While Tom Paris deals with boredom and disillusionment with Voyager life, the ship brings on board a mysterious alien that physically swaps identities with whomever it touches.
This episode provides examples of:
- Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: B'Elanna mispronounces Camaro as CA-ma-ro, not Ca-MA-ro.
- Ambiguous Situation: When Janeway summons security to her ready room, they find her and "Tom" struggling with/trying to strangle each other. Is she still fighting off the body-swapper before he can claim her, or has he already done so and is strangling his prior body? (Either because it's still required to finish the transformation, or to knock the real Janeway out so she can't reveal the truth.) A short time later it's revealed to be the second one, but then another ambiguity is left unclear: was the one who summoned security Janeway (i.e., she called for help just before the switch happened) or the alien (wanting them to witness the struggle so they'd believe "Tom" to be guilty, and stun him)?
- Auto Erotica: Tom and B'Elanna in the Camaro at the end of the episode.
- Body Snatcher: The alien shapeshifter.
- The Charmer: While disguised as Tom, the alien sucks up to the Doctor and smooth talks B'Elanna to cover for any weird behavior.
- Chekhov's Gun: The carburetor.
- Choke Holds: The alien shapeshifter nearly strangles Janeway to death... Or so it appears... Since he also does this when swapping bodies with Paris, it seems to be a required part of the process. (Or else physical touch of some sort is required, and strangling is the easiest way to take out the person whose life they've stolen at the same time.)
- Cool Car: The Camaro that Tom works on in the holographic garage.
- Didn't Think This Through: Steth tries to impersonate Tom without learning everything about his life. It takes a lot of fast-talking and flattery to keep the ruse going as long as it does and even then, that cover is blown laughably fast.
- Drinking on Duty: Seven of Nine catches the alien impersonating Tom drinking actual alcoholic (not syntheholic) beverages in the mess hall while he was still on duty.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Twice—Seven catches "Steth" downloading Tom's personnel file to learn about his life, just before he steals his identity, and later she catches "Tom" reading Janeway's personnel file, revealing who he plans to become next.
- Gender Bender: The swapping of physical identities does leave its victims with whatever gender the alien's last appearance assumed; it's seen twice in the episode, with the last instance being the alien swapping out Tom's appearance with Captain Janeway's.
- Glamour Failure: The alien shapeshifter has a few brief moments while Tom isn't looking when its male form temporarily assumes a female form, yet still speaks in the voice of the male form.
- Grand Theft Me: The alien shapeshifter swaps physical forms with whoever it touches and uses this ability to steal its victims' bodies and identities.
- Grease Monkey: The name of Tom's holodeck program, and what he is in that program.
- Identity Impersonator: Finally ends up in Janeway's body, and nearly leaves behind a lot of confusion.
- Impostor Forgot One Detail: Thanks to reading Tom's personnel file (and being told about things like his relationship with B'Elanna), the body-swapping alien is able to do a fairly good job of impersonating him. However, either he didn't make it through the whole thing, or details beyond Tom's biographical information and service record weren't in it; he had no idea about Tom's medical studies with the Doctor, and didn't seem to know about his friendship with Harry (let alone that they'd been golfing together). This carelessness seems to be something of a Fatal Flaw for him (despite how it would interfere with him assuming new lives), since he doesn't understand Voyager's command hierarchy when Seven calls him on accessing ship's files without permission (or supposedly on Tom's behalf), nor does he seem aware of the fact that Paris wouldn't be allowed to drink on-duty (or that the ship's computer would catch that he had done so through the replicator records), or even how to find Sickbay. Whether being in a rush or getting arrogant is responsible is up to the viewer.
- Race Against the Clock: The shapeshifting alien only has a set amount of time in a given form before he reverts to his previous one; as he gets closer to the deadline, he starts involuntarily shifting and has to concentrate to maintain his current form. The haste this necessitates (in the episode he has a little more than three hours before reversion) may explain why he missed crucial details in Tom's file (or didn't spend enough time learning more about his life/the ship and its crew) and had to improvise, and also why he was reading up on Janeway so soon after becoming Tom.
- Reset Button: The crew has fixed all the damage from "The Killing Game".
- Retro Upgrade: Tom solves the problem of the alien test pilot's ship's engine through the appliance of a piece of 20th-century automobile technology called a carburetor. He observes that this is how he often solves technical problems, by looking back on prior eras and adapting an old concept into a modern solution.
- Standard Female Grab Area: The alien impersonating Tom threatens Seven of Nine by grabbing her arm when she catches him reading through the Captain's personal logs.
- Transferred Transformation: The alien can swap bodies with whomever he touches, and this has been going on for quite a while. At the end of the episode, more victims still need to be tracked down.
