Janeway: Dal tried to use telepathy to contact me, but we swapped neural patterns.
Hologram Janeway: Sounds like something Dal would do.
Hologram Janeway: Sounds like something Dal would do.
An attempt to telepathically communicate with Vice Admiral Janeway swaps her mind with Dal's.
Tropes:
- Acting Unnatural: Dal as Janeway has no idea how to act and can keep up the charade for about five minutes before the crew starts doing brain scans. This is Starfleet, after all, it wouldn't be the first time.
- Call-Back:
- Dal's telepathic genes, first shown in "Masquerade", allow him to join minds with Zero to enhance the latter's telepathy. His proto-Organian genes, mentioned in the same episode, are revealed to have Touch Telepathy properties, enabling the mind swap when the two interact.
- Janeway (in Dal's body) tells the Protostar crew about the time she got turned into a salamander. The crew is appropriately baffled.
- Chekhov's Gun: Zero and Rok theorize that the Dauntless phaser beam acted as a conduit for the initial mind swap. When Dal is grabbed by a tractor beam before they can make contact, Janeway phasers him to recreate the effect.
- Cliffhanger: The episode ends with the Protostar downwarping in Federation space, surrounded by a Starfleet armada — with Admiral Janeway in the Dauntless brig, unable to warn them of the danger.
- Dramatic Wind: Janeway in Dal's body causes the tentacle on his head to wiggle ceaselessly. When the crew realizes what happened, this involuntary behavior emulates this trope as we get a dramatic shot of Janeway posing like an Admiral in Dal's body.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: Dal and Janeway swap minds thanks to an interaction between Zero's telepathy, Dal's Organian DNA, and phaser fire from the Dauntless hitting the Protostar.
- High Heel Hurt: Not that the Starfleet uniform's boots are especially high heeled but even the slight heels on them give Dal-in-Janeway's body issues walking in them.
- I Owe You My Life: The Diviner releases Janeway from Sickbay because she saved his life at Tars Lamora, only asking that she look after Gwyn.
- Ignored Epiphany: The Diviner admits to Janeway that he has found Starfleet to be more compassionate and kind than he had ever anticipated, but he will still continue his mission to save his world by destroying them.
- Internal Reveal: Thanks to the mind swap, Janeway gets up to speed on the Living Construct, the Diviner, and Chakotay's probable fate. Holo Janeway doesn't know any more about that situation than the viewer does, however.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Holo Janeway shuts herself down when she realizes that her program has been infected by the Living Construct and it has been using her against the crew this whole time.
- No Transhumanism Allowed: When Gwyn expresses hope that they'll be allowed to join Starfleet once the crisis is over, Janeway has to explain that, as an augment, Dal would never be allowed to join.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Janeway's radically different behavior convinces Dr. Noum to give her a cup of coffee after previously forcing her to drink tea for her health. Dal immediately spitting out the bitter drink is further proof that she's not just off her game.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Janeway's crew instantly realize that she isn't herself when she spits out coffee.
- Pragmatic Villainy: When Drednok suggests spacing the unconscious Janeway, the Diviner points out that her disappearance could cause problems.
- Something Only They Would Say: Janeway (in Dal's body) proves who she is to Holo Janeway with a childhood memory involving her sister.
- Voices Are Not Mental: Janeway and Dal's bodies keep their voices after the mind swap, which leads to Kate Mulgrew playing an upset teenager while Brett Gray plays a collected Starfleet Vice-Admiral.
I was right. Stings quite a bit. Oh, no!
