A Classic Star Trek Villain Just Got A Whole Lot More Disgusting In Picard Season 3

This post contains spoilers for the latest episode of "Star Trek: Picard."

It's no secret around /Film HQ that I haven't been the biggest fan of "Star Trek: Picard" season 3 so far. Granted, I have a pretty limited attachment to "Star Trek: The Next Generation," the series whose crew forms the nostalgic foundation for this show's 10-episode grand finale, so I was never the target audience for this trip down memory lane. Regardless, in the three episodes leading up to this week, I wasn't especially impressed by the new season's mix of ship-bound melodrama and accidentally goofy side quests.

All of those mixed feelings melted away, though, when the last moments of episode three re-introduced us to the "Star Trek" universe's most goopy, nasty, sticky legends: the Changelings. In case you've forgotten about the Changelings or missed their earlier appearances in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and "Star Trek: Discovery," it's worth noting that these shapeshifting aliens have had a long and inconsistent history in "Star Trek" canon. They sometimes never look the same twice, and not because they're capable of taking on the shape of other life forms. Rather, the special effects used to represent Changeling transformation are always getting updated, with "Star Trek: Picard" offering a rather delightfully horrific new take on the old foe.

When the Changelings were first introduced in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," they were revealed to be shapeshifters that reverted back to a sort of stasis in a liquid state. The Changelings aren't all villains: they have a pretty deep culture founded around the Great Link, which is basically a body of liquid that includes all the Changelings in their natural form. Odo (René Auberjonois) was the rare Changeling who spent much of his time vaguely person-shaped, and he was a stand-up dude who basically proved that not all Changelings were bad eggs.

Odo may be the heroic face of the Changelings, but it's the history of their faceless form that's more interesting to me. Back in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," they first appear as a somewhat off-putting looking brown liquid that's poured into a mucus-like pile. When we see them shapeshift in action, though, it's with extremely '90s visual effects, with apparently human crew members suddenly shifting into brown or silver shiny cyclones of goo that bounce off through vents or other means of escape.

This creature design reminds me of a much less scary (and endlessly lower-tech) version of the watery face in James Cameron's "The Abyss." A /Film colleague of mine also described it as a screensaver-level graphic, and it's true that the early Changeling effect looks a bit like those pixelated, ever-moving pipes that took over Microsoft computers a couple decades back. Regardless of what lengthy, gooey, bad graphics thing the Changelings of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" remind you of, they're certainly memorable.

Still, they're no match for the nightmare fuel that is the most recent Changeling effect. A recent Changeling appearance in "Star Trek: Discovery" took a different approach than its predecessors, with a shapeshifter transformation that looked more sandy than gooey. It was technically a more impressive visual effect than its '90s counterpart, with the character in question turning into a Tribble to roll away, but it also took all the organic, yucky fun out of the Changeling process. Thankfully, "Star Trek: Picard" corrected that mistake in a big way. The new Changeling, first shown in an interrogation scene featuring Worf (Michael Dorn) and Raffi (Michelle Hurd) at the end of episode 3, is basically just a thick puddle of liquified human flesh.

As a continuing "Star Trek: Picard" skeptic, the Changelings' return has been a high point of the season for me so far. It's a Cronenbergian slice of horror dropped into the middle of a season that's often felt like a chamber play on board the USS Titan. Yet the show's shiny sci-fi aesthetic is disrupted by the sudden reveal of something disgustingly strange. After the Worf and Raffi's interrogation subject is revealed to be in desperate need of regeneration (as opposed to going through withdrawal, like they thought), he collapses into a gross pile of skin-colored liquid and begins to — this really calls for a new verb here — goop away.

More Changeling hijinks pop up in the fourth episode of "Star Trek: Picard," including a great moment when Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) susses out the fact that an imposter is posing as Sidney La Forge (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut) thanks to a subtle mistake the Changeling makes when addressing her. That's a fun moment, but I'm not sure anything else can top the first, scream-inducing reveal that the Changelings are back and gnarlier-looking than ever. Forget that "What's your favorite 'Star Trek' show?" question: I'm going to start breaking the ice with Trek fans by asking their Changeling transformation preference. Are you team brown goo, screensaver graphic, sandy Tribble, or Cronenberg sludge? I know where I stand, and it's with the fantastically revolting new take on the old villain.

"Star Trek: Picard" streams new episodes on Thursdays on Paramount+.