The scary/creepy moments of TNG

Yar raping Data.

 

Time to watch Identity Crisis and Night Terrors for halloween.

Where aaaaree youuuu I need to fiiiiind youuuu

 

I had a very similar reaction to that scene as you did.

I think it was the fact that I realized this universe's Riker was desperate not to go back to that hell universe he was from that he was willing to shoot at the alternate version of his friend and colleague.

What really got me was that int the attempt to stop him, his very weak and damaged Enterprise just couldn't take the heat, and one torpedo blew it to pieces.

I felt sick for a couple of days afterwards just thinking about it. How that Riker just wanted to survive. It was a mind screw for sure, even now thinking about it brings a bit of negative feeling about the whole thing.

 

Oh dear lord, I could accuse a dozen women of raping me then.

 

The entire episode of "Masks".

"Sub Rosa" creeped me out.

Also any episode with Lore.

 

Hey, she was ordered to by Lt Thorn under direction by Admiral Ro. Metal mother frakker.

I might call Justice the creepiest episode of TNG though. Strikes me now as a thinly veiled domination fantasy.

Come to think of it, I don't think Yar/Data was rape, but any consummation Soong did with robo-mom, I dunno. If you program somebody to consent does it count as consent?

 

This is very interesting. I never thought about it like this before - I think these more sort of existential fears are, to me, less frightening than the more psychological ones.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, in the episode "Remember Me", Dr. Crusher is both worried she is going crazy, and also confused by such weird and scary things as apparently random phenomena appearing and nearly sucking her into something - and also other things are happening, notably crew-members inexplicably vanishing and her colleagues and other crew having no memory of them. That's existential too, but for some reason I found it far, far scarier than that one moment in Parallels.

I'm not sure why the Parallels scene never bothered me. Perhaps it was because the Riker from that alternate timeline looked, in my opinion when I last watched it, a little ridiculous. The make-up was, IMO, overdone. Moreover, I think it was more about whether you could buy into how real this alternate enterprise was, or wasn't. Yes, in the episode it was meant to be perfectly real, even if it was all restored by the end. However, the episode as a whole was rather goofy from my perspective, and its tone more balanced between serious and humourous moments as opposed to strongly one way or the other. We all find different things scary...I'm sure there are some people who find 'real' threats in TNG such as aliens more scary than hallucinatory ones, or things based strongly around the mind.

In my view, any episode which has its roots in dark, atmospheric psychological thrillers is typically far scarier and more disturbing than one which does not, regardless of other associated subject matter. Some posters earlier mentioned "Identity Crisis", and that is an episode which, while definitely based around a mystery thriller set-up, doesn't seem to be that psychological in nature at first. As it goes on, however, it becomes very much that, with the balance between the (in some ways) terrifying physical mutations and the psychological element being the episode's strongest points. Think about it: If it hadn't been for the scientific and medical genius of the Enterprise's staff and the efforts of his friend, Geordi would have ended up as little more than a shambling invisible beast, with no higher intelligence...and spent the rest of his life creeping around bushes and shrubs in the undergrowth of a weird planet with his 'comrades'. That's tapping into a vital fear: losing one's mind, in this case to the point that one reverts to an animal state. For whatever reason, the way it's done in this episode is pretty damn horrifying.

 

In Identity Crisis, I found even the site of the landed shuttle creepy. Maybe it was just the eternal night that the planet seemed plunged in, and/or the creepy critter sounds in the background. But it really set kind of an unsettling, mysterious tone for me.

 

I agree completely. There was something eerie about the entire thing, especially the planet. And yes, it was always night there, wasn't it? Weird, and not something that was ever touched upon by anyone in the episode itself - or in anything around the episode, AFAIK. I wonder why they chose to make it that way - or did they? Was it a conscious design choice to thicken the atmosphere, or simply a coincidence? If anyone has any further info about this then please share if you can - it's a very interesting detail which often goes unnoticed until you observe the episode really carefully.

On Memory Alpha, Braga says that the first draft was meant to be far more horrific, and the apparent reason behind this (the only one mentioned there) is that there would be 'many more aliens on the surface', or something like that. I don't see why that would necessarily make the episode scarier, unless they planned to make it a bit like a paranoid horror version of Aliens crossed with The Thing, with crewmembers being abducted and/or infected and transformed into more of the aliens. And in fact, that could easily have made it more silly than scary, IMO.

As usual, when it comes to TV especially, less is more. This isn't always true of course, but I don't think there being more aliens, or making the aliens hostile rather than simply creatures who want to be left alone, would actually be more frightening or not. The fact that we hardly see the aliens at all until the end - in fact, I think we don't see them on screen once until the last but one scene in which the crew is attempting to retrieve La Forge - only makes them creepier. I think the atmosphere, which is something like a dark, freaky mystery horror/thriller, makes the episode extremely effective as it is. Again, just try to imagine yourself in Geordi's position.

 

Lwaxana beaming onboard.

 

I'm so scared of these episodes I tend to skip them outright

 

I always wondered if the Borg in different universes knew about each other? Would our Borg be aware of the their alternate's victory against the Federation in that other universe? What if the collective consciousness spanned the "multiverse", I think that'd be a pretty scary proposition.

 

It wasn't a TNG moment, but the Jem'Hadar take out of the Odyssey made me and girlfriend at the time go "WHOA!!" when we saw it. Blowing up a Galaxy-class starship served notice that we had some bad-ass dudes after us.

 

I've watched "Phantasms" episode yesterday, and it definitely had some creepy moments.
The story about that phase-shifted parasite bugs are just 'ordinary Trek plot', but it's all just a decoration for an android going mad and trying to murder people...

Also, "Frame of Mind" was quiet opressive (is this a correct word for this?). As you watch the episode, you are, just as Riker, completely confused about what's going on and has he really lost his mind. The idea has nothing to do with space exploration (common for Star Trek series, LOL), and I don't think it shows us how are real insane people see the world, but still, exciting episode.

 

Something else occurred to me recently. Frame of Mind has an almost mystery thriller quality in addition to its status as an outright horror episode (which I would argue that it is). The mystery thriller side has undertones of film noir, notably in the subtle but surprisingly creepy scene in which the aliens in the hospital use 'reflection therapy' on Riker and he re-lives something which apparently happened. The description of how he supposedly murdered someone is very noir, right down to how he was walking down an alleyway at night, it was dark, and someone was approaching him with a knife (or something along those lines).

Also, Jonathan Frakes' performance here really sells the scene: it's amazing how nothing more than some spooky music, recreations of his friends aboard the Enterprise describing his actions, thoughts and feelings about his supposed murder of this person, and his own reaction to them - all in a rather darkened room - is so awfully creepy. Acting, eerie undertones (and overtones) and suspense are what make these kind of scenes genuinely scary. No monsters to be found here...just creepiness and the dark side of psychology.

Interesting. Phantasms had a few scary moments, but only one springs to mind: the slasher flick-like scene in which Deanna Troi is stalked through the corridors by Data. That aside I didn't find it particularly scary...strange, but in a manner that was, IMO, more quirky than creepy.

As for Frame of Mind - well, see what I wrote at the top of my post. It's one of my all time favourite 'dark' episodes of not only TNG but also Star Trek as a whole, most of all because it probably goes deeper into psychoanalysis and psychological horror than the vast majority of other Star Trek episodes which could be considered scary.

The three outright scariest TNG episodes (in my opinion) are probably the aforementioned ones: Night Terrors, Schisms and Frame of Mind. What do they have in common? Well, every single episode deals with very deep-seated human fears. Night Terrors is about being unable to sleep, hallucinating and losing control of one's mind with only a shipful of corpses for company nearby. Schisms is about being abducted and experimented on by truly alien life-forms, most of the time without even truly knowing it. Frame of Mind is about losing one's grip on reality, and like Night Terrors also about losing control of one's mind, except here one's inability to distinguish what is real from what is not is even greater.

Most other successful Star Trek episodes in a similar vein have done the same kinds of things, although with variations of course. Another kind of surprisingly scary story (of a different kind) would be the existentialist horror of Remember Me, and its Voyager counterpart (to be a point) Mortal Coil. It's interesting how well that existential breed of even subtler horror seems to go with sci-fi. Any thoughts on this?

 

a close up of picards bald head lol lol lol

 

Trying to think of ways to revive this thread...

There's a lot of stuff which hasn't been discussed, I'm sure. We've been over the bulk of the typically considered "scary" episodes in TNG, but what about individual moments? Again, what about episodes such as "Remember Me" which is never remembered as scary, and yet it is absolutely terrifying in some ways?

We don't have to focus solely on TNG. Although it's in the TNG section, I don't think it matters if stuff is brought up from other series, does it? So long as it's about Star Trek. For the most part, though, I do think focusing on TNG is a good bet.

How about episodes which are more existentially creepy or frightening, as opposed to directly so? Under this, I would include "Skin Of Evil", "The Royale", and "Allegiance", amongst others.

I still find it a very fascinating subject, the subject of horror and atmospheric creepiness in television generally, and especially in sci-fi television. It's there that some of the weirdest things can be imagined and envisaged, but most be done so in a subtle way. Although I don't remember having yet seen any of it, I've heard that "The Twilight Zone" was like this at times.

Less may not always be more, but there's something about horror in space that's often so awfully creepy. Perhaps it's because of the enclosed spaces? The potential for meeting or being visited by the most strange and bizarre and terrifyingly incomprehensible aliens? Or many other things? Either way, space can be scary.

Thoughts?

 

The corpse in The Royale always scared the shit out of me.

 

The strange alien that kept trying to take Janeway into his "matrix" so that she would "nourish him" for a very long time.

The look on his face when he says "Im trying to spare you unnecessary pain".

Brilliant.

 

I think the most scary moment in TNG is in 'Night Terrors' when Crusher suddenly sees the dead crew members from U.S.S. Brattain sitting up in the cargo bay.

 

I find Timescape pretty creepy. Especially the first part where they just freeze. Plus wandering around being alone surrounded by frozen people.