This, and he wanted connection from someone of his species, and the first officer of the one ship that can overcome the plot debuff happens to be that species, a species we barely see outside this plot…it’s writing so bad you can’t see the show through it. Emotional stories are appropriate, it’s why Troi was a bridge officer. But this show was constantly setting up unsolvable problems that could only be fixed by this one crew, which breaks immersion. Good trek doesn’t have 50 Galaxy or universe ending threats only fixable by plot-armored main characters, it has ship, person, and planet level threats giving you the space to appreciate the human story. Even DS9 kept the stories on missions while the thread of the war was just a hum with reasonable stakes.