It’s Thursday morning, which means it’s Star Trek: Prodigy morning, and season 1, episode 18, “Mindwalk,” is one I was really excited for. It’s a classic trope, but they handle it in a really original way that I enjoyed, and I think you’re going to also.

Desperate to warn Starfleet of their dilemma, a daring experiment goes awry as Dal inadvertently swaps minds with a certain Starfleet vice admiral. It’s one of those premises where you’d stop and go, what am I watching?

The truth is, the mind swap is one of those kinds of Star Trek episodes. You have your bottle episodes, you’ve got your holodeck episodes, and then you have your body swap episodes. They always have some unique twist or spin on what’s essentially the Freaky Friday concept, two mentalities getting swapped out. Sometimes it’s because of a Vulcan mind meld. Other times it’s because of a Ferengi artifact being used in a horrible way to get into someone’s head.

A Car Chase in Space

When last we left off, they’d just arrived because of the Janeway hologram’s deception, due to the artifact controlling her. She feels terrible, by the way. They literally find themselves dropping out of warp right in front of the Dauntless, and that’s where we pick up.

The episode starts with Janeway the hologram saying she can’t be trusted. She can’t know what they’re doing, otherwise she’s going to hurt them, so she deactivates herself. That leaves them trying to figure out how to stop the ship, because the artifact has total control of it. So what does it do? Bam, it hightails it out of there, because it’s headed toward Federation space. Inevitably the Dauntless jumps into warp, catches up, and they’re in hot pursuit. It’s a car chase in space. Sure.

Merging Warp Bubbles

Then they have the brilliant idea: what if they merge warp bubbles?

As a former chief engineer myself, I’m going to tell you that’s a unique approach, and a very original way of moving toward what you’re trying to accomplish. A warp bubble, for those of you playing at home, is how warp speed happens. The nacelles are positioned very specifically relative to where the warp core is. That’s why you get the two upper armatures and the warp core at the bottom. Imagine it as a model. Then later on you learn with Voyager’s class that if you move the warp bubble, you can in essence create a faster slipstream, hence the slipstream drive.

So the idea of being able to stretch your warp bubble and merge it with another ship’s is a unique one. In previous Star Trek, The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine and whatnot, we’ve seen them create a warp bubble around another ship in order to carry it along. But we’ve never actually seen them merge bubbles before, not like they did in this. I’m down for it. I think it’s cool. It’s a little bit of hand-wavy sci-fi, but when has Star Trek never been? Let’s be real.

Dal Wakes Up an Admiral

Zero and Dal are trying to figure out how to communicate. Smoke signals, anything they possibly can, to tell them you can’t talk to us, you can’t board us, you can’t do that. Meanwhile, on the actual Dauntless, they decide they’ve got to bring them out of warp and stop them. They can’t be lost now, because they’ve merged warp bubbles, so they’re stuck with them. They start shooting phasers, trying to take out their shields.

During this, somebody makes the suggestion: couldn’t you reach out and talk to her? And Zero says, if I had a hive, I could probably do that. Then Rok-Tahk has the brilliant idea. What about Dal? He’s got telepath DNA. He could be your hive.

So Zero and Dal hold hands, such as they are, and poof, they try to do the thing. Next thing you know, Dal wakes up and he’s Admiral Janeway. They’ve switched places. On the Dauntless, Janeway, who if you recall from last episode had been knocked out by the Diviner, wakes up, and she’s now Dal. So there’s Dal Janeway on the Dauntless and Janeway Dal on the Protostar.

One Actor Playing Another

This is the true chef’s kiss of these kinds of episodes. It’s seeing one actor have to portray another actor. This is when actors get to really stretch. I really believe that.

Brett Gray, who plays the voice of Dal, is doing an unbelievable Kate Mulgrew impression. The way he’s talking, the cadence, the intonation and inflections. I was like, right on, bro, you’re doing so good. And you can tell Kate Mulgrew is having the equivalent of voiceover fun, because she’s all over the place. Hey, what’s going on, yeah, absolutely, this is cool.

It’s kind of a cheat. But you can’t help but have fun with this kind of concept, especially when the actors are having a good time.

So Dal Janeway is stuck on the Dauntless, trying to figure out what happened. The Diviner and Asencia had basically said, we’re going to put Janeway’s combadge in her quarters and say the admiral won’t be disturbed. Then all of a sudden Janeway shows up, and they’re like, what’s going on? Asencia is totally ready to phaser her if she has to, but she doesn’t. Dal Janeway manages to fumble through getting them to stop firing, and ultimately goes to Janeway’s quarters.

Back on the Protostar, Janeway Dal is sitting in the captain’s chair, legs crossed, totally under control, and she’s like, so that’s why you haven’t communicated with us. Now I understand so much of this. It’s great. Janeway’s on their side now, understanding the whole thing, which is really all I ever wanted. I felt like the logical conclusion was that Janeway was ultimately going to be the one to help unwind this whole thing, unknot it so to speak, and that’s exactly what happens.

The Phaser Is a Shortcut, and I’m Okay With It

Back on the Dauntless, the crew’s clearly noticing that Janeway’s acting goofy and a little bit off, and eventually they try to force her to medical to get looked at.

Right around this time, over on the Protostar, they’ve come to the conclusion that they can’t just do the thing again. That’s when Rok notices there was a connection, and the connection was the phaser fire. For the briefest of moments, while Zero and Dal were trying to reach Janeway telepathically, the Dauntless was shooting, and the phaser fire technically connected the two ships. It was enough of a tether to allow this thing to happen.

Is it a stretch? Possibly. You can call it lazy writing, but I don’t think it is. It’s a writer’s shortcut. Writing 101: if you can get both ends of the story, the front end and the back end, to meet this close, I’m perfectly okay with bridging that gap with some kind of contrivance. It’s when the two ends are so far apart, and then there’s an “oh yeah, and then this happened,” that it gets lazy, because you’re like, really? In this episode the front and the back are doing so much work that it wasn’t a big jump for me to go, okay, the phaser. Everything else is valid. This is a shortcut that works, in my opinion, and I’m down for it.

Charades, an Airlock, and a Fisheye Lens

So they have to make a connection somehow, physically. They play charades while Dal’s watching from Janeway’s quarters, basically making Dal Janeway understand: hey, you have to leave the ship so we can physically touch. It’s great the way they do it.

Sure enough, that’s when the crew shows up to take who they think is Janeway to medical, because they’re like, we don’t know who you are. Dal Janeway makes a break for it, gets to the airlock, puts a suit on and manages to get out. But Dal Janeway’s on the wrong side of the ship. So we’re talking about a walk across the outside of the whole ship.

The next thing they do is something I’d never thought about. My understanding of how the camera systems work is that Starfleet technology takes sensor data and translates it into visual data. Think Star Trek IV, the whale one, when they have Gracie’s radio signal and it’s “put it on screen” and “how can you do that?” It’s super confusing. How in the world can you see a picture of something on the other side of the planet? Again, it’s sensor data being translated into visual data. That’s how the sensors work.

Here, while the command people are talking, they have the outside of the ship on the viewscreen, and suddenly, as if it’s a camera, you see this giant fisheye lens view of Dal Janeway walking on the outside.

I’m totally fine with it. No, it’s not how Star Trek sensors work. But I get the visual gag, and I’m not even going to chalk this up to some writer who doesn’t know anything. Again, it’s a shortcut, for the sake of using the visual of the outer hull in a very creative way. I don’t bump into it.

The Snake Eats Its Own Tail

So how do they get her off the outside of the ship? Sure enough, she jumps off. Murf, holding on to Janeway Dal, is stretching as far as possible, and just as they’re about to touch, the Dauntless starts using its tractor beam. With seconds before the opportunity’s lost, Janeway Dal pulls a phaser, says, “I’m really sorry, this is probably gonna sting,” and fires at Dal Janeway.

Full circle, the snake eating its own tail, as it should be. The phaser made the connection, and the phaser makes it again. They do exchange places. Dal’s back on the Protostar, Janeway wakes up on the Dauntless, and Janeway’s in the brig.

Just before that, they drop out of warp, and they’ve arrived at the meeting place where they were headed. Starfleet has sent a whole bunch of ships.

Next week is part one of a two-part finale, and I’m here for it. It’s going to be real good.

The Verdict

Star Trek: Prodigy season 1, episode 18, “Mindwalk,” is a 9 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

I liked it, man. I liked it a lot. It’s not a 10 yet. My socks haven’t been blown off. I’m hoping maybe the two-parter as a whole is going to be that thing, and I’m excited to see what it does.

I’d love to hear your take on the technological leaps they made, the warp bubble thing and whatnot. And what did you think of their spin on the body swap episode, which I feel was both original and very, very Star Trek? The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.