The Forgotten Actress Who Loved Becoming A Star Trek Babe

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 24 seconds ago

The James Bond franchise is famous for its bevy of beautiful babes, and it’s generally considered an honor to be one of them. After all, what actress wouldn’t want to have something as cool as “Bond Girl” on her resume? Sadly, other franchises don’t really have the equivalent of this elite group. However, one largely unknown actress gave herself a “Bond Girl” type nickname for the least likely IP of them all: Star Trek.

The actor in question is Jennifer Gatti, who had previously played a practically naked minor character in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Later, she played a completely different bit part in Voyager, and she was once again required to strip down for her scenes in the episode “Non-Sequitur.” She didn’t mind, though, boldly giving herself a title that nobody had given themselves before: “Star Trek Babe.”

The Naked Now

Veteran Star Trek fans know Jennifer Gatti best for her role as Ba’el in the two-part TNG episode “Birthright.” She’s got the hots for Worf, and she accidentally seduces him with the next best thing to Klingon opera: her naked body.

She serves as a temptation for Worf to embrace his own happily ever after in a Romulan prison compound. However, her charms were not enough to win Worf over, and he successfully returned to the Enterprise.

Later, in the Voyager episode “Non-Sequitur,” Gatti played a very different character: Libby, an old flame of Harry Kim’s. In the main timeline of the show, she’s the girl he keeps pining for, even though he’s on the other side of the galaxy.

In this episode, though, Kim wakes up in an alternate timeline where he never joined Voyager and gets to live happily ever after with his main squeeze. Libby is very different from Ba’el, but she does share one important quality: when she’s onscreen, she’s hardly wearing any clothing.

A Star Trek Babe Is Born

As recorded in Captains’ Logs Supplemental-The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, Jennifer Gatti quickly realized the similarity between her two characters. “I always seem to have my clothes off,” she said with a laugh. “I guess now I’m a Star Trek babe, huh?” She then mulled over how Libby spends most of “Non-Sequitur” wearing things like a pajama top, a towel, and a dancer outfit. Rather than being offended, though, she had “to feel a little complimented…because apparently somebody likes me without my clothes on.”

She never found out who that somebody was, though my money is on Rick Berman. At any rate, her raunchy appearance in Star Trek: Voyager speaks to that show’s attempt to capture the verve of The Original Series, right down to featuring beautiful women with as little clothing as the network would allow. This concept would later reach its apex with Seven of Nine, a Borg beauty who walks around in a skintight catsuit. As beloved as Seven was, though, Jennifer Gatti has the distinction of being Voyager’s first Star Trek babe, one who walked so that Jeri Ryan could run.

Just, uh, not very fast. Have you seen those heels?