Deanna Troi is only half-betazoid, and not fully telepathic. She can communicate that way with her mother because her mother is a full betazoid. She's also demonstrated the ability once with Riker so apparently she can also do it with people she's banged. 
Although that was never mentioned again after the pilot I think.
If I were to judge TNG by the first season, I would hate it. The first two seasons of TNG were utter crap (a few episodes aside), and it's absolutely amazing that the series survived (not just my opinion, btw). TNG didn't get really good until Roddenberry was booted upstairs at the start of season 3.
And I prefer strong characters and dialogue over action any day. My favourite TNG episodes are things like "Tapestry" or "The Inner Light" which have barely any action. DS9 did have plenty of action in the later series, though. The introduction of the Defiant helped a lot with that.
And as far as hot women in sci-fi go, you need to look no further than Aeryn Sun. 
