User Reviews

As the enterprise passes near a remote star system they receive a distress call from a federation ship that was lost two hundred years previously. Picard intends to make a note of it then carry on but Troi says she can sense a consciousness on the planet. Violent storms means the sensors can't detect it and the transporters can't be relied on so the away team, consisting of Riker, Data and Troi, must take a shuttle flight to the surface. The storms cause them to crash but they are rescued by O'Brien who chances the transporter to take equipment to the surface to enable them all to teleport back. However just before they return the storm strikes and three entities enter the bodies of Troi, Data and O'Brien. Once back they initially appear normal but they seem excessively to take the ship to the planet's southern pole. When they are overruled they react violently and seize the ship by taking hostages in Ten-Forward. Eventually they identify themselves as the crew of the lost ship but despite their knowledge of the people they claim to be Picard doesn't believe them. The crew will have to discover a way to get the entities out of their unwilling hosts and then off the ship; it won't be easy and will require a combination of diplomacy and technology.

This is a fairly exciting episode made all the more interesting by the fact that the antagonists are characters we are used to seeing as good guys. Seeing Trio, Data and O'Brien seize the ship was rather fun; especially seeing the emotionless Data getting angry. There was also a real sense of menace; especially when O'Brien sees his wife among the hostages… we may know it is the entities rather than the people we know but it is still more menacing than seeing somebody who doesn't look familiar. The cast to a fine job; especially Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner and Colm Meaney as the possessed trio. The conclusion nicely explains the true nature of the entities and gives us some genuinely tense moments before the situation is resolved. Overall a quality episode with a greater sense of threat than most.

The Enterprise goes to a really crappy planet where a ship might have crashed long, long ago. However, instead of finding humanoids, some spirit-like beings take control of several members of the landing party. Coming back aboard the ship, the possessed crew members try to take over the ship and take hostages. Of the three, the one possessing Data is the creepiest--with a desire to kick butt and do great bodily harm. Can Picard do anything to get the hostages back alive, solve the problem with the possession and maintain control of the ship?

I don't think it's giving anything away to say that eventually good triumphs over evil in this one. However, despite being an excellent episode, the ending seemed too easy. After all, why should the aliens EVER tell the truth about who they are and why should they really care about each other? Still, well worth seeing and exciting.

Energy sprites take over the bodies of Data, Troi, and O'Brien after a hazardous away mission; who then try to commandeer the Enterprise. These aren't characters you'd normally expect to see violently overthrowing the ship's command, which is the real attention-getter of 'Power Play'. Naturally, I thought it was eerie seeing Data speak and behave like a snotty human being.

Packed with action, this relies on Picard's quick thinking' and it's entertaining despite the convenient ending.

7/10

ST:TNG:115 - "Power Play" (Stardate: 45571.2) - this is the 15th episode of the 5th season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

When an Away Team consisting of Riker, Troi, Data, and soon Chief O'Brien to look for the survivors of the Essex (a Federation ship that disappeared 200 years ago), the latter 3 are taken over by energy beings. Once onboard the Enterprise, they commandeer Ten Forward with an agenda of their own.

I have to admit, of all the TNG episodes, I place this one close to my heart. It's a great action-oriented episode, with great phaser play in the Ten Forward scene.

Trivia note: Rosalind Chao makes another appearance as Keiko O'Brien, with daughter Molly. Also, Michelle Forbes also makes another appearance as Ensign Ro Laren.

Creative out of the box thinking in terms of a sci fi story.

Trek at it's foundation is a sci fi show and it's always nice to get a solid science fiction story once and a while.

I was pondering the extreme punishment of removing the essence of these criminals bodies and have them eternally stuck on this planet that's hostile to organic life. What did these criminals do? That's some hard time man. That's a sign of a good storytelling---- If I actually ponder story elements within it after finishing the episode.

I enjoyed watching Data/O'Brien/Troi playing different roles and flexing some acting versatility. It was a nice touch that they kept their inherent skills and used those skills to thwart the Enterprise's rescue attempts.

Where the hell is Guinan? I miss you girl --- Maybe it was her night off?

Solid episode!

This is a hostage TNG episode, which isn't bad. This is just a great treat to watch, how Troi, Data, and Miles got controlled by someone else was really eerie. It has lots of action, maybe too much for TNG, but I have nothing against lots of action unless there's really too much. It was just a really fun episode to watch, one that you could maybe rewatch. Really worth a try!

In "Power Play" a trio of disembodied aliens from a prison planet take over the bodies of Troi, Data, and O'Brien with the goal of escaping their incarcerated existence. It's up to the remaining crew of the Enterprise to stop them.

Star Trek isn't always the best at pure action and adventure but this one's pretty good. We get a lot of fun cat and mouse plays between Picard and the terrorists, hostage negotiations, fight scenes, etc. It wraps up a bit too neatly for my taste but the rest of the episode is good enough for me to qualify this as a solid ep.

As Sci-Fi viewers, we readily accept that a being can exist as point of light and then enter and take over a person's body. But other events can jar us out of the mood, such as O'Brien taking a 50/50 chance of death to transport a pattern enhancer. I expect that most people thought "Say what?! Why doesn't he just send down the equipment?! Surely every away team member knows how to use it."

I wish that they would write an episode and then have someone else review it for these glaring problems and then adjust it.

The writers clearly wanted O'Brien to be inhabited (so that we have the interaction with Keiko) but there's no logical reason for him to be on the planet, so instead, have the being inhabit Riker. O'Brien is in the transporter room when they beam up but someone else is at the controls, so that O'Brien greets them. Riker is unsteady on his feet, or needs help standing up, so O'Brien grabs his arm, which causes excruciating pain so the being jumps from Riker to O'Brien, without being seen by anyone. (Need to adjust some other things, but this would flow "naturally" and still have the plot point that pain will displace them.)

It's incredibly unlikely that a being that could inhabit a human could also inhabit an android. I suspect that many people questioned that but having Data as a villain provide excellent interactions, so most of us will accept that as part of the Sci-Fi.

The inhabited people retain a strong technical knowledge of the ship, know how to speak in the manner of their host, their roles on the bridge, and Troi remembers Picard, but O'Brien doesn't remember Keiko?! They wanted the cringey interaction but it didn't make sense. I think that the episode would be better without it. Also an unbelievable ending that Keiko is so quickly all smiles. That experience would haunt anyone.

When interrogating the leader (Troi), Picard let her off easy because she only quoted statistics easily learnt from only the crash site. It would have been more natural for him to ask questions that would require deeper knowledge or learn from misdirection.

The beings can take over any controls form 10 Forward but the bridge can't isolate the controls in the cargo bay? It's a weirdly designed ship, but we mostly accept that, even when we laugh at how silly it is. Why are the aliens taking over 10 forward instead of the battle bridge? Perhaps that would probably move the plot too quickly.

The crew could have prepared a simpler trap in the cargo bay, some anesthazine gas for the humans and phasers (from gas mask wearing people hidden in the cargo bay) for Data, but then we wouldn't have that nice conversation with Picard.

Unsure why blowing the cargo bay doors would help. These being are now just energy, they could leave the suffocating bodies and re-enter the ship, as we see energy beings do all the time in Star Trek.

How many people thought that the aliens gave up too easily and how did they enter the force field to join the others?

Why not an ending where Geordie regains control of the transporter, transports the prisoners back down and the hostages out of the cargo bay, so the aliens scream in frustration. The aliens are forced out of their bodies, and exit the ship into space, then Enterprise floors it to get away from them. Leaving a mystery as to what will happen to these aliens floating in space. Will they be able to travel the galaxy and find a planet or to find another ship to take over? Perhaps too dark for Star Trek. :)

There are so many plot holes with this episode and they've all been covered, but the thing that annoys me most of the initial "take over" of Troi, Data and O'Brien, is that every time anyone shoots at them, they miss, yet every shot they take at another, it hits dead center.

Give me a break!

Also, I realize Data is stronger than humans so it stands to reason the entity that took over his body would be, but why are Troi and O'Brien stronger than everybody else? Specifically, why is O'Brien so much stronger than Worf that he knocks him across rhe Bridge?

You really must suspend all disbelief to enjoy this episode at all.

A wonderful graphic of the planet and the moon where electromagnetic whirlwinds make it virtually impossible to locate the source of the distress beacon which can clearly be heard on the Enterprise bridge. It is a Starfleet subspace distress signal... a Daedalus class starship which dates from at least 175 years before.

The USS Essex under Captain Bryce Shumar disappeared in the sector 200 years ago. Is this a ghost ship?

According to Deanna someone is down there... alive.

I assume she means on the moons surface.

This has the makings of a great story Riker, Date and Troi travel down to the moons surface using a shuttle.

Thundering rumbles, strong buffeting winds.

I feel that this story had a much better potential than what it turned out to be. It seems a bit ridiculous that a Starship crew from the past would act in such a hostile way towards a present day crew. All they had to do is ask, instead of taking the crew hostage.

So, a group of aliens who are promised safe passage to get their souls back to Earth, decide to be nasty to the Enterprise crew in order that they will co-operate and get their souls back to Earth.

Even when the entity calling itself Shuman revealed the aliens real intentions, it still underlined the fact that they would probably have been more successful in their deception had they been conciliatory towards the Enterprise crew... and would such ruthless villains really give up the chance of their own freedom so easily, simply to save the rest of the bad-eggs down on the planets surface???

Data's character was certainly a bit salty in this episode which made this better than could otherwise have been the case. Not necessarily a bad episode but I still feel it had the potential to be so much better.

This Episodes Clue: Wings made of feather and wax.

The resolution of this episode was quite unsatisfying because it didn't make sense given the power that the ghostly entities possessed to take over the Enterprise. Having taken over the bodies of Data (Brent Spiner), Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis), and Chief Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney), and using the identities of Starship personnel long thought dead over two hundred years ago, the 'spirit' entities locked down virtually all of the Enterprise's functions, and ultimately demanded that the skeletal remains of the original Starship Essex officers salvaged from a moon of Mab-Bu VI be returned to Earth. But why? When what they really wanted was for the Enterprise to board all the entities trapped on the moon and bring them to a place where they could take over additional host bodies. Picard and crew threw them a monkey wrench by stating they were all prepared to die rather than fulfill that request, since the entities were all the spirits of former criminals, trapped on what was really a penal colony. So, the three alien life forms simply turned tail and agreed to return to their moon prison to be trapped for eternity. The only saving grace for this story was seeing Data, Troi and O'Brien seemingly act out of character, though when you eventually realize it wasn't really them, the tension in the story is shifted to the alien spirits.

The Fifth Season of TNG contains some remarkably strong episodes while continuing to push the boundaries of what could be achieved within an episodic television format. It is notable for the tragic loss of its creator, Gene Roddenberry, who died on 24th October 1991 at the age of 70. His influence upon the positive depiction of humanity and diversity in Science Fiction endures to this day. Senior Trekker continues to score all episodes with a 5.

A lot of strong elements went into the episode Power Play, with a hostile, storm-wracked landing site, vicious aliens inhabiting some of the cast, some tense hostage scenes and ghostly threads running through the storyline. But not everyone felt that it worked out and fitted together into a seamless whole, hence the episode's mixed reception.

My own particular beef is the unnecessary confusion when the "possession by a long-dead Starfleet crew" was changed to "possession by the inhabitants of an alien penal colony": either would have made for a good story, trying to get my head around both was just plain irksome.

Most people enjoyed the out-of-character possession scenes as Troi, Data and O'Brien turned into Slash, Buzz and Slugger - their on-set nicknames. Colm Meany injected a deadly chill into his scenes with Chief O'Brien family and Marina Sirtis apparently broke her coccyx by doing one of her own stunts. Everyone involved was definitely still trying their hardest by this stage in the series but, after more than a hundred episodes, some of the fatigue was starting to show.