#betazed

[automaton-enjoyer]

I think the world would be a lot better if we all got betazoid therapists

[elimgarakdemocrat]

Humans in star trek: wtf wtf how dare the ferengi slightly mispronounce our species name

Also humans in star trek: ok so since the star chart has your planet listed as BZ we're calling you "betazoids"

[40cleverways]

Reminder that Deanna avoids large crowds because they can become physically painful for her. This is a direct result of her being half-human.

Apparently, this is common knowledge aboard the Enterprise,

Star Trek: The Next Generation #18 "Q-in-Law"

[timaeuslover001]

Betazed Fashion Headcanon (AU)

Betazed is such a beauty do and vibrant planet that Betazoid feel as of they shouldn’t compete against nature and its beauty and be respectful to its beauty.

They have simple silhouettes and don’t have any created patters or pleating or any manipulation of the favoring. The women’s wardrobe resembles medical tunics and loose bottoms pants and the women in simple but faltering dresses that are sometimes wrapped or have pieces to be wrapped around.

The simplicity even highlights the beauty of the Betazoids even more.

[sopheadraws]

"The women of Betazed used to wear these enormous wigs with large holes in the centre for tiny caged animals...First, it was a fashion. Then it went on long enough to become a custom, a tradition. But it was uncomfortable for the woman and cruel to the animal. So then one day, one very formidable woman finally said so, refused ever to wear another of those wigs. fairly soon the custom stopped. She had the courage to stand up and fight for change." - Lwaxana Troi, TNG S5e20

[episodicnostalgia]

Star Trek: The Next Generation, 110 (Nov. 28, 1987) - “Haven”

Written by: Tracy Torme Directed by: Richard Compton

The Breakdown

In this episode we find out that Deanna Troi is ‘genetically betrothed’ to some dorky space-nerd named Wyatt, as per Betazed tradition (even though Wyatt is human) overseen by her Mom (Lwaxana). Apparently Betazoid marriages also come with the expectation of the wife leaving her career behind, which Deanna doesn’t seem too happy about.  To make matters even more awkward, Wyatt is coming to the ship with his family (and Deanna’s mom) to meet Deanna for *checks notes* the very first time? Yep. That’s right, this is the first time they’ve ever even laid eyes on each other.  In addition to this awkwardness Lwaxana’s arrival makes matters only worse as she proceeds to ridicule everyone who isn’t a telepath for being so obviously inferior.  But she’s definitely not being rude, because this is just *checks notes* how Betazoids are… which I guess makes it not bigoted or xenophobic at all.

While Lwaxana makes every effort to be offend anyone she talks to, we find out that Wyatt is more-than-a-little surprised that Deanna isn’t how he imagined.  You see, apparently he’s had a vivid-life-long-dream about some random blonde woman he’s never met (haven’t we all?), and so naturally concluded he was accurately imagining Deanna the whole time. Chalking up his mystery woman to nothing more than a silly fantasy, Wyatt decides to settle for Deanna since she is very pretty, and that has to count for something.  Unfortunately, just as the two love birds are warming up to each other, Wyatt’s mystery blonde woman arrives on a refugee ship and immediately recognizes him; as it happens, she’s also had life-long dreams about him, which is a pretty remarkable coincidence!

And the explanation for all this… *checks notes* spontaneous space telepathy.  Yep, that’s what we’re going with. According to Lwaxana, apparently we all have some kind of universal telepathy deep down inside of us.  At any rate, that’s enough of an explanation for Wyatt, who packs up to follow the hot blon- er- his destiny.

The Verdict

One would think that ‘Haven’ might offer a decent opportunity to flesh our Deanna’s character, but nah. Why do that when there are still male guest stars, and love interests to focus on? I do genuinely try to find the good in these old episodes, but this one is a dud.  My biggest points of contention are in the portrayals of Lwaxana (specifically), and the Betazoid’s (generally).

For starters, Lwaxana is exceptionally rude; she’s condescending, hostile, and has no regard for anyone else’s feelings.  I don’t care that “She’s telepathic and therefore thinks differently,” she’s completely bigoted towards anyone who isn’t Betazoid, and it’s clearly spiteful. The episode tries to play it off as comic relief, but based on this episode alone Lwaxana exhibits more potential for becoming an arch nemesis than the Ferengi ever will.

Secondly, Betazed may have a unique culture, but perhaps the federation should think twice before inducting other civilizations with such draconian marriage practices into their ranks. It would all be one thing if Deanna was happy with the arrangement, but she clearly doesn't want to get married. So why must she? Why such pressure? Shouldn’t freedom of choice weigh in to all federation cultures, without risking ostracization or criticism? Even Picard is like “hey, this seems kinda questionable. I wonder if this should be allowed” but that’s as far as we’ll explore such topics, because we have a LOVE TRIANGLE to get back to! Yay! (more on that below)

1 star (out of 5)

Additional Observations:

This is Lwaxana’s first appearance. My familiarity with this character is mostly from DS9, where I found her occasionally amusing, if exasperating, so I never quite understood the hate she got from other fans.  Now I get it.

Space love triangle: Riker is too busy feeling jealous of Wyatt to consider how this may be affecting the woman he supposedly loves. Deanna even calls him out by stating “YOU’RE the one who wanted to focus on a career,” to which Riker essentially retorts with “Yeah, but this is hard on ME!” Real mature, dude.

This season really has a fixation for alien races that are just hot white people in revealing clothing. Which leads as a nice segway into my next point…

This show is VERY horny, but repressively so. The crew all seem to have a “live and let live” mentality towards others (which is usually good), but are very restrictive and emotionally stunted in their own self-expression.

On the other hand, Lwaxana talks about her naked body and sex life WAY too much. She’s obviously making the crew uncomfortable, and it’s clearly intentional.

Data’s fascination over “petty squabbling” cracks me up though. Solid comedic performance from Brent Spiner.

[sshbpodcast]

Fashionably late: A Lwaxana Troi appreciation post

She is daughter of the Fifth House, holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed. Add to that the mother of the counselor of the Enterprise-D. Star Trek fans either love her or hate her (we love her!), but there’s no denying that she has class, style, and a fashion sense that could make any runway collection envious.

Join us at A Star to Steer Her By as we drool over the costume choices for Lwaxana Troi, a woman larger than life, played by Star Trek royalty, the late Majel Barrett Roddenberry. Sure, it’s been a little bit since we brought up this topic on the podcast (follow along! discussion starts at 1:09:23), but this Betazoid is a fashion queen and reserves the right to be a little fashionably late. We sense you’ll love it.

[Images © CBS/Paramount, as found on Trekcore.com, and Star Trek Timelines]

[saltynametag]

i think the only thing i would change about betazeds is full sclera contacts and slightly glittery skin.

[nevinslibrary]

Make It So Friday

I haven't read a ton of the Star Trek Dominion War books (yet?). But, I’ve seen all of DS9. So, I was prepared.

But, honestly, the reason that I read this book is because I have always loved the planet and people of Betazed, and how they’ve been portrayed both on screen and in the few books that focus on them (*cough* Imzadi *cough*). Everything from how they can sense each others feelings and thoughts. The different levels of telepathy and just all the ways the show (and novel) writers made these Betazed people look almost like us and yet they were so, so different. So, on that level, I loved this book. But, it was also a battle book. It had both the internal battles of Deanna Troi as well as the few outward battles going on against the Jem-Hadar and Cardassians.

The main question of this book was, what would you do to save your people? Would you perhaps doom your people's future to save your race in the present? It's an often used question in books, the deal with the devil, and I thought it was presented in an interesting way in this book.

You may like this book If you Liked: The Romulan War by Michael A. Martin, Acts of Contrition by Kirsten Beyer, or Taking Wing by Michael A. Martin

The Battle of Betazed by Susan Kearney

[marymoss1971]

New Imzadi fic

Here's something I was going to post next week but got excited and couldn't wait to show all of you.

(I don't know why the title isn't showing up. It's titled Living in Anger)

[booksnotyetwritten]

"An Undisclosed Mission"

Lieutenant Zwei Uh’Beeahn sighed. It had only been two hours since they'd taken the shuttle from DS9 into the Gamma Quadrant to escort the Cardassian Adjunct Ambassador to meet with the Wadi and already the arguments had started.

Lieutenant Poq D'ghorgas leaned towards him, his hands on the flight controls. "'Gilgamesh and Enkidu at Uruk' am I right?" Smirked the Klingon. The Betazed chuckled. "More like 'Achilles and Patroclus at Troy,'" he replied as they both started laughing.

"And another thing! Just because we were both adopted makes us nothing alike!" Shouted Lieutenant Te'yera's, her cheeks bright blue with rage.

"What are you talking about! We both grew up in vastly different cultures due to wars!" Replied the now green cheeked Ambassador. Zwei turned his chair around and sighed. He had thought an Andorian rasied by Bajorans was strange but he'd had to shelve that thought when he'd first met the "Cardassian" Adjunct Ambassador to the Federation, a Romulan war orphan raised on Cardassia Prime.

"Please. For all of our sanity can we maybe put a pin in this... 'discussion' until our return trip?" Te'yera and Chol glared at him but took a breath and sat back in their seats.

"As long as the lieutenant stops playing debate... games with me. I will agree to be silent," replied the Adjunct Ambassador.

"No one's playing games with you," replied Lieutenant Te'yera.

"Yeah," said Poq, "Save that for the Wadi!" He shrieked before cackling like a Hyena. The two in the back looked angrier than when they were arguing as they shot the Klingon a glare. Zwei gritted his teeth in a grimaced smile as he tried desperately to stifle his laughter. He quickly swung his chair back and leaned in towards Poq.

"Shut up! Shut up! You can't say that! Stop!" He said as he shook with laughter next to the cackling Lieutenant.

[40cleverways]

I actually have some theories on this!

I imagine that Betazoids think visually, and without the use of words, while the majority of humans "hear" their thoughts, allowing for Betazoids to hear the words being thought as their spoken. This begs the question: Would their mind reading convey language or would they need to speak the language to understand those thoughts?

I theorize that as Humans (and presumably other species as well) associate words with their meanings, Betazoids may be very good at picking up languages because they would know the pronunciation and the meaning instantly upon reading someone's thoughts, allowing them to understand thoughts even in a different languages!

Okay, so, as we all know, Betazoids can read feeling and, even more improtant, thoughts. But what I always thought about was how they were able to understand those thoughts. After all, I wouldn't dream of thinking in another language than my mother language.

So now I have this headcanons that they either have a special UT or they are fucking geniuses in learning languages. And I actually like the last one better. Just imagine:

The UT on the Enterprise broke and they have to deal with e.g. Cardassians or Andorians or Vulcans and nobody understands them and then Deanna is like 'they are just returning to their home planet. Let's continue' and everybody is looking at her and she then has to explain that Betazoid learn new languages in like months.

[40cleverways]

Betazoid Worldbuilding From Star Trek: The Next Generation #18 "Q-in-Law"

Customs:

Apparently, Betazoids are polytheistic (that or lwaxana was including gods from multiple religions and/or planets)

Weaponry:

[tanadrin]

I'm watching season 5 of discovery while I work on this map, and I think my verdict of DIS is that conceptually it is solid Star Trek. It gets Star Trek, like in the abstract. Obviously the last 3 seasons are a lot better than the first two, both because they escape prequel territory and because it just takes a ton of Trek shows two seasons to find the sweet spot. But the writing never really lives up to the ideas. So, so many of the character beats feel completely paint-by-numbers, with painfully generic dialogue, and I find myself mostly skipping over those scenes to get to the high concept SF or the action sequences. The actors really are doing the best they can, and visually it's gorgeous, and it throws out a ton of fun ideas into the Trek universe (though IMO it relies too much on overt callbacks to old Trek, it's not unique in this regard--SNW does this too, it might just be the curse of a long-running franchise). But man. The character writing is frequently not good! The emotional dialogue is frequently not good! And I don't know why; it's not like Star Trek doesn't have this stuff, rich character interaction has been there since TOS and the Bones/Kirk/Spock triad. But even back when you would have, like, Random Character Never Mentioned Before From Someone's Past showing up in an episode only to die horribly, from the older and more episodic Treks, the dialogue around these characters was still more believable and more compelling. And you'd think the more serialized nature of modern Trek would give you more room to build on and use these character dynamics.

I wonder if in part it's the decline of writers' rooms and the spec script market. Maybe something about that shift makes developing good scripts for television, and for genre TV in particular, harder. Part of me thinks it may well be the serialized format, because just like a good high concept sci fi plot often relies on a "hey-wouldn't-it-be-fucked-up-if-this-happened-randomly" idea, so too do a lot of the good character stories in older Trek--when everything has to be tied back in to an ongoing plot and significant character development has to be spread out over 10 episodes, maybe that's harder to do.

I think ultimately I feel about DIS like I feel about Enterprise--don't like prequels, do like some of the ideas, some of the characters are pretty interesting, the character arcs are kind of weak, is too bogged down in referencing other installments in the franchise, needs more Jeffrey Coombs.

[huckuntucked]

The more I rewatch Star Trek the less sense Q makes and the more I love Lwaxana Troi

[marymoss1971]

I did the prompt. Thank you so much for this amazing prompt! I was writing a story set for posting next month about the fall of Betazed. The story had a collaborator, or turncoat. A part of me was hoping to flush out his story and thanks to this prompt, I got the chance.

July Prompt

Tell a story inspired by the prompt word “turncoat.” When you’re done, tell it again from someone else’s perspective in half as many words. 

Any Star Trek Voyager character. Crossovers with other Treks are welcome. Any length.

If posting on AO3, please submit your story to the Voyager Writing Games Prompts collection and to this post.  Don’t forget you can use any of the prompts at any time.