Star Trek: 10 Shapeshifting Aliens That We Know About

A term used in fiction to describe a whole host of ghostly/undead creatures — the ones from Stargate Atlantis will definitely suck the life out of you — the Wraith in Star Trek are telepathic shapeshifters with a penchant for poetry. No luck either for those of us who might have been more motivated to find a "scantily-clad man" (just sayin', T'Pol), this particular Wraith of the rogue planet of Rogue Planet appeared to Captain Archer in the guise of the mental image he'd formed as a child of the "elusive woman" from The Song of Wandering Aengus by W. B. Yeats.

It wasn't "a little silver trout," however, that "had become a glimmering girl," but a sort of giant, violet-tinged, sentient slug made of cells capable of entering a state of chromosomal flux (hence the shapeshifting, as Doctor Phlox discovered). I'm sure all that was in the first draft of Yeats' poem! 'Wraith' was also, in fact, the term used by the Eska, a humanoid species not even from the rogue planet they had named Dakala but come in groups to hunt the lifeforms there all the same.

Unless provoked into defending themselves the Wraith were a peaceful species. As shapeshifters, they could transform into an array of objects, inanimate and animate. "We can become whatever you see: a tree, an animal, water, whatever you see," said the slug-lady to Archer after they'd both stopped wandering.