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The Klingon Love Mantis
Episode: Genesis
This one was jacked up, even by Star Trek: The Next Generation’s standards. That’s saying something about a show that blew up a guy’s head with a phaser in season one. The 24th century’s biggest hypochondriac/germophobe, “Reggie” Barkley, is Patient Zero for a bizarre cellular disorder that causes everyone on the ship to rapidly devolve into more primitive states. While the majority of the humans on board become Neanderthals, Barkley becomes some weird spider thing and Troi becomes a Betazoid frog woman. Worf, however, gives us a pants-shittingly terrifying look at Klingon anthropology by devolving into an anthropomorphic insect with all sorts of rapey intentions towards Troi. Data – an android lacking the ability to revert into a Compaq – saves the day, but not before Worf and the proto-humans commit a serious amount of murder and carnage throughout the ship. The episode ends with some light-hearted joking about the disease being named after Barkley as the crew continues to boldly go.
This is arguably one of the biggest “What the fuck?” moments in Star Trek history. I mean, we’re familiar with the red shirt genocides of the original series, so slaughtering half the crew and ending the episode with some warm fuzzies is nothing new. But the most terrifying realization is that everything went back to normal as if nothing had ever happened. If not for Data and a rapidly devolving Picard, Worf would have raped and eaten his way through the entire crew, turning the Enterprise into a 24th century version of the Donner Party. Maybe in the future, people are better socially adjusted, but I’d have a hard time sleeping at night knowing that the guy in charge of security had eaten my wife’s face without so much as a slap on the wrist.
