Warning! Spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Red Shirts #3!
Star Trek just delivered the gnarliest transporter malfunction in franchise history, resulting in a nightmare-fuel tangle of displaced limbs and organs that was quickly, mercifully put out of its misery. Fans knew the Red Shirts miniseries was going to be intense, but this is the kind of gruesome fate few could have predicted for one of its protagonists.
Star Trek: Red Shirts #3 is written by Christopher Cantwell, with art by Megan Levens. Trek readers had some idea of who wouldn’t survive the issue going in, but the inventive “how” of characters’ deaths has kept the series engaging.
In the issue’s stand-out moment, Starfleet Officer Vesta and a Romulan spy are accidentally fused together by the transporter in a true body-horror twist for the series.
“Red Shirts” Delivers Star Trek’s Most Horrifying Death Ever, Highlighting The Horror Potential Of The Transporter
Star Trek: Red Shirts #3, Written By Christopher Cantwell; Art By Megan Levens; Available Now From IDW Publishing
Red Shirts #3 opens with Lieutenant Vesta and several of his fellow “red shirts” climbing a signal tower, in pursuit of Romulan spies trying to get away with sensitive Starfleet material. The issue’s narration lingers on Vesta’s virtue as a consummate Starfleet officer, emphasizing that he has all the same, best qualities that the franchise’s main characters possess.
Then he is promptly dispatched in the most vile way imaginable. In one last desperate move, while the spies are being transported away, Vesta jumps on the back of one, as the Romulan is already half-transported. What appears on the transporter pad of the Romulan ship is a visceral jumble of organic matter, in which nothing is where it should be.
Vesta’s horrified face is approximately where a bipedal humanoid’s should be, but it is surrounded by an out-of-context rib cage. The mangled creature has several appendages, which devolve into a pile of exposed internal organs. The screaming mouth of the Romulan spy is situated in the crook of the elbow of one “limb.”
Star Trek Fans Have Seen Transporter Malfunctions Before, But Not Like This
Lt. Vesta Gets The Worst Red Shirts Has To Offer
Artist Megan Levens delivers a legitimately unsettling image with Vesta’s death, which is made all the more gutwrenching by the remnants of the officer’s red uniform still dangling from the mess of flesh he’s been reduced to. It doubles, even triples down on the thesis of Red Shirts, which is that the careers of many Starfleet security officers are nasty, brutish, and short.
Star Trek has depicted transporter accidents before, and there are even precedents for characters being fused by the technology. Most memorably, Tuvok and Neelix were combined into one being, Tuvix, in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. But that was nothing compared to what Red Shirts envisions with Vesta’s ending, which is certifiably Star Trek’s most hardcore death.
Star Trek: Red Shirts #3 is available now from IDW Publishing.
- Created by
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Gene Roddenberry
- First Episode Air Date
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September 8, 1966
- Cast
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William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Deforest Kelley, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, Jonathan Frakes, Patrick Stewart, Michael Dorn, Marina Sirtis, Gates McFadden, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Wil Wheaton, Avery Brooks, Nana Visitor, Rene Auberjonois, Alexander Siddig, Cirroc Lofton, Armin Shimerman, Colm Meaney, Terry Farrell, Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, Roxann Dawson, Jeri Ryan, Robert Duncan McNeill, Robert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, Garrett Wang, Jolene Blalock, Connor Trinneer, Dominic Keating, Scott Bakula, Linda Park, John Billingsley, Anthony Montgomery, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, John Cho, Chris Hemsworth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Anton Yelchin, Idris Elba, Sonequa Martin-Green, Mary Wiseman, Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp, Wilson Cruz, Oyin Oladejo, Emily Coutts, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Rebecca Romijn, Michelle Yeoh
- TV Show(s)
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Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Animated Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Short Treks, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek Lower Decks, Star Trek: Prodigy, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy