T’Lana was born on Vulcan to a Betazoid father and Vulcan mother, Makaan and T’Shara. She struggled with her Betazoid emotions most of her childhood as she was mostly ignored by her peers due to being different. Her family was pretty much isolated from the rest of the community due to the unlikely pairing of her parents. Her father had always found T’Shara’s Vulcan traditions fascinating, and T’Shara emerged herself in Makaan’s Betazoid history. Although, it was a difficult contrast having one who suppressed emotions living with someone who sought out people’s feelings, the two of them were happy. As a result of her upbringing, T’Lana tried to be more like the Vulcan side of her family which led to her becoming isolated and lonely. When she was 24, she met Ambassador Spock for the first time and was amazed that someone with a similar heritage to him had been able to achieve so much. She studied his life and missions in star fleet and decided that the only place she had a chance of feeling like she belonged was in star fleet. She joined the academy where she specialised in science, making a conscious decision to stay away from the obvious choice of psychology. She excelled at the academy, her unique way of looking at things made her unique but this time in a good way. She was able to look at a problem from 2 angles, her Vulcan side gave her wisdom and logic whereas her Betazoid side allowed her to relate to people and make friends. She no longer felt isolated and alone. She graduated in the top 10 of her year and was assigned to the U.S.S. Hood as a junior science officer. She continued to impress her superiors and was quickly promoted. After 2 years she was transferred to the U.S.S. Excalibur. She had a difficult time with one of the other junior officers, a young man, Kavan, who had a thing against Vulcans, but she worked through it with him and he became one of her closest friends. A year later, Kavan was killed during an explosion in one of the science labs and T’Lana felt that she could no longer stay on board the Excalibur. A posting came up on the Brandywine and she put in for a transfer.