Highlights
- Star Trek has had multiple body swap episodes throughout its various series, using different plot devices and exploring different themes.
- The body swap episodes in Star Trek often serve as a way to further the storyline and develop bonds between characters.
- Some of the body swap episodes in Star Trek tackle important issues such as prejudice, gender roles, and the struggles of acceptance.
Since debuting in 1966, Star Trek has brought eight live-action series and three animated series to television and streaming services. And one of the most common tropes in science fiction series and Star Trek, specifically, is the body swap episode. Several Star Trek series have introduced this episode to advance storylines while building bonds between characters.
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As the series advances and new technology is developed, Star Trek has introduced new ways for body swapping to happen and new pushes for what can be done when people are in a different body. Star Trek always finds a way to make body swaps interesting.
6 Mindwalk - Prodigy
The most recent body swap came in the first season of the kid-centered animated series, Star Trek: Prodigy. Dal uses body swapping to inhabit the body of Admiral Kathryn Janeway. This gives the teen who has always wanted to be a starship captain a chance to live his dream.
In the series, a hologram of Janeway serves as a guide for the crew of the Protostar. This episode allows Janeway to finally meet the crew her hologram is guiding. Body swapping is a simple plot device in this series that many fans say doesn't stack up to other episodes. However, since it's a series targeting younger viewers, it may just do the job for fans of Prodigy.
5 Spock Amok - Strange New Worlds
Just six months before the body swapping on Star Trek: Prodigy, live-action Star Trek brought the trope back for episode five of Strange New Worlds. Spock reunites with his wife T'Pring and since they are struggling with his distance while exploring, he proposes a Vulcan-soul joining which accidentally triggers a body swap.
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T'Pring has to work Spock's day job while Spock has to work hers and, in something that doesn't happen much in Star Trek, hilarity ensues. However, the episode also takes on the hardships that Spock has experienced from the prejudice of the Vulcan people to his human half. Plus, it shows how his own people are not accepting of T'Pring for marrying a man who is only half-Vulcan. In the end, both develop a deeper understanding of the struggles of the other.
4 The Crossing - Enterprise
During humanity's first deep-space travel aboard the Enterprise NX-01, engineer Charles "Trip" Tucker swaps his body with a non-corporeal entity called a wisp. While in non-corporeal form, Tucker relives fond memories like swimming with a girlfriend before his life in Starfleet. Trip thinks this was a great experience until the wisps use the knowledge they got from him to launch an invasion of the ship.
The wisps swap bodies with Lt. Reed who approaches women on the ship inappropriately and Ensign Sato who tries to establish communication with other wisps. Captain Archer floods the ship's quarters with carbon dioxide to suffocate the human bodies to cause the wisps to flee. Meanwhile, Doctor Phlox, whose Denobulian physiology prevents swapping, revives the crew before they die.
3 Vis à Vis - Voyager
Star Trek: Voyager had a little more freedom to tackle the body swap plot lines thanks to its separation from the other series. While Voyager was exploring the Delta quadrant, they weren't anywhere near the Enterprise or Deep Space Nine. In the episode entitled "Vis à Vis," an alien takes over the body of Tom Paris and uses Paris to repair his ship.
While this plot is very similar to several other body swap episodes across science fiction, the alien's determination to destroy the reputation Tom Paris had built on Voyager was interesting. This body-swapped Paris is a drunkard who treats his girlfriend horribly. Meanwhile, the real Paris is stuck onboard another ship in the alien's body. This is one of the few body swaps in Star Trek that switched genders, species, and locations. Eventually, Paris and the alien work together to return to their own bodies.
2 Turnabout Intruder - The Original Series
Star Trek: The Original Series ended on a body swap episode. A former classmate of Capt. Kirk, Janice Lester, is near death when she is given the chance to switch bodies with the captain. Lester lamented not being able to captain a starship of her own due to being a woman. That's a storyline that would only work in the 1960s since future Star Trek series allowed women to be captains, including the prequel series Enterprise.
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Lester tries to murder Kirk in her helpless body, then goes around avoiding the barriers that she had faced before the body swap. While not planned to be the series finale, The Original Series was canceled after season three, making it one of the oddest series finales in the Star Trek universe.
1 The Lights Of Zetar - The Original Series
Star Trek: The Original Series actually had two body swap episodes in its initial three-year run. In "The Lights of Zetar," a strange cloud approaches the Enterprise and attacks the ship incapacitating Lt. Romaine, a Federation officer the ship is escorting to the Federation library. The cloud destroys the library and inhabits Romaine.
The Enterprise crew learns the cloud is a non-corporeal race from the destroyed planet of Zetar. Lt. Romaine is able to see the future and predicts an attack on Chief Engineer Scott which the crew can thwart. Lt. Romain is eventually placed in a pressure chamber to drive the aliens out of her body.