10 Star Trek: TNG Facts You Probably Didn't Know

Deanna Troi's character was inspired by Ilia from Phase: II. Ilia is Deltan and came from a culture that was so sexual that they must swear an oath of celibacy to join Starfleet. The first go at Troi's character retained this element of hyper-sexuality. Roddenberry envisioned Troi as a wanton four-breasted hermaphrodite.

Writer Dorothy Fontana argued that this was a character everyone was going to find offensive. As detailed in Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek, Fontana added, "Do you know how much trouble women have with the normal number? Keeping them out of the way of things, I mean. Four straight up and down? Don’t be silly."

Troi did retain Ilia's gift of being an empath, which ended up creating some issues for actress Marina Sirtis. The character's powers were expansive and poorly defined to the point that new writers were hesitant to write her character into scripts at all. On top of that, Roddenberry felt there were too many women on the show. Marina Sirtis was worried she would be fired.

These weren't idle fears. In an interview with The AV Club, Sirtis said that Majel Barrett-Roddenberry confirmed her character had been on the chopping block... but going into the second season, a lot had changed. Gene Roddenberry let Sirtis know that the first episode of the second season would be about Troi. Her response was to burst into tears, "...basically, I've been hanging on by my fingernails for that whole season - not just professionally, but emotionally."