User:Cockney Heroes/Abilities/Telepathy

This page is a spoiler. Telepathy has yet to appear in Cockney Heroes, please proceed with caution.

Telepathy
Matt can hear the thoughts of others.
Originally held by:	Matt Parkman, Maury Parkman (deceased)
Absorbed by:	Peter Petrelli (inaccessible), Arthur Petrelli (deceased), Gabriel Bishop
Ability to:	Mentally control functions of the brain

Telepathy is the ability to mentally control any function the brain controls, hearing other people's thoughts, scanning the memory of other people and sending thoughts directly to other people's minds.

Characters

Confirmed

• Matt Parkman is the first person shown to innately have this ability.
• Peter Petrelli absorbed this ability from Matt (Fallout), but lost it when his father stole it from him (Dying of the Light). He replicated it for a brief time while infiltrating Building 26, but lost it again when he replicated flight from Nathan.
• Maury Parkman also had this ability.
• Arthur Petrelli stole this ability from an unknown source, prior to stripping Peter of his powers. (Dying of the Light)
• Gabriel Bishop absorbed this ability from Matt Parkman.

Unconfirmed

• According to Chandra's journal, a woman in Botswana, a woman in California, and a man in Sweden potentially have this ability. (Seven Minutes to Midnight)

Limits

Matt Parkman

Matt's power first manifested as mind-reading, but he subsequently discovered that he can also send his thoughts to other people as a form of communication. His control over his ability continues to improve with practice. He can actively focus on the thoughts of a particular person, but he still sometimes picks up thoughts at random from people in his vicinity, and he can have difficulty "blocking" the thoughts of agitated individuals or crowds. He was once overwhelmed by the intense thoughts of a crowd of frightened customers at a convenience store (Hiros), but he has not had any "overload" problems recently.

Matt once told his wife that he is only able to hear the thoughts of others. He was unable to receive mental images, complex thoughts, or delve into the memories or emotions of others (The Fix). While he is now able to send thoughts and even influence the behavior of others, he has yet to receive a mental image.

Matt is unable to read the Haitian's mind, and he has great difficulty reading the minds of other people when the Haitian is "screening" against mental intrusion. With extreme effort, however, Matt can occasionally pick up a word or two through the Haitian's interference.

If a person is thinking in a language other than English, Matt can still hear them, but he does not automatically understand the thoughts.

Matt's telepathic abilities seem to have a limited range; he has not been seen to pick up thoughts from anyone more than a few hundred feet away. He does not require a line of sight to pick up thoughts, but it seems to help.

To escape from his father's nightmare, Matt was able, for the first time, to telepathically communicate to Nathan (Fight or Flight) and later, Molly. Later, Matt was able to break himself and Molly out of the "nightmare" trap into which Maury had placed them. Matt was even able to turn the tables on his father, trapping Maury in the nightmare (Out of Time).

Matt has also discovered that he can coerce people with his power. Not only can he hear thoughts and send them, but he can also implant them, as he has done with people like Molly Walker, Detective Fuller, and Gibson, in a non-verbal version of persuasion. However, Angela Petrelli, due to her experience with Maury and Arthur, was able to resist him, and in doing so caused herself a nosebleed, similar to the ones Matt gets around the Haitian. She did not prove entirely successful, as Matt was able to get a name from her (Cautionary Tales). The persuasive effect of thought projection did not seem to affect Peter (Powerless) who was able to resist and counter.

Matt experienced painful feedback when he tried to read Future Peter's mind. However, Peter did not appear to suffer any ill effects, perhaps because he was more experienced than Matt. (The Second Coming) Matt can now read the thoughts of another with little effort, only having to concentrate to read deeper complex thoughts. Matt can also cast telepathic illusions to mislead individuals. These illusions can deceive a target's senses of sight, hearing, and touch (Eris Quod Sum). Expanding on this ability, Matt was able to cause a gunman to turn against his allies, shooting each of them down (Trust and Blood).

Matt has since refined the ability to enter the minds of others, even able to find a way out in an attempt to free Angela. Thanks to Daphne, Matt now has the skill to bring other people with him into an other's mind and take them all back to the physical world (It's Coming). When Matt activates his ability to read Mr. Millbrook's mind, he is able to receive the thoughts of Daphne. He is able to interpret and understand each without being overwhelmed (The Eclipse, Part 2). Matt can also locate others by homing in on their thoughts (The Eclipse, Part 1). Matt can now erase memories (Graphic Novel:Almost Famous).

Although Maury said that he can receive mental images, Matt has not yet displayed this aspect of his power yet.

Matt was able to hear the thoughts of the whole city when he was "zapped" by Ando's ability. (Dual)

Matt has been shown to scan the brain for exact memories as detailed as flashbacks, although the process can be painful to the victim if he or she tries to resist it. Mohinder noted that Noah's entire system was being strained from trying to resist Matt's probing. (Cold Wars)

A new aspect is the ability to control minds from a distance. He took over the minds of two of Danko's team members and controlled them to leave them alone and keep Danko contained. This wasn't just mental commands as he clearly lost control of them when his power was disrupted. Besides Peter, who was using a replicated copy of the ability at the same time, neither Maury nor Arthur displayed this aspect of the power. He can also control people from a distance with this ability as he was able to control the two team members from the room he was in despite the fact that they were elsewhere in the building. (Exposed)

However, there is a weakness to this ability: loud noise and bright lights disrupt telepathy and hurt the user as well as breaking their concentration. Matt and Peter were hurt by this when Noah Bennet activated the fire alarm of Building 26, disrupting Matt's mental control over two guards and causing him pain. (Exposed)

Matt displayed another aspect of this power: he can induce dreams in others. He uses this to give Daphne a storybook ending as she dies from an infection of her gunshot wound. (Cold Snap)

Maury Parkman

Matt's father stated that his powers only started with mind-reading. At the time of his first encounter with his son, Maury Parkman was far more adept than his son at using this ability. He is able to trap people in nightmarish visions that can fool the senses, such as he did with Molly, Matt, and Nathan (Fight or Flight). In order to put an individual into a nightmare, Maury first has to find a nightmare from the individual (Out of Time).

He is also able to sense and block mentally intrusive abilities and damage the minds of people who attempt to do this--such as when he incapacitated Molly when she used her ability to find him (The Kindness of Strangers), and caused Matt pain when blocking his telepathy (Fight or Flight).

After escaping Level 5, Maury used his ability to cause Nathan and Daphne to see and speak with a projected mental image of Linderman. However, he was either unable to deceive Daphne's sense of touch or she caught him by surprise before he could react, and she was able to sense his deception by passing a file through "Linderman's" chest (Angels and Monsters). At this part of the power Matt has proven more adept as he was able to fool Knox's sense of touch when he cast an illusion to trick him.

Peter Petrelli

Initially, Peter could only read the minds of others. Originally, he was unable to do so with focus or intent, seemingly hearing thoughts accidentally and scanning the memory of his mother while in the future (Out of Time). He first used the power on purpose to listen to the thoughts of Victoria Pratt (Truth and Consequences). He was able to project thoughts after Matt projected thoughts into his own mind. The persuasive effect of thought projection did not seem to affect either of them. (Powerless)

During a visit to see Gabriel Gray in the exposed future, Gabriel was able to resist Peter's use of telepathy, although the reason is unknown. Also after Peter activated Intuitive aptitude, his use of telepathy became more refined as he appeared to be able to scan Nathan's memory to analyze his thought patterns.

While examining Angela's mind to find the reason for her coma, he sees an image (the Pinehearst logo) instead of hearing an actual thought.

Peter has displayed a few things that Matt has yet to accomplish with telepathy such as seeing actual images in people's minds. Maury said that this was an aspect of the power but Matt has yet to display it. Peter has however, such as when he was trying to remember Angela in the future he scanned her memories and saw the actual images connected to them. This was accidental, but later he was able to see an image in Angela's mind (the Pinehearst logo) while trying to read her mind, but this was after he activated intuitive aptitude which seemed to help him gain better control over his various powers.

Recently he replicated the power in order to infiltrate Building 26 using it to control the minds of a few people in order to get where he needed to go. He and Matt displayed this ability together at the same time and it was the first time any telepath demonstrated it on the series. Peter was also able to use it making an agent obey to his vocal command, similar to persuasion. (Exposed)

Arthur Petrelli

Arthur was already an experienced user of telepathy in April 2006. He can use this ability to read thoughts, project thoughts, control a person's behavior and personality, and alter a person's memories. According to Daniel Linderman, lasting telepathic alterations, such as constant mind control or erasing memories, to a person's mind leave "scars" but evolved humans possessing the ability of healing or regeneration can counter memory loss by healing the scars.

After being paralyzed by Angela's poison, Arthur could still communicate telepathically.

Arthur was able to imprison Angela within her own mind in a unresponsive trance, disguise himself as Daphne within Angela's mind to trick Matt, and inflict a psychosomatic stab wound upon Matt from inside Angela's mind. He can also enter the minds of others that are not close to him. (It's Coming)

Gabriel Bishop

This section is a stub. You can help by expanding it.

Selected Examples

• 
  Matt's intense telepathic concentration results in a single word—and a nosebleed.
  (Fallout)
• 
  Though Matt can hear Mr. Bennet's thoughts, he can't understand them--they're in Japanese.
  (Company Man)
• 
  While in a cell, Matt receives instructions from Mr. Bennet, who is in another cell.
  (.07%)
• 
  Angela's efforts to resist Matt's telepathic commands result in a nosebleed.
  (Cautionary Tales)
• 
  Peter discovers the location of Strain 138 by reading Victoria Pratt's mind.
  (Truth & Consequences)
• 
  Maury creates an illusion of Linderman.
  (Angels and Monsters)
• 
  Arthur keeps Angela trapped in her mind.
  (It's Coming)
• 
  Matt disarms Heather's assailant.
  (Almost Famous)

Memorable Quotes

"It's like -- it was like someone was talking to me. Except it was in my head."

"Did the voices tell you anything else? They want you to do things? Rob a store, kill the president?"

"No. It's more like I can ... hear people's thoughts."

- Matt, Audrey (One Giant Leap)

"You have the same abilities as Maury has, anything the brain controls, you control. Senses, actions, thoughts."

- Bob (to Matt) (Out of Time)

"Those marks that you have all over you. My father made you do that to yourself, didn't he? Did you know him when his mind reading became something more? When pull became push, and then he realized he could put a thought into anyone's head?"

- Matt (to Angela) (Cautionary Tales)

Notes

• The Mozaic file reads Parapsychology / Telepathy.
• In a post on 9thwonders.com, evsdropr calls Maury's power "dream telepathy".

Trivia

• Audrey calls Matt "Carnac," referring to his ability (One Giant Leap). Carnac is the comic psychic played by Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. Carnac the Magnificent could "read" questions on a card inside a sealed envelope and give a humorous answer to the question prior to opening the envelope.
• Telepathy is the first power shown to have passed directly from parent to child.

See Also

• For the similar ability to alter the minds of others, see mental manipulation.
• For the ability to persuade others using verbal means, see persuasion.
• For the ability to create illusions that affect all people, see illusion.

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Volumes
Volumes	Teething Problem • Baptism of Fire