Deanna Troi: 15 Things Paramount Doesn't Want You to Know
1. Marina Sirtis Was Desperate
2. Marina Tried Out For Yar
3. Sirtis Almost Missed the Call
Looking back, it seems like Sirtis was made for the role of Deanna Troi but it was a pretty close call. Sirtis has said she was petrified by the repeated auditions and pretty much given up hope of getting the job at all. She had even come to think her acting career in the US was over. On the day the decision was made to hire her, Sirtis' six-month visa was due to expire. She said when she got the call offering her the role, she was packing to return to Britain. An hour later and she would have missed the call, and we would have missed her talents.
4. Troi's Accent
5. Troi Almost Had Four Breasts
6. Troi Needed a Promotion
Some people questioned why Troi was hanging around on the bridge all the time, even to the extent of having her own chair right next to the captain. Yes, she was a counselor but was she really an officer? She didn't even dress as a Starfleet officer until later in the series. In fact, Troi held the rank of lieutenant commander because of her medical training. In the seventh season's "Thine Own Self," Troi took the Bridge Officer Test and was promoted to Commander. Some fans objected to Troi becoming a commander over the lieutenant commanders Data and Geordi but producer Jeri Taylor bluntly said that Troi becoming a commander just had more drama.
7. The Betazoids Took Troi's Father
8. Two Other Girls Played Troi
9. Troi Kept Getting Taken By Aliens
10. Sirtis Hated Troi's Chocolate
11. Troi and Riker Were Inspired By the Movie
It's hard to talk about Deanna Troi without discussing Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes). Number One and Troi were lovers before being stationed together on the Enterprise, and the two had an underlying flirtation that smoldered throughout the series. You just knew they were still into each other. Troi's relationship with Riker was actually based on the relationship between Ilia and Decker in Star Trek: The Motion Picture which was itself based on the unproduced TV series Star Trek: Phase II.
12. Sirtis and Frakes Were Frustrated
If you watched the pilot of TNG and saw how the romance between Troi and Riker was developed, you might have expected it to play a big part of the show. Fans of the couple waited for the entire series to see them together and ended up with no payoff. Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis apparently felt the same way and were just as disappointed as the shippers in the audience. Frakes said, "Some of the Troi-Riker relationship was certainly swept under the carpet, much to our dismay. We did everything we could to keep it alive." Unfortunately, the writers didn't know how or didn't want to deal with the romance so it became more of a subtext than a fully developed storyline on the show.
13. Troi and Riker Almost Married on TNG
It wasn't until Star Trek: Nemesis that Troi and Riker finally pulled the switch and got married which was celebrated by the Troi/Riker shippers. Some fans might be upset to find out the marriage could have happened much earlier. In season seven of Star Trek: The Next Generation, some of the show's writing staff campaigned to have Troi and Riker get married as a way of rewarding the fans. Sadly, producers Rick Berman and Michael Piller shot down the idea, which didn't make Sirtis and Frakes happy.
While Troi and Riker didn't get together on the show, they had more than their share of relationships with other people. One of the strangest and most controversial romances was between Worf and Troi. While some fans thought it didn't make sense, Marina Sirtis definitely felt the same way. In an interview, she said she thought the writers had forgotten about the characters' identities in favor of pursuing the relationship. At one point, she said, "It was certainly an interesting idea, but [...] because the sixth season had established Troi's ongoing love interest for Riker, I was amazed that Deanna would trade her strong feelings for a relationship with Worf [....] I often felt that someone had watched Beauty and the Beast too many times."
15. Troi Was Almost Cut in Season One
While Deanna Troi has become one of the most popular characters on the show, Sirtis spent most of the first season in fear of being fired. Apparently, the writers didn't know what to do with Troi because they felt her empathic powers and role as a counselor didn't fit into their stories. There was also a concern from the studio that there were too many women on the show, so when you considered cutting the doctor (Dr. Crusher), the security chief (Tasha Yar) or the ship's counselor, the ship's counselor would be the one to go. However, Gates McFadden and Denise Crosby left the show, so it left Sirtis in a much better position to stay on. When Roddenberry told her the first episode in the second season would be focused on Troi, Sirtis burst into tears of relief.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Sirtis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deanna_Troi
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Deanna_Troi
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