10 Fragile Star Trek Villains YOU Could Beat

Dubbed by fans as the Salt Vampire, this villain was introduced in The Man Trap (TOS). Not a traditional shapeshifter, the Salt Vampire uses some sort of hypnotic visions to create an illusion of someone their target knows. So, multiple people in the same room can each see the Salt Vampire embodying the form of a different person.

The creature is sentient, but to what extend their victim fills in the blanks of the conversations and illusions they see and hear, and how much is strategical intended by the alien is unknown. What is known is that the alien needs salt and lots of it.

While it can survive on salt tablets (and has been prior to the start of the episode) it prefers to suck the salt out of living creatures - leaving a trail of bodies on the Enterprise. At the end of the episode, Dr. McCoy shoots the Salt Vampire with a phaser gun: demonstrating that killing the creature through normal means isn't the problem. The problem is finding a creature who can convincingly appear as someone else.

Eating an extra salty meal might help lure the salt sucker to you, but the best bet of identifying the alien is with the use of a carnivorous beauregard plant, like the one Sulu tends to named Gertrude. For some reason this type of plant reacts to the Salt Vampire when it comes within a radius of some ten to twenty feet of it.