If you want to know the actual reason is that Roddenberry planned for his wife (Marjel Barrett) to be Number 1 in TOS and basically have the ship deeply dependent on her. The Studio canned the idea, and she was relegated to playing nurse Chapel.
So TNG was a chance to revive the idea with Counsellor Troi looking after the whole ship via her job, but this too was downgraded so she was just another character on the show rather than the center of the crew’s lives.
That doesn’t surprise me, but it does surprise me that all future Star Trek people (outside of Prodigy) treated it like it wasn’t standard, and yet no one ever really said anything about it beyond Jellico making her put on a real uniform.
If you want to know the actual reason is that Roddenberry planned for his wife (Marjel Barrett) to be Number 1 in TOS and basically have the ship deeply dependent on her. The Studio canned the idea, and she was relegated to playing nurse Chapel.
So TNG was a chance to revive the idea with Counsellor Troi looking after the whole ship via her job, but this too was downgraded so she was just another character on the show rather than the center of the crew’s lives.
That doesn’t surprise me, but it does surprise me that all future Star Trek people (outside of Prodigy) treated it like it wasn’t standard, and yet no one ever really said anything about it beyond Jellico making her put on a real uniform.