How can you be able to sense emotions from sometimes light-years away? I often see her sensing others emotions from ships light years away and I just realized it and ik curious what the range of it is? (Silly or cannon response of course).
How can you be able to sense emotions from sometimes light-years away? I often see her sensing others emotions from ships light years away and I just realized it and ik curious what the range of it is? (Silly or cannon response of course).
Very far. We’re not given numbers, but Deanna’s range might actually be on the lower side, because she’s not wholly Betazoid, and her empathic abilities are due to her telepathic abilities only being semi-functional.
If the books and extended media are to be believed, Betazed passed First Contact restrictions because they were already reading minds for light years around.
It’s likely that most of the time, all the nearby minds just get drowned out or metaconsciously tuned out. So unless you have a condition that impairs that, you’re not picking up every thought for light years.
But type of telepathy matters too. Vulcan-type telepathy doesn’t have nearly as large a range, and is good for about a few metres, or requires physical contact, for example.
Tin Man’s telepathy was able to reach across at least a whole star system.
When Lwaxana scanned the bar in DS9 s01e17 The Forsaken to figure out who stole her broach, she has to look at each person in the room to read them. Perhaps the range for Betazeds is very high or unlimited, but using it requires them to be aware of the person’s presence, or to specifically focus on them? Or perhaps there’s general vibes, but truly reading someone requires active focus?