The hydraulics specialist of the Velara III terraforming team, killed by a reprogrammed laser drill in Home Soil in what proves to be an act of self-defence by native life.
Arthur Malencon is the hydraulics engineer of the terraforming station on Velara III, working with Kurt Mandl, Luisa Kim and Bjorn Bensen. He appears in the first-season episode Home Soil, set in 2364.
While the Enterprise away team is being shown round the station, Malencon goes to the drilling room to work. The laser drill there turns on him and he is fatally wounded. When Data examines the room, the drill attacks him as well, and only his speed saves him.
The death first looks like murder by one of the colleagues. The investigation shows instead that the drill had been reprogrammed by a microscopic crystalline life form, which was being killed by the team's drilling and had struck back.