Hello all, Ric here, and welcome to another Star Trek Bestiary and once more we’re looking
into some of the creepiest creatures from Star Trek that I stuck with me. This time
I’m looking at the unknown entity that attempted to bring Janeway into its trap in the episode
Coda. First off, this creature was encountered over
an unknown planet in the Delta Quadrant, but looking at Voyager’s journey, it was probably
just before the Nekrit Expanse, a dividing natural barrier of the Delta Quadrant. The
planet itself had a breathable atmosphere, which is fortunate as Janeway and Chakotay’s
shuttle crashed on it. However, as will become apparent, the location may not be a factor
in the appearance of this entity. Janeway was catastrophically injured in the
crash and in fact, she was on the verge of death when this creature slipped into her
mind. Its composition, structure and type were completely unknown but it was detectable
to a medical tricorder and resided inside her cerebral cortex. It was described as an
alien presence and while inhabiting her mind, was capable of preventing attempts to revive
her from emergency medical treatment. While in her mind, it was attempting to erode
her willpower to survive through guile in the hopes of tricking Janeway to “cross
over” by stepping into a portal and basically dying. By complying with the entity, her life
energy, neural energy or perhaps soul(?) would have been ensnared in its Matrix where it
would have been able to feed off her, as it had with many others before. So effectively
it is a parasite that enters the mind of a dying victim and attempts to encourage them
to let go in order to feed of them, but there is a lot to be gleaned from this, despite
how vague it is. Firstly, we don’t know how it entered into
her mind, nor how it departed when she realised its ruse. It could have been a telepathic
presence only, a form of energy being, or a physical creature of matter, but the last
one is unlikely unless it was microscopic, as it was never seen by the rescue team. The
point at which Janeway was infected with it was also unclear, but I think it was shortly
after the shuttle made landfall. With the way it simply appeared in her mind, I suspect
that it is some form of extra-dimensional parasite that is drawn to the dying, and steps
across into our realm, already within the mind of the victim, meaning that it was not
limited by distance within the standard reality. Following the infection, Janeway’s mind
was already in a dream-like state where she was having a near-death experience, and filled
with scenarios of her mind attempting to rationalise what had happened. As she is a very pragmatic
and scientifically minded person, I think that these projections and attempts to make
her situation make sense were mostly of her own creation. She imagined a time loop responsible
for the repeating events leading up to her injury, first vidiian attackers, then ships,
then contracting the phage, before finding hope in the idea of a temporal anomaly and
Kes’ telepathy as potential solutions to her problem. All very much in line with her
general personality of problem solving. Her mental escapades were being hindered however
by the presence of the alien entity, which appeared as her father, Edward Janeway, and
tried to convince her that she was dead and to let go.
This shows us that it had near complete access to her memories as it not only recreated the
image of her father, but also was able to probe her mind at will and recount experiences
back to her, to build upon the façade. It was simply its own goal, of convincing her
to allow death, that didn’t mesh with Edward Janeway’s personality and Kathryn’s stubbornness
to let go that kept her alive long enough for experiences in the real world to creep
in. It’s method of coercion was quickly identified as necessary, as it could not force
people into its matrix, it had to convince them to enter it willingly. When it had been
rumbled, it then switched tactic to say that it was posing as her father, but because its
species came to people on the verge of death to help them into the afterlife peacefully.
This was another ruse as after it had given up on her, it admitted that the portal it
had been trying to encourage Janeway to step into was a gateway to its matrix, that provided
it nourishment. Although it mentioned it belonged to a species,
subsequent references to its matrix made it seem like a singular entity, so I believe
it is just the one being. What is more interesting, is that it would feed of off something that
persisted after the physical death of its victim. Star Trek has long had the idea of
neural energy, of a life force made up from a person’s bioelectric processes, and perhaps
it was simply this force it wished to whisk away to its realm at the point of death, akin
to a Devidian feeding off neural energy. The matrix may have been a way to keep the mind
active beyond the death of the physical in this other realm, to provide a constant source
of food. Probably not a pleasant experience for the mind.
Of course, there also exists things like the Vulcan Katra, or a neural imprint that can
be translated into another form, see TOS’ Turnabout Intruder or Picard’s finale for
examples of this. So in a way this essence is a semi-quantifiable thing in Trek, so yeah,
it wanted her soul. The closest thing we get to a similar instance
is when B’Ellana Torres enters Gre’thor in a near-death state too, but with the Coda
entity, we have 100% proof that there was an intrusive being at play here. One that
could keep Janeway’s mind from responding to outside stimulus while it manipulated her
into accepting death, or its version of it. This led Janeway to speculate that many near-death
experiences were down to this being, but did not enjoy that premise. However, it does feel
very diabolical in its telling, with a force trying to convince you to give away your soul,
just to condemn you beyond death to a long, long time of suffering. Perhaps this creature
is responsible for some of those experiences. What finalises this as a particularly chilling
episode for me, is that this creature was driven out eventually, by Janeway’s denial
of it and the efforts of the rescue team in reviving her, but it was not destroyed in
any way. The EMH attempted to flush her mind with a Thoron pulse in an attempt to dislodge
its hold on her, which is an isotope of Radon used in radiotherapy. It’s not clear if
this did anything to weaken it, or if it was all down to Janeway’s refusal to give up,
but the entity seemed to grow frustrated and leave of its own accord. In fact, it stated
that it would be waiting for her, next time she died, and that she would be a part of
his matrix eventually. So unlike some of the other creatures of this
Bestiary, this one stands out for its undefined nature. We are told just enough about it,
that it exists and what it can do, but not much more giving it this air of the unknown.
And of course, the unknown can be scary. There are a lot of questions out there that we don’t
know the answers to, and some that cannot be answered, and this entity preys on those
fears and uncertainty. Let’s hope Janeway was right, and that it only exists in the
Delta Quadrant, but somehow, I doubt it…