There is another . <| sep |> to find out that Johnny Rotten was right . <| sep |> Every holiday has some way of exploiting and furthering the commercialization of said holiday . Black Friday is the attempt to do this for thanksgiving . <| sep |> This scene from The Ensigns of Command is one of my favorite Troi scenes in the series m 6 ckzuhv 2 oI think it ' s in Encounter at Farpoint where Picard tells Riker that it ' s Riker ' s job to make sure Picard doesn ' t make an ass of himself in front of the crew . He is aristocratic and erudite and maybe can ' t connect with the average joes of the crew and the civilians on board like Riker can . As my wife put it , Riker is the Joe Biden to Picard ' s Obama . If Riker is there to make sure Picard doesn ' t make as ass of himself in front of the crew , Troi ' s job is to make sure Picard doesn ' t make an ass of himself in front of everyone else aliens , colonists , diplomats , guests , etc . . In the clip from Ensigns , she is doing just that by briefing Picard on communicating with an alien species . You can extrapolate from this scene that she ' s not only a psychologist but a sociologist and a linguist as well . But neither this aspect nor the counselor aspect of her position necessitates a seat on the bridge . She is on the bridge so she can do the other part of her job , which is to advise the captain during conversations with whoever happens to be on the screen at the time . This role complements Riker ' s role as an adviser , and it justifies her position on the bridge . Riker might be more useful for giving tactical or logistical advice , while Troi ' s role is to give diplomatic , psychological , or sociological advice . As Picard became a more complete person , Troi started to seem redundant . I even recall a conversation that went something like thisTroi He is hiding something from us , Captain . Picard I ' m no empath , but even I can sense that . Gee thanks , boss . Picard began the series with a lack of emotional intelligence . If he had kept that character flaw , Troi would have been more important . On top of that , the writers never seemed interested in exploring 24 th century psychology or what encounters between species with radically different umwelten would really be like save for the rare episode like Darmok , so Troi had to settle for marriage and pregnancy subplots . Imagine what a great character she could have been in the hands of a writer like Ursula K . Le Guin . But since we are interested in inuniverse explanations , I would say that Picard learned a lot from Troi about understanding and connecting with people and aliens , and that is why Troi seems so redundant most of the time , but he still valued having someone to validate his hunches and give him another perspective .