"Sentient species are all kinda the same" is a common trope in Star Trek though, not just with telepathy.
Don't forget that per behind the scenes, Piscopo wrote his own material because what was written in the episode was even worse.
Or you know... establish a distance limit. At the distance ships should be in the show, Troi should have trouble sensing the other alien - otherwise she would be able to locate crew on a planet as fast as any sensor.
Yeah, it makes you wonder how the federation would work if there was a species who's survival environment was literally incompatible with another. Like what do you do when segregation is enforced by biology? Or two species aren't even close enough with their senses to be able to communicate?
I guess TNG was trying to establish its own identity, but at the end of the day they could have just used a female half Vulcan or something as the ship's councilor and had her mind meld to do the whole physic thing when needed and it would have solved all these problems.
That trope, with respect to telepahty, was largely established by Troi, so if we're rewriting her we can ignore it. Difficulty with telepathy isn't that uncommon, especially with the stranger aliens who may not be descended from Solid Salome Gens. Talosians are telepaths par excellence but they are overloaded by simple survival emotions. Spock barely understood V'Ger, and had to have physical contact with a simulated Deltan before he could make any sense of its thoughts. (Touch-telepathy seems more effective than remote telepathy, probably something to do with their nervous systems syncing up.) Full-blooded Betazoids can't read Ferengi or Breen. Troi couldn't understand the symbolic thoughts transmitted by the aliens in Night Terrors. And she couldn't read Worf's intention to hit it and quit it. Maybe that's why she fell for him, his alien brain and honor culture were intriguing.
Admittedly, it's very hard to understand what Neil Breen is trying to convey.
Ezri Dax was supposed to be a therapist.
Yeah, I think it would have been neat to throw standard situations at the ENT crew that we know from the other shows, where they usually very quickly get out of trouble by doing some technobabble, only in the case of ENT, they have no clue what is going on and they first have to figure out what the anomaly does and how, before they can show figure out how to counter it.
It's been a while since I watched it, but if I remember correctly it was strongly implied in Babylon 5 that the telepaths were all controlled by some Psy Corp which essentially held that kind of power. Though as I recall the Psy Corp felt more like a parody of Scientology than anything.
I believe 9/11 is one of the main reasons why the tone of the show changed. You have to remember that Enterprise started airing only 2 weeks after 9/11. Then the Xindi attack is tacked onto the end of season 2 and then the whole Xindi arc is a fuck huge metaphor for the Iraq war and subsequent war on terror (Weapons of Mass destruction, "Not all Xindi are bad", Phlox being assaulted for being an alien etc) I enjoyed it, but it feels super jarring when binge watching as it literally comes out of nowhere, though in hindshight it was much better than the directionless temporal cold war that ate screen time.
I thought the Psy Corp was B5's version of the CIA.
Having the same actors that played Koval and Weyoun from DS9 kept reminding me of much, much better DS9 stories I could be watching. Rule 1 for making a bad movie is never remind your audience of other, better movies.
IIRC it started out as a way to keep tabs on telepaths, and ended up as a literal thought police. After the shadows leave the galaxy and humanity alone it's implied they'll die out.
They should've just used Guinan and her magical negro powers as a conselor.
Is it better for a counselor be insightful like Guinan or empathetic like Troi?
What? Jeffrey Combs was fucking awesome as Shran. He stole every scene he was in. The series would have definitely been worse off without him.
And besides, if Guinan had a seat on the bridge, her giant hat would block Worf's view on the main screen.
Using the same thing over and over again would become rather boring, sure, but you could put a lot of variation on it and the translation of some message could be a thing happening whenever they meet a new species, but depending on the focus of the episode, it could be a key element ("Damnit Hoshi! We need that translation and we need it NOW!") or something in the background ("I will have the translation ready first thing tomorrow morning captain" *cuts to next/different scene and main plot continues*). A similar approach can be used for anomalies, too.