#so i was like a riva from Star Trek who is deaf

[doyouknowthisdisabledcharacter]

Do You Know This Disabled Character?

Riva is Deaf.

[comrade-spock]

The real secret is turning disadvantage into advantage.

[ID: Several screenshots from Star Trek: The Next Generation, showing Geordi, Riker, Picard, and several new characters standing on the bridge. The main new character is Riva, a Deaf man wearing a blue cloak, with red hair and a red beard, and the people known as his Chorus--three telepaths who all wear white. Riva does not speak out loud, so his Chrous reads his thoughts and translates for him.

The screenshots begin with Geordi speaking to Riva: “It is my pleasure to meet you, sir.”

The Chorus speaks Riva’s thoughts, saying: “What is that you’re wearing?”, while Riva puts his hands on either side of Geordi’s face to gesture to his visor.

Geordi responds, “A visor--it interprets the electromagnetic spectrum, and then carries the readings to my brain.”

Riva asks, “And without it, can you see?”

Geordi: “Without it, I’m as blind as a stump.”

Riva: “Then your visor serves the same function as my Chorus, which interprets my thoughts and translates them into sound.”

Geordi: “Yes.”

Riva: “And you don’t resent it?”

Geordi: “The visor or being blind?”

Riva: “Either.”

Geordi: “Well, no. Since they’re both a part of me, and I really like who I am, there’s no reason to for me to resent either one.”

Riva: “What is your position on this ship?”

Geordi: “I’m the chief engineer, sir.”

Riva: “It’s a blessing to understand that we are special, each in his own way.”

Geordi: “Yes, that’s the way I feel exactly.”

Riva lowers his hands from Geordi’s visor, and Geordi places his hand over Riva’s heart while they both smile.

End ID.]

(thank you @y-that-crazy-five-foot-two-chick and @rjalker for thinking to caption this post!)

[thegreaterlink]

Reviewing Star Trek TNG - S2E5 "Loud as a Whisper"

THE PREMISE

The Enterprise takes on board a renowned negotiator named Riva to help resolve a centuries-long war between two tribes on the planet Solais V. Riva is deaf and mute due to a hereditary genetic deficiency, and as such travels with his "chorus," a group of people who communicate with him telepathically and say what he's thinking.

When Riva beams down with his chorus and an away team to begin the peace talks, one of the tribal delegates fires upon them, killing the chorus, and Riva and the crew evacuate back to the ship. Without his chorus Riva is unable to communicate, so Picard scrambles for a way to resume the peace talks, beginning with Data learning Riva's type of sign language.

MY REVIEW

Once again I'm probably going to struggle to say much about this one, but I'll try my best.

I'll admit that when I started this episode and heard the premise, my expectations weren't exactly high. But it surprised me. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this episode great, but it’s certainly a lot better than its rather lacklustre premise would have you believe.

I’ll admit that the opening is a bit dull; the peace talks aren’t especially interesting, plus the aliens’ design of long hair and random facial lumps just feels like they wanted Klingons who weren’t Klingons. Then one of the representatives goes rogue and disintegrates Riva’s chorus in a trio of unexpectedly violent deaths. Because clearly someone watched Remmick's death in "Conspiracy” and took it as a challenge.

Suddenly Riva is effectively isolated from everyone around him. Even when Data learns the necessary sign language, a distraught Riva refuses to resume the peace talks, believing that he’s responsible for the deaths of the deaths of his chorus - they were his friends as well as his interpreters, and it's only when they're gone that he realises how much he took them for granted.

Riva is played by Howie Seago, who is deaf in real life. He was actually responsible for this episode's inception when he approached the producers with the concept of a deaf mediator, which had been proposed by his wife, who was a Trekkie. Originally Seago was supposed to learn how to talk after his chorus was killed, but Seago opposed this, as he feared it would continue the practice of forcing deaf children to speak.

Fortunately the producers understood his concerns and ordered some rewrites. The episode ends with Riva returning to the planet to resume the negotiations alone. His disability will force the tribes to learn sign language to communicate with him, and they will be able to bond through the shared experience. I'm glad they changed the ending - it just wouldn't seem right for someone like Riva to not be accepted in the much more progressive 24th century. I can also understand the importance of having such a character onscreen, someone unable to communicate as most people do, surrounded by people who can't understand him but want only the best for him.

Speaking of disabilities, Geordi, who is blind and unable to see without his visor, has a scene with Dr Pulaski where she offers him the option to restore his vision, either through ocular implants or more risky repairs to his optical nerves, but either way there's no going back. This scene feels a bit out of place structure-wise, but I'm glad it was included. It's obviously not an easy decision for Geordi to make - of course he wants to be able to see with his own eyes, but at the same time his condition is a part of him, and isn't necessarily something bad which needs to be changed. He tells Dr Pulaski that he needs time to think about it, and by the end of the episode he still hasn't made his decision, in a surprisingly mature move for this show.

I’d also like to note that these past few episodes were filming at the same time as Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and it was during the filming of this episode that Wil Wheaton had his infamous first meeting with William Shatner.

6/10 - Decent plot, but not especially interesting.

Previous Episode | TNG Masterpost | Next Episode

[script-a-world]

I am creating a non human race that is deaf and mute but telepathic. That however only solves communication issues among their own kind. They can learn to speak (albeit it depends on their poorly developed vocal cords) or read and write other species languages though. But how about environmental interaction? Should they have much better vision or something since they can't hear danger if not in front of their eyes?

Tex: How is your telepathy defined? Deaf people don’t always have an internal monologue that translates to what hearing people would typically infer as “speech” (George Takei, CaptionCall). It might stand to reason that your species would develop similarly, particularly if they’re aided by mind-to-mind communication - writing is an inherently visual form of communication, though it might not have an alphabet as we know, and pictographic language might be closer to the norm for them.

For the latter part of your ask, I’ll default to Star Wars’ development of Force Sensitivity (Wookieepedia) and Jedi training (Wookieepedia) - in particular, a Force User’s ability to sense their environment without the use of sight (Wookieepedia). This is partially already supported by preexisting science (Wikipedia), as well as some ventures into research (Tarlaci, S. (2010)), though of course there’s always room for worldbuilding to develop some ideas.

With such a talent, Force Users are capable of communicating with their environment - sentient beings, yes, but also animals and plants and conventionally non-living objects (rocks, furniture) that soak up impressions from living beings. In that way, a Force User can lean into the Force as a form of mental echolocation, and depending on their skills and strengths, can put their own thoughts into the world around them.

Star Trek has a similar vein of telepathy (Memory Alpha), though I would like to direct you first to the Next Generation episode “Loud As A Whisper” (Memory Alpha), because it shows a deaf character communicating using telepathy. I’m not sure if Riva in this episode was literally mute or habitually mute, but it does parallel a lot of your concerns in building your world about how a primarily deaf/mute society might function.

Feral: Although there are plenty of animals without external ears; I don’t know of any that have evolved to be completely deaf. All animals I’m aware of have some mechanism by which they can perceive sound waves via vibrations in air, water, or earth. Extraordinary eyesight would only help in as much as the threat is front of their eyes, so eye stalks that can move independently of each other and allow for 360 degree sight would be more beneficial than just greater visual acuity.

Now I’ve gotta be That worldbuilder… the Disability-Negating Superpower, Disability Superpower, and Disability Immunity tropes are often considered quite harmful by real-life disabled communities.

Telepathy isn’t “solving” any real communication issues here. Real d/Deaf people can communicate with others just fine - hearing people are usually the ones with the communication issue. Keep in mind that many people who identify as Deaf do not consider themselves in need of a cure, magical or otherwise, and activists with the Deaf community and other disabled communities are working hard to clarify that they individually do not have a problem, society has a problem being accessible to them. There is a movement right now to make ASL (and I’m sure there are similar pushes in other countries) a fundamental part of early childhood education; this would eventually effectively end any communication issues hearing people have with Deaf people.

Sign languages are their own fully developed languages and should be treated as such and not as something inferior to spoken language. Writing systems do not have to be phonetic or correspond to a spoken language.

Muteness specifically references the actual inability to speak whether due to physiological, psychological, or neurological/developmental causes. If your species is mute, then it’s not a matter of the language they’re learning to speak. Deaf-mute, in case you are not aware, is considered an outdated term and can be offensive when used in a non-historical context.

[jimintomystery]

TNG: “Loud as a Whisper”

The Enterprise is assigned to transport the legendary diplomat Riva from his homeworld of Ramatis III to Solais V, where he will mediate bitter civil war that has raged for 1,500 years.  The crew is unprepared for the fact Riva is deaf, and telepathically communicates through a “chorus” of aides that articulate his thoughts.  This becomes a complication when one of the Solari panics and annihilates the entire chorus.

The shooting of Riva’s chorus has always stuck with me.  For some reason that special effect--the burning away of skin, then flesh, and then a bloody skeleton--seems more cruel and unusual than the typical Star Trek kill shot, which just makes the target fade away like a cheap edit.  I think the people who designed the Solari felt a need to emphasize the brutal atmosphere of their ancient war, and for my money they succeeded.

This episode seems a little too pleased with itself for featuring a deaf person and demonstrating that the crew are super-mega-fine with this.  (“Your method of communication is most elegant and quite beautiful.”)  The bit with Riva and Geordi being all “disability twinsies!” is weird--Trek tells us people are beyond dwelling on these things, but then lingers on them anyway for the benefit of the “normal” viewers.  It might have been more productive to present Riva as a human Starfleet officer that just uses sign language from the start, instead of setting up Picard to act like “guy who can’t hear” is a surprising alien curiosity.

Compounding the clumsiness of this attempt at inclusivity is the fact that Doctor Pulaski attempts to “treat” Riva’s deafness when it becomes inconvenient, and then randomly mentions she knows how to fix La Forge’s optic nerves all of a sudden.  Once the chorus is gone, the crew is at a loss to communicate with Riva, and I get where that’s a problem, but “fix his brain so he can hear” is such a crude and simplistic solution.  The La Forge bit was meant to be part of a multi-episode subplot to get rid of his VISOR, which was apparently abandoned before he could make a decision about it.  It’s just so odd that Pulaski just now decides to mention that she’s cured blindness a couple times, nbd.  I don’t think you can properly represent the disabled while treating their conditions like “have you tried turning it off and on again?”

The political situation here is kind of weird.  The implication is that Solais and Ramatis arranged the diplomatic mission bilaterally, and the Federation has no role in it except to provide transportation.  This serves the story’s goal of keeping the crew in the dark about Riva and limiting their options when the situation deteriorates, but it’s not clear why the Federation flagship is roped in for such a menial task.  I suppose maybe Riva and/or the Solari might value Starfleet’s reputation for rendering assistance without meddling (which implies an interesting benefit of their noninterference policies), but that’s still a job for a transport ship, not Picard.

[glowyjellyfish]

Random thoughts about the next few episodes of Star Trek TNG that I watched:

-Data and Geordi cosplaying/roleplaying Holmes and Watson was amazing

-they reminded me very strongly of Troy and Abed in that episode, and according to Mark Watches comments and a tumblr that was linked, I'm not the only one. Hooray!

-I was kind of disappointed that the episode wasn't just about Data blowing Pulaski's argument out of the water, and was actually shocked that the sentient holodeck Moriarty was like... not evil? He just attained consciousness (because a program had to achieve consciousness in order to challenge Data, and the holodeck computer is magic) and wanted to continue living and understand things! I think Futurama may have misled me; that or he comes back and is evil later. (...I expect he will come back, I don't know what to expect about his alignment) On that point, I am tickled that a program had to attain sentience in order to be a proper match for Data, because duh Pulaski, that is what makes Data a living being, stop casting aspersions on whether he has a soul, you're a doctor, not a priest.

-As the above mini-rant makes obvious, I still kinda loathe Pulaski and wish I didn't but.. god, she is just terrible. I'd like to appreciate that an older woman is a main character who gets to wear fancy costumes and get charmed by Holo-Moriarty, but she is not allowed to call Data a machine and tell him he doesn't have a soul and then go on holodeck adventures in a cool costume and eat crumpets. NO. I would guess that she was an attempt to create a Bones-Spock dynamic, but I think the heart of why it fails is that Spock was not bothered when anybody drew attention to his Vulcan attributes, much less a close colleague who we saw shared mutual respect, and they cheerfully traded barbs and mockery with each other indiscriminately. Meanwhile, we spent a season getting to know Data as sweet and earnest and basically just the best, Pulaski attacks the one thing he is constantly striving to achieve and/or improve in a way that smacks strongly of bigotry, and shows little respect for him, and Data does not retaliate because that is not who he is. On top of that, Pulaski replaced another amazing character who had just begun to have some great development and UST and the like. It's like they wanted everyone to despise her.

-I swear to god, that Fake Han Solo guy flirted with Data. And Worf. ...I'm probably just seeing a gay mirage oasis in the desert, because I am used to shows at least having an almost-married bromance (cough cough McShep), if not actual gay people, but I also don't think the Star Trek future utopia Enterprise would have cared if he was, so I choose to believe it. :P

Geordi: have you noticed Data has been acting a little insecure lately? 

Me: what, really? It couldn't have anything to do with the new crewmember who disrespects his sentience every time they're in a room together?

Me: okay, but star trek is probably not having that as a real plot, right?

Star Trek: not exactly, but proceeds to have a plot involving Data and consciousness, including several conversations about what he can experience and what he misses out on and that he deserves respect as a living being.

Me: ...okay, but that wasn't, like, on purpose, right? They aren't going to address the Dr. Pulaski situation or talk about how she is causing Data stress/insecurity, right? Because the writers seem to feel that it's just bantering and don't recognize it as bigotry because it was the 80s?

...omg I actually don't know what to expect from this, I seem to keep setting my expectations too low. It couldn’t be a real arc, right? Because that’s interpersonal conflict and that wasn’t allowed?

...are there at least fanfics for this?

ETA: I forgot to mention, I loved the random Vulcan doctor that appeared. Could we have gotten more of her instead?

ETA2: Personally, the conversation Data had with the Creepy Misogynist Asshole Grandpa felt much better and more interesting than any time Pulaski has talked to him. Because this was an actual conversation. There was give and take, and they asked questions of each other. He could discuss and criticize Data’s construction, but Data seemed more cautiously curious than anything else. CMAG was a little dismissive of Data, but most of his disrespect was not to Data’s face. While Pulaski just drops “oh, you’re just a machine, you don’t have a soul” bombs into what should be regular conversation, and it’s not exactly a topic that she is an authority on, or one that invites discussion. Bring back Dr. Crusher ASAP.

And did I mention this week that Brent Spiner is amazing? Because that. In less than two seasons, he’s played two utterly distinct creepy versions of the character he plays every day. Two characters with very different personalities who are creepy in entirely different ways, who are both trying to pass themselves off as Data, and all three believable and unique. Bravo.

Also, I didn’t have much to say about the Riva episode, although overall I think it was good; it didn’t strike my fancy very much, but I liked what it was saying by the end. Knowing that it was written by and starred a deaf man makes it even better.