By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Over the years, Star Trek has boldly gone where no franchise has gone before by exploring different ways of telling killer sci-fi stories. We’ve had movies, live-action TV shows, 3D cartoons, 2D cartoons, all of which have been supplemented by entire libraries of books, magazines, and comics. The latter includes some surprisingly good Star Trek manga. Despite that quality, however, we’ve never gotten an official anime. But that didn’t keep the writers and producers of various shows from sneaking in countless references to their favorite shows!
Most of those references are hidden where fans can’t easily see them. For instance, references to shows like Dirty Pair were often written in Okudagrams or on computer monitors in Star Trek: The Next Generation. In one grisly instance, however, an homage to an anime classic was hidden in plain sight. In the episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” Enterprise-C Captain Rachel Garrett is killed, leaving shrapnel sticking out of her body. Look very closely, and you’ll notice something wild about the most prominent piece of shrapnel: it’s the wing from a Super Dimension Fortress Macross model kit.
Death By Anime
In “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” the Enterprise-C accidentally travels forward in time to the present day instead of getting destroyed. This changes reality, making it so that Starfleet is in the midst of losing a war with the Klingons. Picard convinces Enterprise-C captain Rachel Garrett to return to the past, sacrificing herself in the hopes of saving the future. However, Tasha Yar has to take command of the older ship after a Klingon attacks the Enterprise-C. This kills Rachel Garett, and in a notably gruesome scene, we can see her lifeless body pierced by shrapnel.
Believe it or not, that shrapnel has its own bizarre story. According to Star Trek: The Next Generation art department illustrator Rick Sternbach, the shrapnel in Garrett’s head was the wing of a VF-1 Valkyrie model kit from the popular anime series The Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Interestingly, this wasn’t even the first time this model secretly appeared in the show. It was also used (albeit in multiple scales) to create both the desktop version and studio film model of the Constellation-class ship. That’s the same type of ship as the Stargazer, the vessel Picard commanded before becoming captain of the Enterprise-D.
The Most Requested Anime In The Holodeck
While this trivia might seem a little strange, it’s not really that surprising that an anime model kit made multiple prominent Star Trek appearances. The Next Generation writers were big fans of Japanese animation and often hid references to their favorite shows within random episodes. For example, both “A Matter of Perspective” and “Peak Performance” had references to Dirty Pair, a popular anime about a pair of plucky female consultants with a reputation for causing Demolition Man levels of destruction wherever they go. Such Easter eggs reveal how the Trek writers loved anime about a decade before its popularity exploded in the West.
“Yesterday’s Enterprise” may be the best episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s an episode that pulls no punches, killing popular characters like Riker in ways that seem downright shocking. Nobody got a more brutal death than Rachel Garrett, whose body was destroyed by shrapnel. It can be hard to watch, but maybe knowing that she’s got an anime model kit sticking out of her face will make things better. It’s a surreal detail that calls to mind Trek icon William Shatner’s famous episode of The Twilight Zone. “There’s someone on the wing,” he cried. “Something on the wing!”
Yeah, there’s something on the wing, alright: Rachel Garrett’s face!
