Mindwalk (episode)

Real world article

(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

Act One

Thanks to the corruption in Hologram Janeway's program, the crew of the USS Protostar was unable to stop the ship from hurtling directly towards Federation space, and they have ended up exactly where they don't want to be, facing down the USS Dauntless. 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. The Dauntless tries to hail the Protostar, but the crew knows they can't answer without exposing it to the Living Construct. Dal resolves that they must not let the Dauntless take their ship. Dr. Noum sees the Protostar crew through the window as they panic, realizing that their ship is powering up warp drive.

On board the Dauntless, Commander Tysess calls a red alert and summons Admiral Janeway to the bridge, but Noum informs him that she isn't answering her combadge. Meanwhile, 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. Drednok suggests throwing her out of the airlock, but the others reject the idea as it would draw unwanted attention. Asencia orders Drednok to cover their tracks, then reasserts her Trill appearance and reports to the bridge. There, she suggests to Commander Tysess that they merge their warp field with the Protostar.

The crew of the Protostar desperately tries to figure out how to handle the situation as they are pursued and shot at by the Dauntless. Suddenly, Gwyn gets an idea— Zero should try using telepathy to tell Admiral Janeway what's going on. Zero states that if they were still a part of their hive mind, they'd be able to, but they can't do it alone. Rok-Tahk and Zero surmise that Dal R'El's Organian genes might permit him to make contact. As Zero uses themself 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 confused and wonders how he got onto the Protostar. 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 actually on the Dauntless in the Admiral's body.

Meanwhile, on the Dauntless, Dal wakes up in the closet and discovers, to his horror, that he's in Admiral Janeway's body. He stumbles awkwardly around the ship, trying unsuccessfully to telepathically contact Zero. The Diviner goes to check the closet that he and Asencia shoved Janeway in and discovers that it is empty.

When Dal-in-Janeway's-body is beamed directly to the bridge by Tysess, the "Admiral's" odd behavior perplexes the crew. He demands that the Dauntless stop firing on the Protostar, and explains by saying that he changed his mind, not in a weird way, but in a totally normal way. Then, he orders the crew to continue pursuing the Protostar just to see where it's going. Concerned, Doctor Noum gives Dal-in-Janeway a cup of coffee, which he promptly spits out. This shocks and concerns the crew.

Act Two

On the Protostar, Janeway-in-Dal's-body says that she now understands why the Protostar crew wasn't returning her hails. She apologizes for making assumptions and promises to help them any way she can, but says that she needs to find a way to get back into her own body on the Dauntless. Zero explains the circumstances of the original body-swap, and they try to replicate it, but it doesn't work, so they realize there must be another variable.

On the Dauntless, Dal-in-Janeway demands to know whether there is any way to contact the Protostar without using comms. Asencia expresses concern that he doesn't remember their previous conversation, and Noum orders him to sickbay for tests. However, Dal-in-Janeway insists that his "brains are fine" and quickly exits the bridge, leaving Tysess in command. With the Protostar headed for the heart of Federation space, Asencia convinces the commander to contact Starfleet and request that they send every available ship to meet them when they arrive.

On the Protostar, Janeway-in-Dal finds that, although even a Starfleet admiral can't reverse the lockout on the Protostar's primary functions, she can affect the ship's non-essential systems. She locates Holo Janeway, 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. As they're talking, Rok calls them to the bridge. She and Zero have figured out how the body swap happened. Zero states that before the ancient Organians became non-corporeal, they were able to transfer their consciousness into other bodies through physical touch. Rok says that the phaser beam must have acted as a conduit, so that the two neural patterns were switched when Zero was attempting to create a telepathic link.

Because losing shields would mean The Diviner could take their ship, having Dal fire on the Protostar isn't an option for recreating the conduit. Zero and Rok suggest that Janeway-in-Dal and Dal-in-Janeway must go out into space in environmental suits so they can float 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 Dauntless crew, who sedate him to bring him to sickbay.

Act Three

As Janeway-in-Dal 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.

Dal-in-Janeway awakens restrained to a table in sickbay. Luckily, The Diviner enters and unexpectedly allows Dal-in-Janeway to escape. He says that her kindness was unexpected, and he intends to save her life as she saved his. He also implores her to take care of his daughter, Gwyn, if his plan should fail. Dal-in-Janeway tells him that he gets it - he'd do anything for Gwyn, too. He rushes out to put on an EV suit and leave through the airlock. Once outside, he realizes he's on the wrong end of the ship and will have to walk across it.

The bridge crew of the Dauntless see Dal-in-Janeway clambering across the hull on the viewscreen, but are unable to beam him back into the ship due to the merged warp field. He jumps off the ship, but loses Janeway's phaser.

Janeway-in-Dal promises to fix things for the Protostar crew once she makes it back to her ship, then leaves with Murf, who stretches her across the gap between her and Dal-in-Janeway. When the Dauntless attempts to pull Dal-in-Janeway back in via a tractor beam, preventing physical contact, 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.

Dal, returned to the Protostar, gives Murf a big hug before returning to the bridge. When he arrives, the ship drops out of warp in Federation space, surrounded by a whole armada of Starfleet vessels.

Meanwhile, groggy from the phaser blast she inflicted on her own body, Admiral Janeway wakes up and finds herself in the brig.

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

"Ahh! What is this thing? What's going on? What's wrong with my voice?"
"Uh, well..."
"I know you. You're Gwyn, and Zero, and Rok-Tahk. Wait, how did I get on the Protostar?"
"You're not making any sense! Did you reach the admiral, or not?"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! He didn't read her mind! He lost his mind!"

- Janeway (in Dal's body), Jankom, and Gwyn

"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 Janeway's body) and Noum

"Um, the admiral's on the hull."

- 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.
- Fortunately for Dal, Janeway ends up having something to say about that in the end. (PRO: "Ouroboros, Part II")
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]