[5.2/10] One of my favorite tropes is “Arbitrary Skepticism”, where people who’ve seen extraordinary things suddenly become skeptics when confronted with something that’s fantastical to us but should be old hat to them. One of my favorite examples comes from Diablo III, where one of the main characters essentially says, “Oh mentor, there’s no such thing as demons, silly. Anyway, let’s go fight these zombies.” It’s amusing when folks who have witnessed the supernatural suddenly become doubters, but normally the only consequence is a mild chuckle that doesn’t hurt the story.
But the problem with “Power Play”, one of them anyway, is that it hinges on that sort of Arbitrary Skepticism. Counselor Troi, Data, and Chief O’Brien are all incapacitated on an away mission and possessed by beings claiming to be part of a long lost Starfleet crew. The final act twist of the episode is that they’re lying, and are, in fact, prisoners who were deliberately stranded there. They’re not humans who simply want to “rest,” but no-good-niks who simply want to escape.
There’s something there! Unusual beings claiming to be one thing and secretly harboring other intentions is part of the standard block and tackle of Star Trek. But the episode doesn’t do much of anything with it, and worse yet, the main throughline for these beings Die Hard-esque hostage-fueled takeover of the ship is that Picard’s skeptical of this possession angle from the beginning, for no good reason.
Literally every member of the senior staff has already been possessed, brainwashed, or otherwise controlled by an outside force by this point in the show. For Troi and Data, it’s happened multiple times. It makes zero sense that Jean-Luc in particular is so doubtful that these “spirits” have taken over the bodies of his crewmen. And hell, if they have access to the records from Kirk’s Enterprise, they’d know that energy being possession is pretty standard. (To the point, this episode feels like a spiritual successor to “Return to Tomorrow” from The Original Series.)
What’s more, Picard is skeptical that these spirits are who they say they are because of their hostage taking and threats. Despite seeming to know their way around a starship, Jean-Luc questions the truth of their professed identities since he reckons this isn’t how Starfleet officers would act. The catch is that 1. Starfleet was, shall we say, more relaxed on protocol 175 years ago, and 2. As Worf points out, spending nearly two centuries in purgatory could definitely change a man.
I’m not one to nitpick, or at least, I aspire not to be. Every Star Trek episode requires a certain amount of willing suspension of disbelief, and I’m normally quick to offer it. But “Power Play” rests so much on who these plotters are and whether or not they’re telling the truth, that the arbitrary way our heroes suspect them and figure them out all but neuters the impact of the plotting itself.
What’s left is wiped out by Marina Sirtis as the villainous ringleader of the prisoner posing as a former Starfleet captain. Look, I think Sirtis gets a lot of undue shit from the fanbase. Troi isn’t always the best-written character on the show, and Sirtis doesn’t necessarily have the most range. But when used well as a performer -- as the empathetic counselor or supportive friend to her colleagues -- she’s a vital part of the show. Unfortunately, playing the ruthless, tough-as-nails dastard is just not in Sirtis’s wheelhouse, and every time she tries to act tough around the hostage or push Picard around, it plays as too flat and, frankly, too comical to pass muster. It’s nice to see the character getting more to do, but the script does not play to Sirtis’s strengths, and the whole episode suffers for it.
Worse still, there’s nothing clever about how our heroes beat the villains of the week. It’s mildly sharp when the good guys convince the bad guys to venture to shuttle bay 4, so that if things go south, Riker can blow the doors and blast the whole lot of them into space. But none of that happens. Instead, a bunch of the usual Treknobabble solutions don’t work until one of them does. That’s it. The only hook is that for some reason pain hinders the beings from possessing their hosts, but all it takes is the right nigh-magically painful (but not harmful) ray, and boom, the good guys have the upper hand again.
There’s no real progression to any of it. There’s no emotional throughline for any of the characters. Hell, the only real intriguing part of this one -- Starfleet officers of old taking on the Starfleet officers of the next generation -- turns out to be a red herring. The fun of seeing familiar characters act outside of their usual comfort zones is obviated by Sirtis’s limitations (though scary Brent Spiner is a treat). The nobility of Picard trading his own security for freed hostages is mitigated by the obvious false jeopardy of the whole thing. The episode lacks all tension and punch, a real weakness when the core of the episode ought to be the main characters outsmarting a pack of clever and determined interlopers who’ll go to extreme lengths to get what they want.
It’s telling that, before I looked at the bylines for the episode, I instantly clocked it as one that felt more like early season TNG. Maybe it’s just that Gene Roddenberry loved him some energy beings and crazy “altered state” stories, particularly when the noble captain has to deal with them. But in hindsight, it makes sense that former showrunner Maurice Hurley helped pen the story for this one, as it has the awkward pacing and garbled storytelling that plagued the show during his tenure.
Most Trekkies dump on “Turnabout Intruder”, another possession story and the final episode of the 1960s Star Trek series. But one of the things I liked about it is that when the crew starts to suspect that their captain is under some type of foreign influence, the various crewmembers express doubt, but Spock notes that over the course of 78 episodes’ worth of adventure, they’ve already seen some wild and crazy things. After all of that, someone pulling a Grand Theft Shatner is well within the realm of possibility and consideration.
I wish Captain Picard and his colleagues took a similar approach to their body-stealing baddies in “Power Play”. The lumpiness of the plotting here was always going to be a weakness. And Sirtis as your Big Bad is another obstacle it’s hard to get around. But at the very least, earning your reveal, having Jean-Luc and company discover the secret of these intruders in a way that feels organic, rather than arbitrary, would have made that twist more satisfying. Otherwise, you risk turning your audience into skeptics, not just your characters.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-05-27T23:17:08Z
[5.2/10] One of my favorite tropes is “Arbitrary Skepticism”, where people who’ve seen extraordinary things suddenly become skeptics when confronted with something that’s fantastical to us but should be old hat to them. One of my favorite examples comes from Diablo III, where one of the main characters essentially says, “Oh mentor, there’s no such thing as demons, silly. Anyway, let’s go fight these zombies.” It’s amusing when folks who have witnessed the supernatural suddenly become doubters, but normally the only consequence is a mild chuckle that doesn’t hurt the story.
But the problem with “Power Play”, one of them anyway, is that it hinges on that sort of Arbitrary Skepticism. Counselor Troi, Data, and Chief O’Brien are all incapacitated on an away mission and possessed by beings claiming to be part of a long lost Starfleet crew. The final act twist of the episode is that they’re lying, and are, in fact, prisoners who were deliberately stranded there. They’re not humans who simply want to “rest,” but no-good-niks who simply want to escape.
There’s something there! Unusual beings claiming to be one thing and secretly harboring other intentions is part of the standard block and tackle of Star Trek. But the episode doesn’t do much of anything with it, and worse yet, the main throughline for these beings Die Hard-esque hostage-fueled takeover of the ship is that Picard’s skeptical of this possession angle from the beginning, for no good reason.
Literally every member of the senior staff has already been possessed, brainwashed, or otherwise controlled by an outside force by this point in the show. For Troi and Data, it’s happened multiple times. It makes zero sense that Jean-Luc in particular is so doubtful that these “spirits” have taken over the bodies of his crewmen. And hell, if they have access to the records from Kirk’s Enterprise, they’d know that energy being possession is pretty standard. (To the point, this episode feels like a spiritual successor to “Return to Tomorrow” from The Original Series.)
What’s more, Picard is skeptical that these spirits are who they say they are because of their hostage taking and threats. Despite seeming to know their way around a starship, Jean-Luc questions the truth of their professed identities since he reckons this isn’t how Starfleet officers would act. The catch is that 1. Starfleet was, shall we say, more relaxed on protocol 175 years ago, and 2. As Worf points out, spending nearly two centuries in purgatory could definitely change a man.
I’m not one to nitpick, or at least, I aspire not to be. Every Star Trek episode requires a certain amount of willing suspension of disbelief, and I’m normally quick to offer it. But “Power Play” rests so much on who these plotters are and whether or not they’re telling the truth, that the arbitrary way our heroes suspect them and figure them out all but neuters the impact of the plotting itself.
What’s left is wiped out by Marina Sirtis as the villainous ringleader of the prisoner posing as a former Starfleet captain. Look, I think Sirtis gets a lot of undue shit from the fanbase. Troi isn’t always the best-written character on the show, and Sirtis doesn’t necessarily have the most range. But when used well as a performer -- as the empathetic counselor or supportive friend to her colleagues -- she’s a vital part of the show. Unfortunately, playing the ruthless, tough-as-nails dastard is just not in Sirtis’s wheelhouse, and every time she tries to act tough around the hostage or push Picard around, it plays as too flat and, frankly, too comical to pass muster. It’s nice to see the character getting more to do, but the script does not play to Sirtis’s strengths, and the whole episode suffers for it.
Worse still, there’s nothing clever about how our heroes beat the villains of the week. It’s mildly sharp when the good guys convince the bad guys to venture to shuttle bay 4, so that if things go south, Riker can blow the doors and blast the whole lot of them into space. But none of that happens. Instead, a bunch of the usual Treknobabble solutions don’t work until one of them does. That’s it. The only hook is that for some reason pain hinders the beings from possessing their hosts, but all it takes is the right nigh-magically painful (but not harmful) ray, and boom, the good guys have the upper hand again.
There’s no real progression to any of it. There’s no emotional throughline for any of the characters. Hell, the only real intriguing part of this one -- Starfleet officers of old taking on the Starfleet officers of the next generation -- turns out to be a red herring. The fun of seeing familiar characters act outside of their usual comfort zones is obviated by Sirtis’s limitations (though scary Brent Spiner is a treat). The nobility of Picard trading his own security for freed hostages is mitigated by the obvious false jeopardy of the whole thing. The episode lacks all tension and punch, a real weakness when the core of the episode ought to be the main characters outsmarting a pack of clever and determined interlopers who’ll go to extreme lengths to get what they want.
It’s telling that, before I looked at the bylines for the episode, I instantly clocked it as one that felt more like early season TNG. Maybe it’s just that Gene Roddenberry loved him some energy beings and crazy “altered state” stories, particularly when the noble captain has to deal with them. But in hindsight, it makes sense that former showrunner Maurice Hurley helped pen the story for this one, as it has the awkward pacing and garbled storytelling that plagued the show during his tenure.
Most Trekkies dump on “Turnabout Intruder”, another possession story and the final episode of the 1960s Star Trek series. But one of the things I liked about it is that when the crew starts to suspect that their captain is under some type of foreign influence, the various crewmembers express doubt, but Spock notes that over the course of 78 episodes’ worth of adventure, they’ve already seen some wild and crazy things. After all of that, someone pulling a Grand Theft Shatner is well within the realm of possibility and consideration.
I wish Captain Picard and his colleagues took a similar approach to their body-stealing baddies in “Power Play”. The lumpiness of the plotting here was always going to be a weakness. And Sirtis as your Big Bad is another obstacle it’s hard to get around. But at the very least, earning your reveal, having Jean-Luc and company discover the secret of these intruders in a way that feels organic, rather than arbitrary, would have made that twist more satisfying. Otherwise, you risk turning your audience into skeptics, not just your characters.