"Behind the sofa" moments

[retroenzo]

After a conversation in the 'Charlie X' thread, it made me wonder if anybody got scared by Trek at times. Did you ever watch Trek from behind the sofa?

I think the scariest I found Trek was during 'Genesis' as the whole atmosphere on board the Enterprise changed. A ship we knew oh so well from the past six years looked scary with the threat of all these creatures roaming the hallways.

The appearance of the Borg appearance in Q Who? as well as the corridors on board the cube were very creepy.

So have you found Trek scary at all? And I don't mean "Oh the writing/acting/direction/etc of 'xyz episode' terrified me" - let's have actual scary moments.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The moment in "Identity Crisis" when LaForge lifts his hand and sees his fingers have all changed scared the shit out of me when I first saw it, age 9 or 10. "Schisms" entire concept and the clicking noises gave me plenty of sleepless nights. I was terrified I'd be sucked into a vortex and have my arm amputated and re-attached!

 

[Vorpal_Blade]

'Schisms' also scare me. I think the scary par for me was when they were all on the holodeck trying to recreate the environment that they had been in. The starkness of the holodeck combined with the general creepiness of what they were doing set up a good scary scene.

 

[Six of Twelve]

Actually, the first time we ser the inside of a Borg cube in Q Who, it wasn't scary at all. It was brightly lit with the dominating color scheme of white and silver. It looked very sterile, of course, but not scary.

Later on, on Voyager, when the cubes were more dimly lit with green lighting, with the color scheme being green and black, they looked a bit more forbidding, but not quite haunted house scary.

As far as that goes, the dimly lit, Spartan, red and black themed Klingon ships are just as forbidding.

 

[BeatleJWOL]

I think as long as I avoid the Ceti eel crawling into Chekov's ear, the salt vampire, minimise my Balok puppet exposure, and vow to never watch "Genesis" or "Conspiracy", I should be good, no couch required.

 

[Albertese]

The moment in "Identity Crisis" when LaForge lifts his hand and sees his fingers have all changed scared the shit out of me when I first saw it, age 9 or 10. "Schisms" entire concept and the clicking noises gave me plenty of sleepless nights. I was terrified I'd be sucked into a vortex and have my arm amputated and re-attached!

I agree with the moment mentioned from "Schisms" but for me, the scary moment in "Identity Crisis" was when he's on the holodeck reconstructing the video of the old landing party and figures out there's the one unaccounted for shadow, then calls up the grey featureless figure that would have to be there to cast that shadow. That grey putty-shape still unnerves me a little.

--Alex

 

[F. King Daniel]

I forgot about that! Yeah, the weird 3D shadow thing freaked me out too.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Nothing in all of Trek worth pulling an L-shaped sofa away from the wall for.

 

[Tora Ziyal]

I think as long as I avoid the Ceti eel crawling into Chekov's ear, the salt vampire, minimise my Balok puppet exposure, and vow to never watch "Genesis" or "Conspiracy", I should be good, no couch required.

OMG, that eel! *shudders* For me, the single worst Trek moment ever. There are a couple episodes that I refuse to watch again, but by now I don't even remember their names. One involved telepathic rape.

 

[retroenzo]

Violations

 

[JRoss]

Eyes in the dark, all the stiffs in sickbay sitting up. I was really young when I saw that.

 

[Six of Twelve]

Those large insects crawling in and out of people's mouths in that TNG episode and the one person who is full of them and had the head explode is enough to turn my stomach.

 

[Vandervecken]

I thought the Davidians in Times Arrow were pretty creepy, explains why they had to burn 'em out, although I kept wondering when David Koresh would show up. One call to Janet Reno would have ended the whole ep though.


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Riker rolling around in Armus was pretty freaky. Sulan wearing Lieutenant Durst's face in Voyager's Faces may be the single creepiest Trek thing I can think of. Not-true-B'Elanna deliquescing on not-Doctor's examining table in Course: Oblivion* is a freak-out moment I felt. None of this is hold-up-your-hands-and-peek-through-your-fingers scary though.



*By the way--was the Doctor then a genuine hologram created by not-Voyager? How did HE get fully mimicked, though? How could the mimetic "demon blood" have copied him and all his program-stored memories?

 

[Tracy Trek]

I wouldn't call it scary exactly because I was already grown up when I saw it. In TNG, when that security guard woman falls through the floor when it phases out and then back in. And there she is, dead, cut in half or something. I just found it a teeny bit disturbing. Does anyone remember what episode that was?

 

[Paradise City]

The bodies falling out of the compartment in TWOK. Spock jetting off deeper into V'Ger in his space suit in TMP. These scenes unnerved me at the time.

 

[Paradise City]

I wouldn't call it scary exactly because I was already grown up when I saw it. In TNG, when that security guard woman falls through the floor when it phases out and then back in. And there she is, dead, cut in half or something. I just found it a teeny bit disturbing. Does anyone remember what episode that was?

In Theory. The episode has Data attempting a romance. Easily the most disturbing part of that episode.

 

[UnknownSample]

The salt vampire and Charlie X defacing the corridor woman. I was eight. I'm not sure I've been that scared ever again by anything not in real life.
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I couldn't imagine anything in any later Trek series to be dread-inducing, until I was reminded of the guy in Voyager who wore B'lanna's dead crewmate's face to make himself attractive to her. On the list of dating do's and don'ts, that's a don't.

 

[Gary 11's]

I found Voyager's One pretty unnerving. Where just seven and the doctor are running the ship while the rest of the crew are in stasis. The hallucinations!

 

[F. King Daniel]

*By the way--was the Doctor then a genuine hologram created by not-Voyager? How did HE get fully mimicked, though? How could the mimetic "demon blood" have copied him and all his program-stored memories?

I assume they copied Voyager's databanks so exactly all the data inside was duplicated, including the Doc.

To me, it's all magic how flash drives and the like store data, but it must all be represented physically at a teeny tiny level. And that's what the "silver blood" copies.

 

[at Quark's]

I don't think I've ever actually been really scared by Trek. But there's some nice creepy scenes to be had.

One of the best (imho) is an old one: The Beverley morgue scene in Night Terrors. She is in the morgue, to conduct autopsies, when suddenly she hears something, looks around, and sees all bodies sit right up on the tables -- still covered in shrouds. Bev shudders, walks backwards, bounces into another sitting corpse, realises she must be hallucinating, and says "go away!". Next instant she looks around and everything is as it should be, the corpses lying quietly on the tables again.

Nothing "spectacular". After all those years, still extremely effective in creeping me out

I could put a link to the scene on youtube here, but I believe that is against the forum rules?