Jammer's Reviews

There's a moment of boldness in "Mindwalk" that surpasses all others. It's a moment of audacity that's beyond all belief and imagination. A moment I won't soon forget.

Janeway mentions that one time she was transformed into a salamander.

Clearly, the Prodigy writers are just trolling us now.

It takes some stones to go out on that particular limb, but, hey, this is a kids' show, right? Most kids have never seen or heard of "Threshold" (and possibly not even Voyager, unless their parents have tried, like I have, to explain the Janeway backstory). The moment arrives in "Mindwalk," which is much better than last week's holodeck wheel-spinner, and manages to move the serialized story arc forward, but still makes me question why this entire season has to be such a protracted arc at all.

In this episode, the kids, being pursued by Janeway's ship and unable to safely open hails, attempt to use Dal's newly discovered telepathic abilities to contact Janeway to let her know about the Super Virus Weapon. In the process, something goes wrong, resulting in Janeway's and Dal's minds transferring into each other's bodies. So now Janeway learns what's really going on now that she's in Dal's body aboard the Protostar (which finally moves this prolonged chase plot significantly forward), and Dal does everything he can not to be found out while he's in Janeway's body on the Dauntless (rather than just telling the crew what's going on). Hijinks, as they say, ensue. "Janeway" sure is acting weird, all the other characters note.

This comic plot works reasonably okay — with Kate Mulgrew and Brett Gray playing each other's characters while simultaneously trying to play themselves — but not enough for me to love this. Your mileage may vary. For me, I'm noticing a decreased amount of patience as this Year of Star Trek comes to its close. But I guess you haven't seen anything until you've seen characters playing charades from one ship's window to another while at warp so they can coordinate a spacewalk body swap. That's to say nothing of the spacewalk itself, which apparently saw the warp-spacewalk sequence from Enterprise's "Divergence" and then said "hold my beer."

Meanwhile, Admiral Janeway (while in Dal's body) meets Hologram Janeway and they have a heart-to-heart — or I guess a heart-to-CPU. It makes for a good scene, except for the strange part about Hologram Janeway having been programmed with all of real Janeway's childhood memories. (Um, why?)

On the character development front, the Diviner decides he can't go through with the Vindicator's/Asencia's plan and releases Dal/Janeway in his/her moment of need. On the other hand, we also have the issue of Dal being an augment, whom, Janeway sadly notes, is forbidden in the Federation. (C'mon, I'm sure they'd make an exception, like with Bashir.) So we have yet another reason for Dal to be the rejected outcast. Let's wrap this up nicely in the two-part finale, shall we?

Previous episode: Ghost in the Machine
Next episode: Supernova, Part 1

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