TNG: The Loss

            This is a very meh episode. Not insultingly awful or mindblowingly dumb, but not great either. The A story (if you can call it that) is about Troi losing her empathic powers and having to learn to cope with only having the powers of a human. In theory this isn't the worst, but it gets handled like a highschool motivational film about how all you really need to succeed is to believe in yourself. There are scenes where this actually works pretty well, and then there are all the other parts where it just seems dumb and you want Troi to stop whining. But then she helps Data figure out the mystery of the flat aliens and then gets her powers back magically when the aliens leave despite Crusher saying cells in her brain had died, but whatever.
            The episode opens with Troi counseling a member of the crew about the loss of her husband and it kinda feels like they just took the stereotypes they had about psychologists and made this part from those. As she finishes she is struck by a headache just as the crew on the bridge notice a strange sensor anomaly. They try to go to warp but the warp field collapses and they are stuck. Not only are they stuck though, they are also being slowly tugged and can't stop it. Troi calls Dr. Crusher to come help her but people all over the ship are having similar symptoms. After some treatment Troi realizes she can't sense peoples emotions and after pretending to be fine pretty much completely freaks. Her next therapy appointment goes fine but she feels she can't do her job and tenders her resignation to the captain. 
            Meanwhile the ship is caught in a field of two dimensional things that may be life and can't get out despite Geordi's best efforts. Even worse the find out what they are being dragged towards, a cosmic string fragment with intense gravity that will destroy the ship if they can't stop from falling into it. Meanwhile Troi continues snapping at literally everyone on the crew and is hella rude to both Dr. Crusher and Guinan. Eventually Picard asks her to help Data figure out how to communicate with the beings and she somehow figures out maybe they are attracted to the string or something so they need to pretend to be a string and it works and the ship is safe.

            Review: While watching it most of this episode seemed ok, but as soon as I finished it started feeling crappier the more I reflected on it. Troi isn't the strongest character in the series and having an entire episode focused on her being mad at everyone because she lost her powers isn't really the best use of an episode.

4 out of 10