Mindwalk (episode)

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(written from a production point of view)

Desperate to warn Starfleet of their dilemma, a daring experiment goes awry as Dal inadvertently swaps minds with a Starfleet vice admiral.

Summary[]

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On board the USS Dauntless the Diviner and Asencia stuff the unconscious Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway into a closet and remove her combadge until they can figure out what to do with her. The Vindicator then reasserts her Trill appearance and reports to the bridge. There, she suggests to Commander Tysess that they merge their warp field with the USS Protostar.

Thanks to the corruption in Hologram Janeway's program, the Protostar crew is unable to stop the ship as it hurls directly towards Federation space, with the Dauntless dangerously close behind. As the crew tries to come up with ideas, Holo Janeway decides to deactivate herself, explaining that she can't sabotage them if she doesn't know what they're doing. Suddenly, Zero gets an idea—they should try using telepathy to tell Admiral Janeway what’s going on. Zero states that if they were still a part of the hive mind, they'd be able to but suggests that Dal R'El's Organian genes might permit him to make contact. As Zero uses himself as a facilitator to assist Dal in telepathically contacting the admiral, the ship is hit with phaser fire from the Dauntless and Dal passes out for a moment. When Dal wakes up, he seems to have no memory of who they all are. However, it quickly becomes apparent that this isn't Dal – it's Admiral Janeway in Dal's body. Zero deduces that somehow the Admiral’s neural pattern switched with Dal’s – which means that Dal is on the Dauntless in the Admiral’s body.

Meanwhile, on the Dauntless, Dal wakes up in the closet and discovers that he's in Admiral Janeway's body. When he's beamed directly to the bridge by Tysess, the "Admiral's" odd behavior perplexes the crew. Concerned, Doctor Noum gives Dal-in-Janeway a cup of coffee which she promptly spits out. Realizing something is wrong, Noum orders her to sickbay for tests. However, Dal-in-Janeway insists that her “brains are fine” and quickly exits the bridge, leaving Tysess in command. With the Protostar headed for the heart of Federation space, the commander decides to contact Starfleet and request that they send every available ship to meet them when they arrive.

On the Protostar, Janeway-in-Dal's-body demands to know what's going on, and crew explains their entire situation, including the living construct. Janeway is sympathetic and promises to help them any way she can, but she needs to find a way to get back into her own body on the Dauntless. Soon after, Dal-in-Janeway locates Holo Janeway and restores her original program and removes the Construct's corruption. Holo Janeway's memories of the original Protostar crew return and she shows the admiral the logs of what happened to Captain Chakotay.

Later, Rok-Tahk figures out that phaser beam must've acted as a conduit and the two neural patterns were switched when Zero was attempting to create a telepathic link. Suddenly, Zero has an idea. They state that before the ancient Organians became non-corporeal, they were able to transfer their consciousness into other bodies through physical touch. Zero suggests that Janeway-in-Dal and Dal-in-Janeway go out into space in environmental suits so they can float out in space until they come within touching distance of each other. Since the Protostar is so close to the Dauntless that Dal-in-Janeway can see them through the windows, they're able to get the word out to him through charades. Unfortunately, just as Dal-in-Janeway decodes the message, he's discovered by the crew who sedate him, take him to sickbay and place him in restraints. Luckily, the Diviner enters and unexpectedly allows Dal-in-Janeway to escape as repayment for her saving his life and in exchange for taking care of his daughter, Gwyn.

As Dal-in-Janeway prepares to exit the ship, she tells Rok that she'll make a great science officer someday and promises to help them all in their quest to join Starfleet. However, she reveals to Gwyn that, since Dal is an Augment, he will never be allowed to join.

Meanwhile, Dal-in-Janeway has made it to the outside of the ship and struggles to reach Janeway-in-Dal, so the latter gets Murf to stretch her across the gap between them. When the Dauntless attempts to pull Dal-in-Janeway back in via a tractor beam, Janeway=in-Dal shoots her counterpart with a low powered phaser blast, hoping it'll work as a conduit for the mind swap. The plan works and both Dal and Janeway are returned to their respective bodies and to their ships.

Groggy from the phaser blast she inflicted on her own body, Admiral Janeway wakes up and finds herself in the brig. At the same time, the Protostar drops out of warp and is greeted by an entire armada of Starfleet vessels.

Memorable quotes[]

"What if we reconfigure the deflector to emit a phased tachyon pulse to communicate the..."
"Yeah, sure! Why not? Beep, boop! Beep, boop! Jankom doesn't know how to do that."

- Rok and Jankom

"Hello, Starfleet person. I am the admiral obviously. Thank you for your service during... Ah. Red alert."

- Dal (in Janeway's body), to an officer on the Dauntless

"I'm Admiral Janeway. I can do this."
"A few more phaser volleys should knock out their shields."
"Whoa! Stop firing! Uh, cease! Quit it!"
"But Admiral, those were your orders."
"I changed my mind. Not in a weird way, but a totally normal way. I can change my mind."
"Uh, understood. We'll end our pursuit."
"Wait, don't do that either! I don't want to lose my body... of work that is the Protostar."
"So, you do want to board their ship?"
"I mean, let's see where they're going first. Then, pew pew pew?"
"You heard the admiral."

- Dal (in Janeway's body) and Tysess

""Admiral, as your doctor, I order you to drink this coffee. Get it together."
""Ugh! How does she drink this stuff?""

- Noum and Dal (in Janeway's body)

"Admiral, my medical scan picked up faint cellular damage in your cerebral cortex. Your brain waves..."
"What? Oh, that's crazy! My... my brains are fine. I'm just busy thinking real hard, that's all."

- Noum and Dal (in Janeway's body)

"You, Antennas, you're in charge. Everyone else, keep doing an awesome job. Teamwork makes the dream work!"

- Dal (in Janeway's body), to Tysess and the Dauntless crew

"Come on, Kate. Make something great out of that mess."

- Admiral Janeway (in Dal's body), quoting her father to Hologram Janeway to prove who she was

"It's really you. I mean me. How?"
"Dal tried to use telepathy to contact me, but we swapped neural patterns."
"Sounds like something Dal would do."

- Hologram Janeway and Admiral Janeway (in Dal's body)

"You mean you want me to exit a starship, go to the middle of a warp bubble, and make physical contact with my own body? Listen, I was once transformed into a salamander. Nothing can be as difficult as that. Let's do it."

- Janeway (in Dal's body)

"Don't you know who I am?”
"No, Admiral. We do not."

- Dal (in Janway's body) and Noum

Background information[]

Title[]

The title was announced by Paramount+ on 25 October 2022. [1]

Production[]

Like "Masquerade", which was aired by Nickelodeon in some European countries such as Croatia, Hungary, and Poland ahead of US release, this episode was originally scheduled to be aired there on 23 November 2022. However, other programming was aired instead on that day. [2]
The episode was released on 24 November 2022 on CANAL+ online in Poland ahead of US release.

Continuity[]

The Dauntless and the Protostar merging their warp fields is a technique first featured in ENT: "Divergence" when the Enterprise NX-01 merged its warp field with its sister ship Columbia to allow Charles Tucker III in a risky maneuver to transfer to Enterprise via a grappler wire extended between the two ships while at warp to assist in repairing the ship after it had been sabotaged by Klingon forces.
Janeway's sister, who was mentioned several times on Star Trek: Voyager, is finally given the name Phoebe, which was first established in the 1996 Voyager novel Mosaic, written by Voyager co-creator Jeri Taylor.
The swap between Janeway and Dal is attributed to Dal's proto-Organian DNA allowing consciousnesses to move between bodies, similarly to the events of ENT: "Observer Effect".
Janeway references her experience transforming into a "salamander" in VOY: "Threshold". Beckett Mariner likewise references Tom Paris' transformation into a salamander, as well in LD: "We'll Always Have Tom Paris", which Brad Boimler defined as a "celerity-induced accelerated somatic mutation rate".
Janeway reveals to Gwyn that as an Augment, Dal R'El will never be allowed to serve in Starfleet due to the Federation ban on genetic engineering. Enforced for more than three centuries following the Eugenics Wars, this law forced other Augments to hide their true nature, such as Una Chin-Riley in SNW: "Ghosts of Illyria" or Julian Bashir in DS9: "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", in order to join.
Although there is no official stardate within the episode itself, an entry by Janeway on the "Star Trek Logs" Instagram account dated the episode to Stardate 61403.7. [3]

Links and references[]

Cast[]

Rylee Alazraqui as Rok-Tahk
Dee Bradley Baker as
- Murf
- Bridge Officer
Brett Gray as
- Dal
- Admir-Dal
Angus Imrie as
- Zero
- Crew Member
Ella Purnell as Gwyn
Jason Mantzoukas as Jankom Pog
John Noble as The Diviner
Jimmi Simpson as Drednok

And

Kate Mulgrew as
- "Hologram Janeway / Vice Admiral Janeway"
- Dal R'El (in Janeway's body)
Jason Alexander as Doctor Noum
Robert Beltran as Captain Chakotay
Daveed Diggs as Commander Tysess
Jameela Jamil as Asencia

Background characters[]

Previous episode:
"Ghost in the Machine"

Star Trek: Prodigy
Season 1

Next episode:
"Supernova, Part 1"

Mindwalk (episode)

Contents

Summary[]

Memorable quotes[]

Background information[]

Title[]

Production[]

Continuity[]

Links and references[]

Cast[]

Background characters[]

References[]

Starship references[]

LCARS references[]

External links[]

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