10 Best CGI Effects In Star Trek

More modern Star Trek instalments like Discovery are much more comfortable with using CGI given how far the technology has advanced. Discovery still has a fair amount of practical work (like many of the beautiful interior sets and alien costumes), but when needed, their special effects team has given us some seriously CGI effects, most notably the ships saucer that rotates during black alert, the huge space battles like The Battle Of The Binary Stars, and, of course, the traveller of the mycelial network, the tardigrade Ripper.

Ripper was one of the most impressive CGI aliens we've ever seen in Trek (a worthy evolution of the plastic-looking Xindi from Enterprise). Based on microscopic tardigrades native to Earth, Ripper has eight legs (each with multiple fingers), a slug-like torso, and a fully animated face and tubed mouth. The attention to detail in the model and having all of these factors synchronised perfectly to show a natural movement makes the tardigrade's model really stand out.

The effect when the alien dried up and went into cryptobiosis in Choose Your Pain was also really cool, and a real thing that actual tardigrades do to protect their bodies from extreme environments.