Best Horror Episode?

[Obsidian Exodus]

Horror is something people don't seem to talk about very much in relation to Star Trek. Or maybe I'm just not looking in the right places. I've often wondered about what people consider to be the best horror episode. Or which episodes people consider to be horror. Remember Me, for example, might be considered horror, but it also could be considered mystery.

I personally think the horror episodes are Night Terrors, Identity Crisis, Realm of Fear, Schisms, Frame of Mind, Phantasms, and Genesis.

Although it had kind of a weak payoff, (I remember reading that the producers were disappointed with the aliens at the end, and I don't blame them), Schisms was pretty good. And that scene where they've gathered in the holodeck, piecing together the situation, slowly remembering their own abductions, was just great. (Although that side character felt pretty unnecessary. She added almost nothing.)

 

[Armus]

"Skin of Evil" and "Conspiracy". The worm eating and head exploding ending to "Conspiracy" is most definitely horror.

 

[Prax]

If you tell me that you aren't terrified, I won't believe you.(TNG: The Dauphin)

 

[Herbert]

Night Terrors is pretty damn creepy, especially that scene with Crusher in the Morgue.

 

[Paradise City]

Sub Rosa. How any human being could write an episode so badly.....even today the very idea chills me to my bones.

 

[Nakita Akita]

Horror is something people don't seem to talk about very much in relation to Star Trek. Or maybe I'm just not looking in the right places. I've often wondered about what people consider to be the best horror episode. Or which episodes people consider to be horror. Remember Me, for example, might be considered horror, but it also could be considered mystery.

I personally think the horror episodes are Night Terrors, Identity Crisis, Realm of Fear, Schisms, Frame of Mind, Phantasms, and Genesis.

Although it had kind of a weak payoff, (I remember reading that the producers were disappointed with the aliens at the end, and I don't blame them), Schisms was pretty good. And that scene where they've gathered in the holodeck, piecing together the situation, slowly remembering their own abductions, was just great. (Although that side character felt pretty unnecessary. She added almost nothing.)

Frame Of Mind is a scary one to me.
I was in a coma when I was 11, after that for many years I would wonder if I was still in the coma and just dreaming.
The episode was well written and Frakes seemed to act very well in the episode too.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Horror has not been Trek's strong suit. Makes me think of the disastrously bad Empok Nor.

Frame Of Mind is good. I would consider Eye of the Beholder horror. An empathic echo which makes you hallucinate murdering your lover and then killing yourself,

Also I consider the Borg to be zombies.

 

[gillmanjr]

Night Terrors would probably get my vote, but it isn't really "horror" so to speak. Just very creepy.

My second favorite would be Schisms.

 

[Mojochi]

I'm particularly fond of Schisms. Frakes does a great job of it. It's a bit simplistic, & that extra lady in the holodeck didn't serve much purpose. It would've been much better if it had been someone we don't see much of like Keiko, or Ogawa, or one of the helm officers, like the one Will saves at the end (Raeger? I can't remember) Hell, Mot the Barber... anybody... that might enrich the community landscape like that

All in all though, they got the mix just right. The creep factor played exceedingly well

 

[Prax]

I always laugh when they say "Computer, it was more like a table. No, a metal table" and a fully functional dentists office torture bed appears.

 

[Mojochi]

It really is the most basic & banal of premises. Aliens abduct the crew... & that's scary, but the presentation is wonderful for a bottle episode. The script treatment is solid & the performances are well played, but more than that, it's the director. He really revels in shooting the ship's interior sets in new & creative ways, & not just in the creepy moments, but throughout. There's even a really splendid overpass exterior shot of the ship's underside. It's a pretty memorable episode because of how well it's produced, the sign of how excellently seasoned they'd become by year 6, even if the creative writing team were running dry on new concepts.

I always laugh when they say "Computer, it was more like a table. No, a metal table" and a fully functional dentists office torture bed appears.

lol, I just watched that scene. I think you have to kind of assume the computer is listening the whole time & eventually deduces that it's an exam table, or at least a table they were all on... people... laying, etc... It runs down like this. Troi's "Make a table" comes back with like 5000 entries (Thanks for your completely thoughtless contribution lol)

Troi: You mentioned it was smooth & cold, anything else?
Geordi: It was long & rectangular
Troi: Make a rectangular conference table (Also dumb since some mentioned feeling confined by it)
Geordi: It's too high. Lower it (Which I never understood, as the aliens' table isn't that low)
Worf: It was smaller & inclined (As opposed to "angled". Inclined implies what a person who's on it might be, So the next table is midway between exam table & slanted wooden work table.)
Riker: It wasn't wood... more metallic

And that's when they suddenly throw up an exam table with a head rest & foot stop. It is sort of sudden to hit that extreme, but if the computer is somehow running routines based on other holodeck requests & programs etc... then I guess it's not entirely implausible that it might assume a table these humanoids were on rather than at, with the way they were describing it... I guess. It's after that when they start adding restraining arms & jagged tools etc...

The part that loses me a bit is when Geordi starts talking about how there was a bright light over him. Did he have his VISOR on in bed? Ok... I've thought way too much about this now

 

[tomalak301]

What's the difference between Horror and psychological thriller? The reason I ask is because I look at Frame of Mind as a psychological thriller type of episode. There were some creepy elements, but it was more on the Silence of the Lambs kind of creepy rather than something like Alien.

In terms of my favorite horror episode, Night Terrors was pretty good, and I remember having some nightmares for a week over Eye of the Beholder. Also, Genesis is pretty creepy too.

 

[Prax]

Genesis scared the crap out of me when I saw it air. I was probably about 8 or 9. Night terrors did, too.

"Wherrrrrre arrrrre youuuu??!?!!"

<scary voice>"One moon ...circles the other..."

One aspect that really freaked me out for some reason was the whole lack of R.E.M sleep thing causing insanity.

 

[Mojochi]

Genesis is much more of what I would consider standard horror fare, freakish monsters & corpses around every corner & such. Schisms fits the bill as a psychological horror, but I too never saw Frame of Mind as horror. Actually it kind of stuck me as the psychological thriller variant of what happened to Riker in Future Imperfect. It's sort of like the difference between The Inner Light, & DS9's Hard Time

 

[Qonundrum]

"Skin of Evil" and "Conspiracy". The worm eating and head exploding ending to "Conspiracy" is most definitely horror.

Seconded. Skin of Evil does more to imply than to show and that can be more effective. Conspiracy certainly went into warp speed with the mealworms' presentation, and passed warp 10 with the head exploding scene.

If you tell me that you aren't terrified, I won't believe you.(TNG: The Dauphin)

"Dauphin" had its moments of greatness, I'll agree to that. I also loved how the blu-ray restoration team kept true to the original f/x, which were pretty great for the time and hold up fairly well.

That's also a nice screencap of what must have been an influence (as well as Sophia Petrillo) for the character harboring Luke's other handy lightsaber in "The Force Awakens".

Phantasms wins it for me, though. Great camera work, unexpected situations, Troi cake with mint frosting (then they whip out the knife), what's not to like?

And any episode with psychological horror as well. The season 5 episode with the beings that can read minds, even forcibly, creeps me out every time.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Yeah, those shots where Troi is forcefully reliving a sexual encounter with Riker, except it turns violent are pretty unsettling.

 

[euphorik]

"night terrors."

i loved - and love - that episode. never understood the hate - from cast members *or* fans.

 

[at Quark's]

Phantasms for me.

Perhaps because I could imagine having nightmares on a regular basis because my subconscious is trying to tell me something important, whereas I have little fear of my neighbors suddenly retro-evolving into reptiles or primates

The creepiest TNG single scene ever in my opinion is that one from night terrors, where Beverly hallucinates seeing all those corpses in the morgue suddenly sitting up.

But I'll agree that it's more creepy than horror. One of the few actual horror scenes in TNG would I think be commander Remmick exploding to reveal that mother parasite in conspiracy. Though that scene is so incredibly cheesy it always makes me laugh...

 

[O_Kav]

I find difficult to be scared by anything that doesn't have the most raw forms of horror like jump scares, for example. Good sound design can scare me too sometimes. Gore and disturbing imagery makes me feel more disgust than fear.

So maybe I'm not the type of person better prepared to give an opinion about this... None of the TNG episodes met very well any of the previous requirements. However, if there's one episode that follows well the Horror formula I would say that episode is Genesis.

If the Xenomorphs popped up in the ST Universe that episode would probably be the one written for them. The lightning, the abandoned Enterprise, Data and Picard being the only surviving members of the crew, the concept that while trekking through the Milky Way you can just casually turn into a mindless monster and be back to normal in a few hours thanks to Technology, the whole banality that a simple cold by Barclay can unleash literal hell on an entire starship...

I liked it. It's quite creepy. It's one of the best episodes in ST where the stakes when exploring Space are really high... What's more interesting, though, is the implication that there's a remote possibility Betazeds evolved from amphibians and Klingons from spider-like creatures. Talk about radical redesign...

 

[Prax]

I wonder how many people died in genesis, And who had to write that letter to the family