Star Trek 982: Power Hungry

982. Power Hungry

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: The Next Generation #6, Pocket Books, May 1989

CREATORS: Howard Weinstein

STARDATE: 42422.5 (between The Outrageous Okona and Loud as a Whisper)

PLOT: The Enterprise brings supplies to the polluted and famine-stricken world of Thiopa, but find that the despotic government might be just as much at fault as the pollution left by a Nuaran Imperium occupation. The dwarven Ambassador Undrun creates more problems because of his arrogant attitude, and dissenters called the Sojourners are dedicated to convincing the Enterprise of their cause. Their big ploy is to kidnap Riker to show him how bad things are, and perhaps to ask Picard for weapons, the same thing the government is requesting. Fealing a measure of responsibility for Riker's capture, Undrun beams to the Sojourners' stronghold to negotiate his release, but he's been taken by a more radical element hoping to trade him to the government for concessions. Undrun briefly becomes a new hostage, but Picard makes a show of good faith and in return gets Undrun and Riker back, the latter beamed away from a government ambush. Picard gives both sides' leaders the information on how desperate their ecological situation is, but they still refuse to cooperate with one another. He splits the relief supplies in two and goes on his merry way.

CONTINUITY: The Ferengi are often mentioned as the "big bad", which TNG was pushing in the first couple seasons.

DIVERGENCES: La Forge and Worf's musical abilities are never referred to again. Pulaski uses the transporter twice without voicing her anxiety, once gratuitously.

SCREENSHOT OF THE WEEK - Location scouting Thiopa.
REVIEW: If I'm always complaining about Weinstein's overuse of "factions fighting on planets we've never heard of" in his comics, it's because I was already familiar with his novels which did the same. Power Hungry (and later, Exiles) does just that. It's Dune Lite, an ecological fable set in a Middle Eastern-ish culture, Fremen and all, and I don't dispute that he presents an intriguing culture. The dialogue is good, the characters well drawn, and I appreciate such things as Wesley getting a call from his mom and the basically atheistic TNG crew manifesting some spirituality. However, there's entirely too much exposition, sometimes because the novel cut away from action it might have described directly, and too great a focus on one-off characters, with whole chapters going by without a TNG appearance. It's a failed mission, which is unusual and realistic, but also leaves you feeling like you just read 273 pages of environmental polemic without a satisfying resolution. Frid Undrun remains the only memorable thing about the book, and he's so atypically built, he's hard to cast in your head, so ultimately a distracting element.

Next for the SBG Book Club: Warchild (DS9), The Riddled Post (SCE), Vulcan! (TOS), Masks (TNG).