Like the Vulcans, the Betazoids arrange marriages at an early age and now it's Deanna's time to meet her fiancée. Deanna Troi accepts her people's tradition despite her half human background, but it doesn't hurt that her fiancée is a handsome and sensitive doctor. Picard and his officers get into their dress uniforms to greet Deanna's wedding party, including her future husband (Wyatt), his parents, and Deanna's mother. Deann's mother is a full Betazoid, so she has powerful telepathic abilities.
At the same time the Enterprise arrives at the planet Haven. Picard and his officers admire its immense beauty and legendary healing powers, but under a previous treaty Star Fleet must protect Haven from any external threats (since Haven has no defensive capabilities). The Enterprise detects a rare and dangerous Tarellian ship coming towards Haven, perhaps the last Tarellian ship in existence. If any Tarellians are on-board, then they are likely to carry a deadly plague (that has wiped out many populations and most Tarellians). So the Enterprise must ready itself for action.
In general, "Haven" (Episode 10, Season 1, Air Date 11/30/87, Star-date 41294.5) includes a few interesting uses of holograms, humorous wedding details (between conflicting traditions), a look into the Tarellian history, and a strange view of consciousness.
It also has a couple minor points about the Star Trek world: (1) Riker relaxes in his quarters and listens to a harp tune played by two little hologram women. (2) Wyatt's parents send a talking (robotic?) treasure chest to announce their arrival. (3) Data acts like a 'buzzard' watching social interactions at the wedding events, and he urges the wedding guests to continue their 'petty bickering'. (4) Dr. Crusher is made to question the sanity of humanoid forms as she reflects on past Tarellian caused plagues. (5) You can't beam out of a ship if its under a tractor beam (not sure why). (6) Neat: Data infers that the Tarellian ship is receiving its message to them because 'our sensors are showing a responding echo on the frequency they once used' (in this type of episode, you really have to look down deep for any SF!).
The most interesting idea in the episode revolves around human duality: we think one thing and often say something different. But the Betazoids can communicate through thoughts (telepathically) so they cannot think anything differently from what they thought-say.
Are Betazoids therefore strictly honest all the time? Perhaps not, for they could still train their mind to stop thinking certain thoughts, so every time a certain chain of thoughts begin, they could practice 'thought stopping'. Some clinical psychologists teach their patients this technique today in our world (my abnormal psychology professor mentioned this).
Plus, humans cannot read minds, so Betazoids could lie to humans all they want. Lwaxana (Deanna's mother) perhaps lies to Picard (or teases him) about him having 'such thoughts' about her as she leaves (but maybe it's true).
I found Picard's gripe about Betazoid traditions interesting. He thinks their traditions conflict with the 24th Century world, probably referring to marriage arrangements at childhood. And he would probably argue that in the 24th Century we tend to treat people as sentient beings worthy of making many of their own decisions. Usually Star Trek is very culturally liberal, but perhaps some cultural traditions strike against its values so much it decides it must take a stand.
And now the idea I found strangest. Wyatt dreams about a Tarellian women, who he mistakingly thinks is his wife (Deanna) projecting her thoughts into his mind. Lwaxana tells Wyatt (while answering his question of how the Tarellian reached him from so far away) that all life and consciousness are 'bound together' and are both 'part of the same thing'. All lifeforms can project their thoughts, get lucky, and contact other people across the universe who they've never met.
This could be the recurrence of panpsychism, which states that all things in nature are intelligent. The idea is mainly in 'Traveler' episodes, such as Episode 5 & Episode 171 ('Where No One Has Gone Before' & 'Journey's End'). But panpsychism isn't a very convincing idea in itself and has zero scientific evidence.
It's a bit different this time. It applies to all life and consciousness instead of the fabric of reality itself, but it still leads to absurd and mysterious thought powers: this time thoughts can travel across the universe and impact the mind of another sentient being. (In the previous episodes it gave the Traveler powers over space-time, propulsion, and more.)
But the idea itself certainly doesn't imply any powers of distant communications by thoughts and dream image inducements. As far as we know, that part of the argument is pure magic and doesn't follow logically from panpsychism. Thoughts are still local and limited to their physical embodiment, even if all life and consciousness is bound together by a common substance or principle. The episode needs to invent another principle in addition to the ones they suggest to help empower thoughts so dramatically (like inventing thought as a mysterious nonphysical type of entity that has infinite range like gravity; we would have detected it probably in a lab if it was a physical substance).
Perhaps Star Trek is getting back at science for killing its ability to use ESP themes and present them as legitimate scientific possibilities as it did in the original series in one episode (Episode 3: "Where No Man Has Gone Before" in 1966). 'Well if I can't use that, I'll use panpsychism from metaphysicians like David Chalmers'! Or maybe they imagined their idea of consciousness in such an extreme way just to prevent science from ever proving it right or wrong!
This episode doesn't have that much substance in its SF elements and seems intended more for lightness, humor, and character development.
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