What the Helm: Star Trek's Astonishing Viewscreen Reveals

Starfleet officers who operate the helm are celebrated for their piloting skills, fearless resolve, and ability to handle any out-of-this-world phenomenon they may encounter. As well-trained as these crew members are, the unpredictable nature of their occupation still has a way of presenting them with surprising sights that boggle the mind and put their starships to the test.

Let's take a journey through Star Trek history and examine some of the wildest situations that Federation vessels have flown into while on their missions of discovery.

An Unfamiliar Face in "Where Silence Has Lease"

If your day started by stumbling across a near-perfect replica of your sister ship in an unexplored region of deep space, you might assume that was about as weird as things would get on that mission. In Starfleet, you'd likely be wrong.

The U.S.S. Enterprise-D found itself in such a quandary, with Captain Picard realizing that someone was testing his vessel's responses to various stimuli. Suddenly, a rough proximity of a humanoid face appeared on the viewscreen, calling itself Nagilum and probing the crew with scientific inquiries about their bodies and mortal existences. Haskell, the officer who was navigating the ship at the time, sadly became the focus for Nagilum's interest in death. The lifeform directed its powerful capabilities at Haskell, inflicting him with a painful death.

The Aftermath of Wolf 359 in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II"

With Captain Picard having been assimilated by the Borg, William T. Riker assumed command of the Enterprise-D and directed the ship to rendezvous with Starfleet at Wolf 359. Wesley Crusher notified Riker that they were approaching the system, where dozens of starships had gathered to intercept the Borg Cube on its route to Earth.

The powerful fleet was expected to prevent the Cube from proceeding deeper into Federation space, but the Borg had superior technology and the advantage of Picard's knowledge pertaining to Starfleet protocols and capabilities. Ensign Crusher maneuvered the Enterprise-D into position, but Riker's order to put the scene on-screen revealed a sea of burning wreckage drifting through space. The battle had been more akin to a massacre, and although such sights became more common during the Dominion War, Starfleet's losses at Wolf 359 were a shockingly devastating sight to behold.

The Fall of Praxis in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Typically the person flying the ship himself in these situations, Captain Hikaru Sulu experienced this unfortunate incident from the U.S.S. Excelsior's captain's chair while his helm officer Lojur handled the controls. The vessel was rocked by an intense subspace shockwave, tracking the phenomenon back to the coordinates of Praxis, home to the Klingons' key energy production facility.

Unable to confirm the existence of Praxis, the location is brought up on the screen and magnified, revealing that the vast majority of the moon had been blasted away in the explosion. So little of Praxis remained intact that the Excelsior's viewscreen needed to highlight where the rest of its form would have been.

An Assimilated Earth in Star Trek: First Contact

In yet another Borg incursion that targeted Earth, Captain Picard's U.S.S. Enterprise-E warped into Sector 001 to salvage Starfleet's chances of stopping the Cube. Though the task force had been decimated, enough ships remained to follow Picard's instructions and join together in a strike which vanquished the Borg vessel.

A single Borg sphere escaped the explosion, leading Picard to tell Lieutenant Hawk to set a pursuit course and track the enemy craft. Chronometric particles emanated from the sphere, creating a temporal vortex which caught the Enterprise-E in its wake. A very different image of Earth emerged on the viewscreen, as its altered atmosphere and mechanical surface were now home to nine billion Borg! Realizing the sphere must have traveled back in time to assimilate the planet, the Enterprise-E stayed behind the Borg ship so that it could reverse any changes it made to Federation history.

Federation Headquarters in "Die Trying"

Still new to the 32nd Century, the U.S.S. Discovery solved the puzzle of where Federation Headquarters had been hidden. With Keyla Detmer at the helm, Discovery traversed the barrier concealing the station from the rest of the galaxy.

A magnificent view greeted the crew, as Starfleet's surviving armada made up for its limited numbers with an array of astounding technology. Sensors showed their hulls were composed of an advanced mix of neutronium-alloy fibers, organic materials, and holographic-containment walls. The sizable ships' detached nacelles impressed Discovery's pilot, while the crew stared in awe at a vessel carrying an entire rain forest. Paired with the brilliant light of the distortion field which encompassed the outpost, these previously unfathomable technological feats painted a majestic scene.

Alternate Enterprises in "Parallels"

Trapped in an alternate quantum reality where the U.S.S. Enterprise-D had a Cardassian helm officer, the Prime Universe's Worf worked alongside that reality's bridge crew to locate the fissure that had sent him there.

The quantum anomaly destabilized, prompting an infinite number of Enterprise-D's to begin appearing throughout the sector. As if a region filled with identical starships wasn't odd enough, the alternate Captain William T. Riker, who had assumed the role following his own Captain Picard's death, received a message from his vessel's Prime counterpart… only to see his long-dead captain on the screen, flanked by his William T. Riker. Dealing with realities converging had a habit of producing mind-bending moments, but talk about a long day at work!

A World Appears in "Meridian"

Intense gravimetric distortions drew the U.S.S. Defiant to Trialus, a star system devoid of any planets. At the conn, Jadzia Dax detected that the distortions were not coming from the star itself, a confusing development considering there were no planets nearby… at least, until Meridian appeared!

Materializing out of what seemed to be empty space, the planet settled into a stable orbit. Its inhabitants contacted the Defiant, relaying that Meridian had returned from a dimension that intersected with this galaxy. The planet had a dual existence, shifting between two dimensions and transitioning from a non-corporeal to a corporeal state. While Praxis had stoked amazement with its explosive disappearance nearly a century before, Meridian bewildered onlookers with its unexpected entrance.

Apollo's Hand in "Who Mourns for Adonais?"

During a standard survey of Pollux IV, the U.S.S. Enterprise was confronted by a very non-standard spectacle. After Hikaru Sulu brought the ship into orbit, a gigantic green hand reached out toward the starship. Scans did not identify it as living tissue or a projection, but rather a field of energy.

Unable to get away, the Enterprise was grabbed by the hand, its engines and tractor beams proving to be ineffective in securing the vessel’s release. Further analysis determined it to be equivalent to a conventional force field, but it was actually controlled by an immortal being who ancient humans referred to as Apollo. The cosmic traveler could channel the energy on a whim, though the logical explanation did little to erase the peculiar image of an immense hand grasping for the Enterprise's saucer.

The Queen's Last Gambit in "The Last Generation"

As waves of assimilated Starfleet vessels besieged Earth, Jean-Luc Picard commanded the restored U.S.S. Enterprise-D on its journey to challenge the Borg at Jupiter. Data and Geordi La Forge sat at their old posts and operated the forward stations, and Picard spotted the unthinkable — a Borg Cube, seemingly more enormous than any they had dealt with before, was nestled into the gases of Jupiter's Great Red Spot.

William T. Riker remarked that the Borg had somehow concealed a transwarp conduit inside the planet's atmosphere. Between the Cube's sheer size, the menacing manner in which the ship was obscured by the planet's gases, and the presence of the Federation's most deadly enemy in what was essentially Earth's backyard, this alarming unveil was destined to land on our list.

Abraham Lincoln in "The Savage Curtain"

Of all the mystifying anomalies and unbelievable visages to have popped up on Starfleet viewscreens, witnessing one of your planets' former presidents floating in space four centuries after his death and countless light-years from your homeworld reigns supreme.

Such was the scenario when President Abraham Lincoln coalesced before Captain James T. Kirk's U.S.S. Enterprise, insisting that he beam aboard so that he could prove he was not an illusion. With Hikaru Sulu piloting the ship, Kirk headed down to the transporter room. Although the captain did not actually believe this was the real Lincoln, scans registered the being as human.

Of course, Lincoln turned out to be one of several constructs created by the Excalbians in an unorthodox effort to understand humanity's concept of good versus evil. Regardless of the explanation, catching a glimpse of Lincoln hovering on their viewscreen was surely something the Enterprise's crew would never forget!