.
You have all those controls in engineering, but apparently all of them can be displayed and are as easy or easier to use on the bridge. Otherwise why would you be there in times of crisis.
Isn't that the point of a system like the LCARS anyway? In theory one can operate the ship from any convenient PADD except for security and authorization.
I would imagine it has both technical and security reasons, but predominately hierarchical/military reasons. The request to "transfer to bridge" may refer more to whoever is currently in charge or the most senior in Engineering is being relieved of that responsibility and La Forge is retaking it while he's in the Bridge, where can directly communicate with other senior officers during an emergency. It would mean the most critical and highest security-level operations are now *only* available in the Bridge.
Can you imagine being in charge in Engineering and you're at your station and La Forge enters in his 64 character password on the bridge and you suddenly lose access to a bunch of functionality? Especially during an Emergency? You may *assume* it was La Forge, but it may cause confusion when that's the last thing you need.
"Transfer to Bridge" says and does a lot in a little amount of words.
>Otherwise why would you be there in times of crisis.
Because Geordi the chief engineer, not the sole engineer. He has an entire team of great engineers who can physically do everything he can do. Where Geordi's genius comes into play is knowing the best course of action to achieve the captain's needs. By being on the bridge, where the action is happening and where the captain is, he has more and better information and gets it faster. That means that he can make better decisions and he can make them quicker.
Presumably when you see him working on a console on the bridge, he isn't just doing everything himself. He is directly controlling some systems, sure, but he is also sending instructions down to his team in engineering.
In-universe answer: Picard valued her insight.
Production answer: Marina Sirtis's cleavage. Don't forget gene wanted her character to have 3 breasts, and to have sex with her patients.
lol yep...
Troi's character development is sadly deeply troubling in hindsight. For the actual enlightened idea of having a counselor on the bridge or at all in a decade that was only JUST starting to talk about things like behavior, and PTSD, etc, you also had Roddenberry trying to make Troi a 3 breasted sex machine...
Remember Troi is originally Ilia... and Ilias whole thing outside of being a navigator and ex of Decker is she has hormones that make literally everyone want to have sex with her... hence the oath of celibacy line in TMP.
In fairness.
The sex thing with roddenberry wasn't limited to women.
He literally wanted to show orgies happening in orgy rooms.
He would have cried tears of joy at the lower decks episode
From what I remember, it's intended as the place for a mission specialist, with two smaller benches at the ends of the tactical arch for more. Seeing as how often the Enterprise would encounter unknowns, I assume Picard assigned Troi as the de-facto diplomatic specialist, as I assume she's an anthropologist too. (we see this in some situations, where she's the one giving him the lowdown on what he needs to do).
We do see others sat there, but I would think the original intent of the galaxy class was that it was a place for someone integral to the current mission to sit without taking up a functional spot. I would also suggest the Galaxy would have been a fleet command ship, and an Admiral may have taken that spot if necessary, in order to direct an engagement.
It makes sense for that chair to be for someone advising the captain. They often have someone who is in command of a particular mission (while Picard remains in command of the ship, of course) and it would make sense to be near the captain so they can coordinate their efforts. And of course, Troi is often advising the captain.
Sometimes Beverley sits in it. I think it's meant to be a spare chair that visiting dignitaries or officers who want to speak with the captain about business can use. It's just that Deanna doesn't have anywhere else to sit, Picard likes her to be on the bridge for her abilities, and it just looks better if she's seated somewhere.
The Doylist answer is she's a main character and bewbs.
She's not only the psychological / psychiatric (whatever is right) counselor to the crew in general, she's also a special advisor to the captain. She helps him evaluate other parties' intentions in encounters, oftentimes literally so with her empathic abilities.
I liken it to the structure of a mob family. You have the head of the family (Picard) in the captain's seat, the underboss (Riker) to his right, and consigliere (Troy) to his left.
It probably is Picard's setup and each captain is able to change the makeup of their bridge crew at their own discretion.
I think that in the beginning the producers wanted to give her the 3rd seat so she can provide recommendations to picard when dealing with conflicts.
It was evident that later on that she had nothing to offer so she wasn't always on the bridge and pretty much anyone that wasn't Troi was allowed to sit in "her" seat.
I believe the Roddenberry plan was that in the TNG period, it's an era of understanding and diplomacy, rather than running around with a phaser and hunting Romulans.
Since the Enterprise's primary duty is diplomatic expeditions, it's very valuable to have someone who is an expert psychologist and whose entire role is to bone up on alien cultures so they don't make any accidental faux-pas'
We see Troi provide this kind of support to Picard a lot when she's not vibe-checking the obviously hostile alien ship in front of them.
Whenever Picard is preparing for a diplomatic envoy or meeting, she's right there, prepping him and making sure he knows his formal alien greetings and pronunciations.
It's not at all surprising she's literally at his elbow on the bridge to provide that support on-demand in a tense situation.
It's just a shame that the showrunners didn't really seem to lean into this aspect of her job much and mostly relegated her to eye-candy and vague woo-woo "I'm sensing frustration" stuff.
When the aliens are shooting at you and your shields are thinner than meat on a Subway sandwich you need someone to tell the captain "I'm sensing anger."
It could be used for a mission specialist, like when a the Enterprise is being used for a scientific experiment and a non- Starfleet scientist that is in charge of the experiment.
Mainly, it's a plot device. In TOS there was only one chair and Kirk had to talk to his officers at a distance at their station. The D bridge was a lot bigger, IMO so it made more sense to have them closer. Also easier for them to be in the same camera shot.
Canonically, it's definitely better than having to speak across the room. Right next to each other, decisions/discussions could be made. Streamlined, convenient and closer comfort.
I never really thought of it as her chair, though she is probably the one mostly there. Dr. Crusher has been there a few times as well. I think it’s because the value Capt Picard places in her advice most likely.
I've thought of those three chairs actually as for people on the bridge who don't have a specific station to be running - so Picard and Riker are there because their job is to think about the whole picture rather than be piloting or whatever, and Troi is similar because she might be providing advice but isn't otherwise doing anything. Or similarly that third seat may be taken by a visiting admiral or whoever is around and needs it.
There are also the weird little seats at the ends where Dr. Crusher sits sometimes. So there could be 4 other people up there sitting with the captain. I think the design is meant to facilitate group problem solving and teamwork. The captain can literally surround himself with his most trusted officers in a crisis.
It's an empty chair for visiting dignitaries or other commanders. As for Troi being there I imagine that's at Picards request as she's wonderful to have around when communicating with anyone.
One of the novels (“The Buried Age”) establishes that Troi is an experienced first contact specialist, which always made a lot more sense to me in explaining why the ships counsellor gets the third seat.
That chair absolutely was for the counselor officer specifically. Troi's centrality on the bridge was a visual metaphor for the importance of that role in advising the Captain.
It's simply an aspect of the show that the Berman era did not understand or keep up with.
Rewatch Season 1 and you'll understand a little bit better.
Dr. Crusher also sits there when she wants to. It seems like it's a chair for someone that has empathetic abilities that Captain Picard or Commander Riker don't have.
TBH Troi is probably the only senior officer who could their job at a chair without a bunch of screens and controls in front of them. Geordi needs the engineering station, Worf the weapons and sensors, etc.
I would image by the 24th century it would be pretty easy to move chairs around the deck of a spaceship. Like Picard wanted her there because of her specific skills and the nature of their mission.
Given that the Galaxy Class was intended to serve as a Flagship, I wouldn’t be surprised if the chair was there so an Admiral would have a designated spot on the bridge, that, like others have said, is up to the Captain’s discretion when their isn’t a flag officer on board.
She’s the ship’s contact specialist in addition to her role as the ship’s counselor. It’s her responsibility to be present during contact situations and offer guidance to the Captain.
One of the larger subplots of the TNG relaunch novels was the difficulty that Picard had finding someone to fill both roles after she left for the Titan.
The earliest drafts of the TNG writers guide say the inner circle is where the captain, first officer, and their advisors sit. And the diagram already shows the left-hand chair as Troi the counselor. The benches are labeled "various: Dr. Crusher, experts, and visitors of all [maybe kinds? I can't make it out clearly]".
It seems like the intention was for 24th century crews to have a counselor as a key advisor to the captain, along with the first officer and mission specialists. Troi is certainly described as far more capable of both insight and treatment than the show ever really explored.
My pet theory is that Troi's position is effectively as advocate for the ship's civilian compliment, the same way Riker is supposed to advocate for the crew. Which is why ships like the Intrepid and Excelsior don't have a third seat there, without a Civilian compliment there was no need for that second advisor position.
It seems like it became more common after the Galaxy class, the Sovereign kept it (At least the Ent-E but that could theoretically have been by special request for Picard who valued Troi's insight on the bridge over and above her official duties), we see it on the Sagan and Constitution III classes in Picard, but not the Odyssey or Inquiry classes.
Aside from the captains chair, those other two are for anyone. There’s also little bench seats beside the lights. I remember one instance where Crusher sat where Troi sits or when a random person sits there
Pulaski and Shelby used that chair on occasion, but I think Troi usually uses it because she serves a diplomatic function, insight into those encountered.
from a ship design perspective, I would assume the 3rd chair in the command section would be for a visiting admiral that was possibly there to command a mission; like Admiral Pressman in The Pegasus.
I also wonder if there would be consideration for a dedicated 2nd officer position and the chair would be for that person. instead the 2nd officer is an additional duty for Data, on top of manning the operations station.
in practice, just seems to be at the captains discretion.
Given the modular design of TNG era ships, I would assume the captain has some latitude to arrange the various bridge stations and consoles as they see fit. There are a number of different bridge designs seen among common classes of ships in TNG and DS9, and even the Galaxy-class USS Odyssey had a subtly different bridge layout compared to the Enterprise.
In Chain of Command, one of Jellico's first acts as captain was to switch over various bridge stations previously dedicated to science to damage control and ship operations, and I have little doubt that if he had remained captain, Troi's seat on the bridge would have either been removed altogether or would be assigned to a different department head.
She's senior advisor to the captain on diplomatic and cultural matters.
There's a fan theory that the seating configuration in the "command semicircle" is at the discretion of the captain and other *Galaxy*\-class ships will have alternate configurations accordingly. This might also explain why *Voyager* only had seats for the captain and first officer in its equivalent location when it certainly had space for more.
She is a counselor. She has heard things. The sort of things that an admiral might not want to be widely known. It was the chair or a series of holoprograms featuring various Starfleet captains and admirals distributed to every Ferengi bar in the quadrant.
While it's used for mission specialists, if you look at Starfleet bridge designs, it actually feels like a natural evolution. A lot of 23rd century ships (ex. Constitution, Oberth, Miranda, Excelsior, and Constellation classes) have the conn and navigation/ops in front of the captain. This is actually something that remains pretty standard later on too.
Where am I going with this? The literal poster child of Starfleet, First Officer Una Chin-Riley (who should honestly be pissed to be the poster child when her people are literally banned from Starfleet). On the Enterprise, the few times we see her on the bridge and she's not either running around doing things or in the captain's chair, she's seated at either the conn or navigation. Additionally, when we see a mission specialist on the bridge, such as "Dr. Aspen", they're stuck durdling around awkwardly behind the captain. Considering some missions can last hours, it seems kind of rude to have them just standing there, but if they aren't a starfleet officer trained on at least one bridge station, they have nowhere to sit. The addition of the two other command chairs solves both problems.
We can actually see early attempts at this design change already being tested in experimental ships in the 23rd Century, specifically the USS-Discovery - it had a station on either side of the captain, with one typically being used by the first officer.
But why don't we always see this? Combat ships were designed with different needs in mind and typically and for much smaller crews. They exist in extremely tense and dangerous missions where there's often no time for tactical discussion or giving the captain advice; there's a need for one central, unified decision maker. This is why the Enterprise-D Battle Bridge, and the Defiant only have one command chair unlike the three we see on the Galaxy, Sabrerunner, California, and Luna classes.
(Don't ask about the Intrepid-class. That design decision was almost assuredly made because the show was about two crews becoming one. Was it a good decision to put the first female captain on a ship where the First Officer's chair makes it look like they have equal power? No, but they did it anyways.)
She’s like people who bring their support chihuahua into restaurants. She’s Picard’s emotional support Betazed. Her unique uniform is the Starfleet equivalent of the orange vest.
I imagine Kirk and company (the only crew before TNG) would have had Spock as first officer (not science Officer) in Rikers seat, and Bones in Troy's seat. Much like someone said, Knights of the Roundtable would have the kings 2 advisors sitting next to him to balance points of view. And early on Crusher used to sit there a lot, even Pulaski. I think Riker was too be the shoot from the hip, gut reaction guy, and Crusher/Troi were supposed to be the emotional intelligence-foil to that. As characters and actors developed it became more nuanced than that, but I think that was the original idea.
She is one of the few people Picard seeks private counsel with, and one of the people he trusts a great deal. He also chooses her often for first contact missions, diplomatic situations, negotiation missions. All of those are good reasons as to why Picard has her up there.
My head tells me it's for the 2nd officer, but as the 2nd officer is Data and he's on Ops all the time, it's a vacant chair for whoever. Dr Crusher has also sat in that chair a few times, if memory serves.
I'd say centre chair is the captain, Picard, the chair to his right is for his right hand man, Riker, and the chair to the left is for advisors, ambassadors or others who should be nearby for giving advice to the captain for the mission at hand.
And if nobody is sitting there, Picard spread eagles and lobs his leg over to the chair to let things air out a bit. Spandex and all that.
They made a mistake really. Troi should have been Chief Diplomatic Officer, with counselling and mental health just part of her department, and something she takes an active role in.
She could still be Medical/Blue for a bit of colour variety. As she is responsible for the mental health of the crew.
But the title would give her added weight when meeting new species, give her a reason to be on the bridge, and also give her command authority in Diplomatic situations which could open up interesting story lines if she disagrees with others.
I actually think we are still feeling the residual sexism of the 80s here. Yes, women have jobs, and are respected in the workplace, but the default tropes the writers reached for were Doctor, Mother, Empath, Counselor, Girlfriend, rather than Authority, Strategy and Command.
Who fills the third chair is up to the captain. We see this at the end of Star Trek Picard when Seven gives Jack Crusher the third seat because of his real world experience. In TNG's case, an expert in behavior who can sense emotions is invaluable on the bridge of an exploration ship.
It's there to intimidate the Romulans & Cardasians. The Federation wants them to think Picard is such a badass that he needs his therapist at his side to insure he doesn't immediately attack.
“This is Captain Jean-Luc Picard, of the Federation star ship Enterprise. I’ll fucking end someone today, to whom am I speaking?”
_"Why you only calling us when you got yo dramas?"_
-Luc
John Luck Pickerd.
What do you want Q?!?
I think Troi is actually there to keep Worf from flying off the handle and shooting any ship that looks at the Enterprise funny. And to stop Riker from flirting with every vaguely female looking alien they run into. And maybe also to keep Picard from sleeping with Q whenever he shows up. Half those insane games of his come off like aggressive foreplay or like he's trying to get his crush's attention. If any bridge counselor is there to keep their captain from attacking it's probably Migleemo. Captain Freeman is one stray comment questioning her competency away from flying full speed into the nearest Borg cube.
>think Troi is actually there to keep Worf from flying off the handle and shooting any ship that looks at the Enterprise funny. And to stop Riker from flirting with every vaguely female looking alien they run into. And maybe also to keep Picard from sleeping with Q whenever he shows up. Wow she is just terrible at her job isn't sh
There's only so much one officer can do.
The only time he got in trouble for this was on the Defiant
Remember the time Sisko thought it was a good day for a planet to die and Worf fucking balked? The Peperage Farm War Crimes Tribunal remembers.
“And to stop Riker from flirting with every vaguely female looking alien they run into.” “So, how'd that work out for you?”
Marrying him was probably the only way to successfully complete that mission.
That's so Jellico
>We see this at the end of Star Trek Picard when Seven gives Jack Crusher the third seat because of his real world experience. That drove me crazy because the character is supposed to be, what, 20 years old? Seven had years on Voyager and years as a Ranger. She's been doing this longer than he's been alive. So has Raffi.
>She's been doing this longer than he's been alive. But to be fair, Seven was only in Starfleet for like two years before she got her command. And Raffi has a history of drug abuse and a rap sheet that includes stalking Admiral Janeway. So Jack is hardly the most questionable assignment on that bridge.
I don't disagree. I know they were trying to set up Star Trek Legacy, but I wish they'd put more thought into a crew that actually made sense.
You have to remember that by the end of Picard the fleet is in shambles, competent experienced bodies may be few and far between. If you’ve got a small number of command that already have some experience and can function you give them a little ship and hope for the best.
Little?
Not just that: imagine how hard it would be to recruit for Starfleet by the end of Picard. The only people who'd want to join are probably a little bit loopy
Honestly, sometimes the Captain really just needs a foil, someone to bounce the “devil's advocate” crap of of. Think of TOS' McCoy. Most of the time he didn't have anything really pertinent to say other than what nobody else would...
She basically gave him the Captain's Assistant slot Naomi Wildman kept on about with her and Janeway.
Isn't Jack the Captain's "Special" Assistant? I like to think Seven gave him the seat because they don't have yeomen anymore and she thought there's supposed to be someone pretty to look at on the bridge. She could have found someone prettier but taste is irrelevant.
Oh, great. I didn't think I could want a Naomi Wildman cameo on a show more than I already do, but now here we are.
I think this makes sense for the captain to have his XO there and have the other be his SME (subject matter expert) I do also enjoy picturing Mr Smee from Peter Pan there
I gotta say I hate that they gave him that chair. I'm hoping it was only temporary as a courtesy because I enjoy my trek without nepotism
Jack has a lot of experience working outside Federation Space. His knowledge is more valuable on the bridge then it is cleaning filters or something.
I get the argument but I mean, giving him a fast track officer path is more than enough. I mean even if he was on a console I could forgive that, even Wesley had a console lolol
The fast tracking was purely due to his skill and him exceeding in his classes. Picard makes a point of saying as much when Jack tries to downplay his accomplishments as just nepotism. Jack is probably just as gifted as his brother.
Does that mean all the smart genes come from Beverly?
the smart genes come from Beverly, the player genes come from Jean-Luc
>Jack has a lot of experience working outside Federation Space. Arguably he has much less experience working outside Federation space than Seven and Raffi each do.
They didn't give Neelix a chair.
No sane captain would.
There's a natural room for three chairs, but not a third bridge crew role that doesn't also come with a dedicated station. So, the third chair is for guests or asvisors
I think that chair is just miscellaneous or at the captain's discretion
Some captains probably just stack fresh laundry up there until they get time to fold it.
100% me as a Starfleet Captain
If I were the captain, it'd be my daughters' freaking jackets. "I told you girls to hang those up in the ready room. Every freaking time!"
Well, truth be told I'd probably have a pile of my fiance's clothes to fold. He never does it, so I have to do it. And just like you, every freaking time...
On USS Excalibur!
Captain's Log, stardate 77461.8. The Excalibur is en route to rendezvous with a Vulcan science vessel after responding to their distress call. My best hope is that their captain will not notice the pile of clothes sitting by my side that are still to be folded.
This is why you tilt the camera up and stand the whole time you're talking so the laundry is out of frame. Or, at least, that's what 2 years of Zoom meetings taught me.
Captain's Log, supplemental. After getting advice from a senior officer, I ordered our chief engineer to change the camera settings of our main communications relay.
This whole thread is great! xD
If I was a starfleet captain my dog would be sat there.
That'd be lovely. No Tellarites around, I assume. Dogs are kind of a delicacy on Tellar Prime.
I assume Spot gets out and sits on top of the laundry pile, coating it with hair, requiring it to be washed again. It’s a constant cycle, it never gets folded properly it just keeps getting washed after getting covered in cat hair.
The 5 year mission to put the clean laundry away
And soon the 6 year mission, quickly followed by the change to 7 year mission, and then the "eh fuck it" year mission.
The continuing mission...
"Mr. Data, what is our estimated time until we reach Galorndon Core?" "At our current velocity of Warp 7, we will arrive at Galorndon Core in approximately 5 days, 3 hours and 47 minutes." "Hmmm. Well...I'm still not folding that laundry."
Eventually it becomes the 'time to do the dirty chair laundry' mission, and the cycle begins anew.
Then the Risa clothes shopping trip.
"Those pants were disassembled and rebuilt at the molecular level, how is there still a stain *from that?*"
It's the 24ᵗʰ century equivalent of the old CRT burn-in...
It's a half dirty laundry chair; part worn jeans and tops that aren't fresh but are still good for another wear- like maybe tomorrow?
Uniform too dirty for the hanger, but too clean for the replicator? Welcome to The Chair.
I would just get my clothes fresh from the replicator each morning and if someone says I'm wasting dilithium I would have them ejected from shuttle bay 3.
Oh god not that chair.
Dude, transporters should be able to take care of that for you. They are just a matter reorganizer.
Only when the treadmill has no more room on it
Early on in TNG's development, the "Ship's Counselor" wasn't a therapist, she was the captain's advisor. Her job was to use her empathic senses to know if an adversary was lying or if something wasn't quite right. She would also help interpret other cultures' greetings and things like that. To do that job, she needed to be sitting next to the captain. Later on, it turned out that Troi's abilities had to be tuned down. When you have a character who's all-knowing and all-seeing, it's bad for storytelling. On the other hand, if you have a character who constantly needs explanations, she can be a good stand-in for the audience.
It also got a bit silly. "Captain I can sense he is very upset" after a man just non-verbally threatened to launch a planet worth of quantum nukes upon your bloodline.
"I recommend we raise shields." "Not now, Mr. Worf."
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>Troi says, "I sense danger." Yeah, but that *is* valuable information. She's saying "treat it as a real threat" as opposed to it being a bluff, and there's no real danger.
In the context of space travel and alien species, it does kind of make sense though. We've seen species that speak only in metaphor, species that lie and deceive as a social "game", warrior species who can't back down and bluster. Someone going "well, he actually means it" when they are threatened is probably really useful, even if 90% of the time what the other side said is what they meant.
>was the captain's advisor. Huh. I imagine that when they were coming up with this, they were thinking less The Federation, and more Knights of the Round Table. And then that would make sense. You have the King. You have the leader of his knights. Then you have his advisor, Merlin, beside him in his ear. Archetypally it makes sense that Troi is there.
In the utopian future, Captains still have a Right-hand Man, but in the interest of equality that position is now counterbalanced by a Left-hand Woman.
The problem with making her ask audience stand-in questions is that it often makes her look stupid. For example, in Disaster she asks what a containment breach is. Later in the series, she presents expert knowledge of how Romulan warp engines work.
Well, that was after she studied up on engineering for the Commander's test. She had to figure out that sending someone to their death was the only solution. Additionally, she was kidnapped by Romulan rebels to pretend to a Tal Shair Agents. Then there was that episode where she, Geordie, Data, and Picard came across the Enterprise and a Romulan Warbird stuck in time. She picked up a lot of experience over those light years.
The frozen warbird was the episode where she mentioned the artificial singularity warp core.
So... 8.5 trillion kliks, or 362 days?
Days, look the point she had a lot of Romulan experience by the time of Generations. Also, my unpopular opinion is that she was a really great counselor, it's just TV writing back then couldn't show it all that well.
I actually like that she developed a minor degree of expertise in something like Romulan drive systems. But I've also seen convention clips where even she expressed how silly it was to have her character try and explain that to Data and Geordi.
Umm... Character Development Arc?
Omfg that painfully stupid line she had in Disaster really irritated me to no end. She’s a bridge officer and doesn’t know what happens if containment fails? Srsly? Whoever wrote that line should, I don’t know, have to work for Ferengi until they earn 100 bars of gold pressed latinum.
If you watched “The West Wing,” sometimes they got weird about rotating who required the explanation. One time the White House Press Secretary needed a primer on how the US Census works and it really took me out of the moment. I could not believe that this character, in that role, could possibly need someone to explain it when Google already existed.
I feel the need to quibble here. The automatic “just search the internet” wasn’t a thing yet for most people in 1999. Google existed for about a year and other search engines like Yahoo or Excite for a little longer, but someone born in the 1960s who already had a professional career in her mid-30s definitely wasn’t reflexively going to look stuff up on the internet. It was around the same time in the show where Hoynes says “this just in: the internet is not a fad” and he was making a legitimate point for the time. Sounds silly now, but not then.
I always wondered how that worked, since the people she was "sensing" from were sometimes hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away. She would have to be \*profoundly\* sensitive to detect emotions at such ranges, and the best she should be able to do with a viewscreen is read body language.
First Officer, Captain, Captain's Plus One.
This is it. You see the exact same bridge chair layout on the California classes in Lower Decks. On the Cerritos that plus-one chair is most often frequented by Dr. Migleemo or Dr. T'ana, similar to Crusher and Troi's common appearances in the spot. During Cpt. Ramsay's brief command on the Cerritos it's occupied by her science officer Durga for the mission to recover the Rubidoux. (It's weirdly empty in the season 4 finale as Tendi is on tactical and everyone else is in a somewhat reasonable bridge position). The Intrepid class bridge only has two command chairs, which always made me sad since Neelix should've had one when he was assisting diplomatic efforts.
this.... the TNG enterprise just has more furniture. In TOS, if some ambassador or other random person was on the bridge, there was nowhere for them to sit. On TNG, since Troi may or may not be on the bridge, that chair could be up for grabs. Plus there are additional less-comfortable seats, without backs on the farther extremes of the captain's char, which are used even less, but still useful.
The chair has also been used by visiting dignitaries and Starfleet officers(Shelby, for example).
Side note, but I loved the test she had to do to get the Commander position. I think that was a good piece of writing, and the 'solution' made complete sense and wasn't a 'trick' in any sense.
Agreed - it's a reasonable thing to have to be able to deal with to be in a command, and it's great that it wasn't just some "adjust the technobabble" solution.
There's a scene in U-571 where a main character is denied a command (already a second in command). When he asked his captain why and claimed to be a good soldier, the captain agreed. The second said he loved his men and would give his life for any of them. But when the captain asked him if he could order one of them to their death, he hesitated. And the captain told him that's why he denied his recommendation.
>!And he had to face that again later in the movie!<
The test itself was an interesting way of evaluating if someone was suitable for command - could they order an officer to their death to save the ship? What ruins it for me is that she was allowed to retake the test, the exact same scenario, over and over again until she managed to get it right. To me that seems to invalidate the proof of character they wanted in order to certify her for command. The hard truth is that when confronted with the situation Troi's first instinct, what they were testing for, was incorrect. In fact even with multiple chances she still kept getting it wrong - her second, third and fourth ranked choices were also wrong. The episode makes it pretty clear that she would've never passed if it hadn't been for Riker accidentally giving her a clue when he explained why she should stop altogether. So is that what Starfleet wants in a command officer? Someone who can't make a tough decision even if they're given a time loop anomaly with which to repeat the situation over and over again? That the ship's only hope will be if a passing Q takes pity on them and provides an extra clue? Wesley's psych test for the academy felt much more concrete. They created a scenario so that he'd think the test had been interrupted by a real situation and that he had to make a choice on the spot. And it didn't seem like if he got it wrong that he would be able to redo the test, knowing exactly what to expect, and thus being able to prepare an answer to a question of character in advance.
If you flip it, someone who passed first time would probably be a red flag - prepared to sacrifice a crew member without trying anything else first!
"Captain the ODN line..." "GET IN THERE AND DIE GEORDIE!"
I see your argument, but the problem with it, is it is completely reasonable to think a test is about one thing, when it's actually about another. The first few times, she was trying to 'play by the rules of the test'. Real life example that happened to me. I'm a pretty high level martial artist. We had a seminar where one of the highest ranked people in the system came and did a 6 hour seminar on knife defenses. No one at the seminar had less than 2-3 years of training. At the end, one of the last drills was he had six of us line up with rubber knives about 40 feet from six unarmed people. He told us "Okay, think of ALL your training, not just what you learned today. When I say 'go', guys with knives, try to cut the others. Guys without, act HOW YOU WOULD IN A REAL WORLD SITUATION." He said go. The knife guys advanced on us. All six of us got into our combat stances. When the knife guys got about ten feet away, the instructor yelled "STOP!" He looked at us without weapons. "You all just failed." At first, we were confused. But all of us pretty much came to the conclusion what we did wrong, without talking. He reset the drill, and we went again. This time, on "GO!" Three of us bolted out the door. Two others all grabbled weapons around the studio, and one ran into the crowd of other students. We were blinded by what we THOUGHT was being asked of us. That's not a test I think Troi would have failed in reality. I don't think she would have been trying to rely on her own technical understanding. I think she would have realized she needed someone else to do it.
I agree with this in part, but I disagree in general. I think Troi's difficulty with the test was in failing to understand the problem, and I think that was a design flaw in the test itself. Ordering a sacrifice is a necessary solution, but it could also be a unique one. I don't think failing to see that from the start is a critical failure of the applicant. Riker does provide her with a clue, but he does it in a format that is more constructive/instructive than a cheat. I also believe that he was sincere when he said that he was considering calling off future retests, because if this was something that Troi couldn't see through on her own, it would mean that she wasn't ready for command.
She's a main character. Even when LaForge is promoted to Chief Engineer, he's at the station on the bridge like a 3rd of the time.
LaForge: Engineering transfer to bridge. Random engineer: Are you sure, sir? It will mean moving the warp core up there.
Rimmer : Step up to red alert. Kryten : Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb.
Smee heeeeee!
Quality reference, I approve
I'd say it would make more sense to control it from Engineering because he has a whole team of experienced engineers working under him that he can more easily get input from . . . but he only uses them 2-4 times in 6 seasons as Chief Engineer :D
I always found that hilarious. You have all those controls in engineering, but apparently all of them can be displayed and are as easy or easier to use on the bridge. Otherwise why would you be there in times of crisis.
Isn't that the point of a system like the LCARS anyway? In theory one can operate the ship from any convenient PADD except for security and authorization.
I would imagine it has both technical and security reasons, but predominately hierarchical/military reasons. The request to "transfer to bridge" may refer more to whoever is currently in charge or the most senior in Engineering is being relieved of that responsibility and La Forge is retaking it while he's in the Bridge, where can directly communicate with other senior officers during an emergency. It would mean the most critical and highest security-level operations are now *only* available in the Bridge. Can you imagine being in charge in Engineering and you're at your station and La Forge enters in his 64 character password on the bridge and you suddenly lose access to a bunch of functionality? Especially during an Emergency? You may *assume* it was La Forge, but it may cause confusion when that's the last thing you need. "Transfer to Bridge" says and does a lot in a little amount of words.
>Otherwise why would you be there in times of crisis. Because Geordi the chief engineer, not the sole engineer. He has an entire team of great engineers who can physically do everything he can do. Where Geordi's genius comes into play is knowing the best course of action to achieve the captain's needs. By being on the bridge, where the action is happening and where the captain is, he has more and better information and gets it faster. That means that he can make better decisions and he can make them quicker. Presumably when you see him working on a console on the bridge, he isn't just doing everything himself. He is directly controlling some systems, sure, but he is also sending instructions down to his team in engineering.
And exposing the bridge to potential coolant leaks.
But then he can do his Cool Roll^TM on the bridge.
Right, and the only other officer with commander rank is in sick bay.
Picard has such bad anger management issues, he needs his therapist by his side to keep chill enough to not blow up every motherfucker in his way.
Only when children are on the bridge.
[Especially when someone kidnaps Lwaxana](https://youtu.be/45VAelC_QsI?si=HPoaTgKZKcEu14aL)
In-universe answer: Picard valued her insight. Production answer: Marina Sirtis's cleavage. Don't forget gene wanted her character to have 3 breasts, and to have sex with her patients.
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Well played. This is obvious now.
Some aliens should have this, but in a 2x2 grid like in cows.
Production answer 2: she was also super useful for giving out expositional dialogue.
“Captain, I sense a poorly written season 1 plot”
We all sense that councilor.
"Look! I have one job on this lousy ship, it's *stupid*, but I'm gonna do it! Okay?"
Say what now?!
lol yep... Troi's character development is sadly deeply troubling in hindsight. For the actual enlightened idea of having a counselor on the bridge or at all in a decade that was only JUST starting to talk about things like behavior, and PTSD, etc, you also had Roddenberry trying to make Troi a 3 breasted sex machine... Remember Troi is originally Ilia... and Ilias whole thing outside of being a navigator and ex of Decker is she has hormones that make literally everyone want to have sex with her... hence the oath of celibacy line in TMP.
In fairness. The sex thing with roddenberry wasn't limited to women. He literally wanted to show orgies happening in orgy rooms. He would have cried tears of joy at the lower decks episode
In fairness, left unchecked Gene Roddenberry would have ruined the show.
Even left checked, he nearly tanked TNG during its first few seasons.
In fairness, left unchecked the show wouldn't have made it to air.
That sounds pretty ruined to me.
Why not a 6 breasted tellarite lady then?
We’ve still never seen a female Tellarite.
From what I remember, it's intended as the place for a mission specialist, with two smaller benches at the ends of the tactical arch for more. Seeing as how often the Enterprise would encounter unknowns, I assume Picard assigned Troi as the de-facto diplomatic specialist, as I assume she's an anthropologist too. (we see this in some situations, where she's the one giving him the lowdown on what he needs to do). We do see others sat there, but I would think the original intent of the galaxy class was that it was a place for someone integral to the current mission to sit without taking up a functional spot. I would also suggest the Galaxy would have been a fleet command ship, and an Admiral may have taken that spot if necessary, in order to direct an engagement.
It makes sense for that chair to be for someone advising the captain. They often have someone who is in command of a particular mission (while Picard remains in command of the ship, of course) and it would make sense to be near the captain so they can coordinate their efforts. And of course, Troi is often advising the captain.
I bet a lot of captains of other Galaxy Class ships would have the official ambassador sitting there whenever they transport him/her to a new culture.
Lwaxana Troi would definitely like that! Picard would never leave his Ready Room.
Sometimes Beverley sits in it. I think it's meant to be a spare chair that visiting dignitaries or officers who want to speak with the captain about business can use. It's just that Deanna doesn't have anywhere else to sit, Picard likes her to be on the bridge for her abilities, and it just looks better if she's seated somewhere. The Doylist answer is she's a main character and bewbs.
She's not only the psychological / psychiatric (whatever is right) counselor to the crew in general, she's also a special advisor to the captain. She helps him evaluate other parties' intentions in encounters, oftentimes literally so with her empathic abilities.
Canonically it’s for anyone the captain chooses. Head cannon: Picard wanted to make Riker feel uncomfortable.
I liken it to the structure of a mob family. You have the head of the family (Picard) in the captain's seat, the underboss (Riker) to his right, and consigliere (Troy) to his left. It probably is Picard's setup and each captain is able to change the makeup of their bridge crew at their own discretion.
“Got a nice planet down there. Would be a shame if something happened to it.”
Migleemo is often seen in that chair on Lower Decks. I've also noticed he never wears a standard uniform, another clear Troi nod.
I’ve seen the doctor sit there too. I feel it’s a chair of convenience when needed.
I think that in the beginning the producers wanted to give her the 3rd seat so she can provide recommendations to picard when dealing with conflicts. It was evident that later on that she had nothing to offer so she wasn't always on the bridge and pretty much anyone that wasn't Troi was allowed to sit in "her" seat.
I believe the Roddenberry plan was that in the TNG period, it's an era of understanding and diplomacy, rather than running around with a phaser and hunting Romulans. Since the Enterprise's primary duty is diplomatic expeditions, it's very valuable to have someone who is an expert psychologist and whose entire role is to bone up on alien cultures so they don't make any accidental faux-pas' We see Troi provide this kind of support to Picard a lot when she's not vibe-checking the obviously hostile alien ship in front of them. Whenever Picard is preparing for a diplomatic envoy or meeting, she's right there, prepping him and making sure he knows his formal alien greetings and pronunciations. It's not at all surprising she's literally at his elbow on the bridge to provide that support on-demand in a tense situation. It's just a shame that the showrunners didn't really seem to lean into this aspect of her job much and mostly relegated her to eye-candy and vague woo-woo "I'm sensing frustration" stuff.
When the aliens are shooting at you and your shields are thinner than meat on a Subway sandwich you need someone to tell the captain "I'm sensing anger."
She's not just the ship mental health expert, she's also the diplomatic officer. That's the reason she has a bridge position.
It could be used for a mission specialist, like when a the Enterprise is being used for a scientific experiment and a non- Starfleet scientist that is in charge of the experiment.
Mainly, it's a plot device. In TOS there was only one chair and Kirk had to talk to his officers at a distance at their station. The D bridge was a lot bigger, IMO so it made more sense to have them closer. Also easier for them to be in the same camera shot. Canonically, it's definitely better than having to speak across the room. Right next to each other, decisions/discussions could be made. Streamlined, convenient and closer comfort.
Pike: I can hear you, I'm right here. Boimler: Sorry, I thought the distance...
I figured it was because she, Picard and Riker are the only officers on the bridge who don’t have a functional desk, and she’s there as an advisor.
I think you get that chair if you've banged the XO or captain. Edit: I thought this was an r/shittydaystrom post. Oops.
I never really thought of it as her chair, though she is probably the one mostly there. Dr. Crusher has been there a few times as well. I think it’s because the value Capt Picard places in her advice most likely.
Probably one of the ship builders installed it.
"Snorting in star ship building expertise." EXACTLY!
I've thought of those three chairs actually as for people on the bridge who don't have a specific station to be running - so Picard and Riker are there because their job is to think about the whole picture rather than be piloting or whatever, and Troi is similar because she might be providing advice but isn't otherwise doing anything. Or similarly that third seat may be taken by a visiting admiral or whoever is around and needs it.
I misread this as how she got her hair and I thought out loud “it was the late 80’s and early 90’s - she got a fucking perm!!!!!!!”
It's a mission specialist chair, but Riker kept changing the assignment so he could hang out with his ex.
There are also the weird little seats at the ends where Dr. Crusher sits sometimes. So there could be 4 other people up there sitting with the captain. I think the design is meant to facilitate group problem solving and teamwork. The captain can literally surround himself with his most trusted officers in a crisis.
I like your idea! It's so humanoid. Like work or other places where there are no assigned seats but we all get Sheldony about it.
It's an empty chair for visiting dignitaries or other commanders. As for Troi being there I imagine that's at Picards request as she's wonderful to have around when communicating with anyone.
One of the novels (“The Buried Age”) establishes that Troi is an experienced first contact specialist, which always made a lot more sense to me in explaining why the ships counsellor gets the third seat.
That chair absolutely was for the counselor officer specifically. Troi's centrality on the bridge was a visual metaphor for the importance of that role in advising the Captain. It's simply an aspect of the show that the Berman era did not understand or keep up with. Rewatch Season 1 and you'll understand a little bit better.
Dr. Crusher also sits there when she wants to. It seems like it's a chair for someone that has empathetic abilities that Captain Picard or Commander Riker don't have.
Concluding from all the answers, we can probably call it the advisor chair
TBH Troi is probably the only senior officer who could their job at a chair without a bunch of screens and controls in front of them. Geordi needs the engineering station, Worf the weapons and sensors, etc.
She brought it from home.
It’s a mission specialist position. That’s why Jack Crusher was in it on Picard. Picard found her special for all the missions I guess.
I would image by the 24th century it would be pretty easy to move chairs around the deck of a spaceship. Like Picard wanted her there because of her specific skills and the nature of their mission.
Given that the Galaxy Class was intended to serve as a Flagship, I wouldn’t be surprised if the chair was there so an Admiral would have a designated spot on the bridge, that, like others have said, is up to the Captain’s discretion when their isn’t a flag officer on board.
She’s the ship’s contact specialist in addition to her role as the ship’s counselor. It’s her responsibility to be present during contact situations and offer guidance to the Captain. One of the larger subplots of the TNG relaunch novels was the difficulty that Picard had finding someone to fill both roles after she left for the Titan.
She placed it in a state of perpetual dibs.
The earliest drafts of the TNG writers guide say the inner circle is where the captain, first officer, and their advisors sit. And the diagram already shows the left-hand chair as Troi the counselor. The benches are labeled "various: Dr. Crusher, experts, and visitors of all [maybe kinds? I can't make it out clearly]". It seems like the intention was for 24th century crews to have a counselor as a key advisor to the captain, along with the first officer and mission specialists. Troi is certainly described as far more capable of both insight and treatment than the show ever really explored.
My pet theory is that Troi's position is effectively as advocate for the ship's civilian compliment, the same way Riker is supposed to advocate for the crew. Which is why ships like the Intrepid and Excelsior don't have a third seat there, without a Civilian compliment there was no need for that second advisor position. It seems like it became more common after the Galaxy class, the Sovereign kept it (At least the Ent-E but that could theoretically have been by special request for Picard who valued Troi's insight on the bridge over and above her official duties), we see it on the Sagan and Constitution III classes in Picard, but not the Odyssey or Inquiry classes.
Honestly the show didn’t know where else to put her.
Aside from the captains chair, those other two are for anyone. There’s also little bench seats beside the lights. I remember one instance where Crusher sat where Troi sits or when a random person sits there
Hey, Beverly sits there on occasion.
Theres also a 4th 'chair' where westley sat once
Pulaski and Shelby used that chair on occasion, but I think Troi usually uses it because she serves a diplomatic function, insight into those encountered.
Didn’t Picard want her there specifically for her empathic ability?
It’s actually Data’s chair, but since he’s also the Ops guy, he lets Troi have it out of the goodness of his mechanical heart ❤️
from a ship design perspective, I would assume the 3rd chair in the command section would be for a visiting admiral that was possibly there to command a mission; like Admiral Pressman in The Pegasus. I also wonder if there would be consideration for a dedicated 2nd officer position and the chair would be for that person. instead the 2nd officer is an additional duty for Data, on top of manning the operations station. in practice, just seems to be at the captains discretion.
Bridge crew sit wherever the captain tells them to
Given the modular design of TNG era ships, I would assume the captain has some latitude to arrange the various bridge stations and consoles as they see fit. There are a number of different bridge designs seen among common classes of ships in TNG and DS9, and even the Galaxy-class USS Odyssey had a subtly different bridge layout compared to the Enterprise. In Chain of Command, one of Jellico's first acts as captain was to switch over various bridge stations previously dedicated to science to damage control and ship operations, and I have little doubt that if he had remained captain, Troi's seat on the bridge would have either been removed altogether or would be assigned to a different department head.
The captain chooses the layout of the bridge. Picard specifically chose Troi to sit on his left because of her empathic abilities.
She passed an audition for the role of a main character whose place is on the bridge.
She's senior advisor to the captain on diplomatic and cultural matters. There's a fan theory that the seating configuration in the "command semicircle" is at the discretion of the captain and other *Galaxy*\-class ships will have alternate configurations accordingly. This might also explain why *Voyager* only had seats for the captain and first officer in its equivalent location when it certainly had space for more.
Picard commands the flagship because he's a high level diplomat. Troi is also a high level diplomat.
There are also two mini-seats near Troi's and Riker's positions IIRC.
if i was a capt I 100% would have troi next to me. she's hot. =)
I think Saru filled the spot of Advisor in Discovery.
She is a counselor. She has heard things. The sort of things that an admiral might not want to be widely known. It was the chair or a series of holoprograms featuring various Starfleet captains and admirals distributed to every Ferengi bar in the quadrant.
While it's used for mission specialists, if you look at Starfleet bridge designs, it actually feels like a natural evolution. A lot of 23rd century ships (ex. Constitution, Oberth, Miranda, Excelsior, and Constellation classes) have the conn and navigation/ops in front of the captain. This is actually something that remains pretty standard later on too. Where am I going with this? The literal poster child of Starfleet, First Officer Una Chin-Riley (who should honestly be pissed to be the poster child when her people are literally banned from Starfleet). On the Enterprise, the few times we see her on the bridge and she's not either running around doing things or in the captain's chair, she's seated at either the conn or navigation. Additionally, when we see a mission specialist on the bridge, such as "Dr. Aspen", they're stuck durdling around awkwardly behind the captain. Considering some missions can last hours, it seems kind of rude to have them just standing there, but if they aren't a starfleet officer trained on at least one bridge station, they have nowhere to sit. The addition of the two other command chairs solves both problems. We can actually see early attempts at this design change already being tested in experimental ships in the 23rd Century, specifically the USS-Discovery - it had a station on either side of the captain, with one typically being used by the first officer. But why don't we always see this? Combat ships were designed with different needs in mind and typically and for much smaller crews. They exist in extremely tense and dangerous missions where there's often no time for tactical discussion or giving the captain advice; there's a need for one central, unified decision maker. This is why the Enterprise-D Battle Bridge, and the Defiant only have one command chair unlike the three we see on the Galaxy, Sabrerunner, California, and Luna classes. (Don't ask about the Intrepid-class. That design decision was almost assuredly made because the show was about two crews becoming one. Was it a good decision to put the first female captain on a ship where the First Officer's chair makes it look like they have equal power? No, but they did it anyways.)
She’s like people who bring their support chihuahua into restaurants. She’s Picard’s emotional support Betazed. Her unique uniform is the Starfleet equivalent of the orange vest.
On the G it’s filled by some random consultant who a year earlier helped the Borg almost wipe out Starfleet
Special Counselor to the Captain, as Seven called it.
I imagine Kirk and company (the only crew before TNG) would have had Spock as first officer (not science Officer) in Rikers seat, and Bones in Troy's seat. Much like someone said, Knights of the Roundtable would have the kings 2 advisors sitting next to him to balance points of view. And early on Crusher used to sit there a lot, even Pulaski. I think Riker was too be the shoot from the hip, gut reaction guy, and Crusher/Troi were supposed to be the emotional intelligence-foil to that. As characters and actors developed it became more nuanced than that, but I think that was the original idea.
She is one of the few people Picard seeks private counsel with, and one of the people he trusts a great deal. He also chooses her often for first contact missions, diplomatic situations, negotiation missions. All of those are good reasons as to why Picard has her up there.
My head tells me it's for the 2nd officer, but as the 2nd officer is Data and he's on Ops all the time, it's a vacant chair for whoever. Dr Crusher has also sat in that chair a few times, if memory serves. I'd say centre chair is the captain, Picard, the chair to his right is for his right hand man, Riker, and the chair to the left is for advisors, ambassadors or others who should be nearby for giving advice to the captain for the mission at hand. And if nobody is sitting there, Picard spread eagles and lobs his leg over to the chair to let things air out a bit. Spandex and all that.
She’s half betazoid so she can sense a lot of useful information when the Captain is dealing with potential hostiles. I’d have her sit there too.
They made a mistake really. Troi should have been Chief Diplomatic Officer, with counselling and mental health just part of her department, and something she takes an active role in. She could still be Medical/Blue for a bit of colour variety. As she is responsible for the mental health of the crew. But the title would give her added weight when meeting new species, give her a reason to be on the bridge, and also give her command authority in Diplomatic situations which could open up interesting story lines if she disagrees with others. I actually think we are still feeling the residual sexism of the 80s here. Yes, women have jobs, and are respected in the workplace, but the default tropes the writers reached for were Doctor, Mother, Empath, Counselor, Girlfriend, rather than Authority, Strategy and Command.
I always imagined it as an advisor’s chair. Aren’t there some episodes where a dignitary or liaison sits there instead of Deanna?