Star Trek: 10 Most Mind-Bending Spatial Anomalies

Or the 'Shouty Chekov' Anomaly

The Original Series episode The Tholian Web is a wild ride (not least for Captain Kirk) and stands out as one of the best of its somewhat rocky third and final season. Of course, the mind-bending anomaly at its centre provided material for a set of episodes decades later — the Star Trek: Enterprise two-parter In a Mirror, Darkly. It was the Tholians in that universe who were responsible for creating the interphasic rift in the first place.

As regards Captain Kirk and crew, they were on a search and rescue mission for the missing USS Defiant (not that one!), which they find glowing a fluorescent green, trapped in an area of 'interspace' where our universe and the alternate overlapped. The Defiant doesn't even show up on sensors, but they beam over anyway to find that its crew have succumbed to a murderous rage. In Doctor McCoy's words, the Defiant then starts "dissolving" as it goes through another interphase, and Kirk is ultimately left behind.

The mind-altering madness then goes full-on crazier than a box of Nick Locarnos. The interspace starts affecting the "molecular structure of the brain tissues" of the crew of the Enterprise — Chekov has to be strapped to a biobed! That's not to mention Kirk's ghostly, floaty, interphasic apparitions after his memorial service.