Star Trek: 10 Shapeshifting Aliens That We Know About

Even the wolf in sheep's clothing might have thought this was a bit much, and Captain Janeway and The Doctor had to jump out of the way of much more than an idiom! "Gentry, David. Rank: Ensign" tried his best to keep up the act, with a (fake) Starfleet service number to boot, but a cytokinetic injection soon revealed a shape that not even Red Riding Hood could have ignored.

'Oh, what long, arm-like appendages you have!'

'All the better to have whacked Ensign Kim round the chest with several episodes before.' 

At least when Species 8472 came out swinging in Scorpion, you knew you were — Harry knew he was — f**ked almost instantly. Without "microcellular scans," the ersatz Ensign Gentry in In The Flesh was indistinguishable from a real human being. 8472's ability to drop their habitual Borg number plate and adopt the form of another species (a good number from the Alpha Quadrant, in fact) was not natural per se, but then not completely beyond their nature either.

Indeed, it took some "highly sophisticated" genetic engineering and a lot of isomorphic injections for 'Valerie Archer' (no relation… or was there?) to go on that date with 'Jason Hayek,' aka Commander Chakotay. However Species 8472 achieved it, the result was the same, for 'reconnaissance purposes,' of course… yeah… that! They could seemingly transform back into the wolf on their own without much difficulty, but at least it was flowers before fluidic space that last time!