Dark moments in TOS...

[Warped9]

In the movies forum there's a discussion regarding the transporter accident scene in TMP and how some found it overly disturbing.

TOS had some pretty horrific moments only you just heard them referenced rather then got to see them happen. Example: the two security guards who were beamed out into open space while the ship was at warp in “And The Children Shall Lead.” Another was when Marta was blown up by Garth in “Whom Gods Destroy.”

TOS had long flirted with horror which tended to set it up as more adult oriented than most sci-fi of the day. So the transporter accident in TMP is perfectly in keeping with what TOS had done previously, but now it was a bit more graphic in keeping with how everything else was more detailed in appearance than what we saw on TOS.

Even TAS flirted with some edgy stuff particularly given its time slot.


So what are moments in TOS, and even TAS, where you thought they went surprisingly dark and perhaps even into the realm of horror?

 

[fireproof78]

Salt Vampire. As well as Charlie X with the lady missing her face. Those stick out to me even after 30 years.

 

[Warped9]

...Charlie X with the lady missing her face.

Yeah, while it's obvious now that creeped me out when I first saw it fifty years ago. The idea itself still gets me.

 

[Greg Cox]

TOS owes more to its immediate predecessors, THE TWILIGHT ZONE and THE OUTER LIMITS, than modern fans may realize. There was lots of darkness, horror, and tragedy.

See also the folks burned alive by the Horta (before we learned her motives), the giant ape-men attacking the shuttlecraft in "The Galileo Seven," Pike being tortured with illusory hellfire, etc.

 

[drt]

The Onlie that attacks McCoy over the tricycle when they first beam down in "Miri" scared the bejesus out of me when I was a kid.

 

[XCV330]

they may look like flying rubber omelettes, now, but Operation Annihilate creeped me out as a little kid watching it in the 70s/early 80s

 

[Warped9]

TOS owes more to its immediate predecessors, THE TWILIGHT ZONE and THE OUTER LIMITS, than modern fans may realize. There was lots of darkness, horror, and tragedy.

See also the folks burned alive by the Horta (before we learned her motives), the giant ape-men attacking the shuttlecraft in "The Galileo Seven," Pike being tortured with illusory hellfire, etc.

The Onlie that attacks McCoy over the tricycle when they first beam down in "Miri" scared the bejesus out of me when I was a kid.

they may look like flying rubber omelettes, now, but Operation Annihilate creeped me out as a little kid watching it in the 70s/early 80s

All underlining that sense that exploring deep space was dangerous and not for the faint of heart.

 

[Metryq]

Horror is in the delivery as much as the concept, or perhaps even more so. In the "Charlie X" scene with the faceless woman, the frozen shadows creeped me out as much as the woman. (In a similar vein, the Space: 1999 episode "The Troubled Spirit" depicted a ghost as only a shadow on the walls of a travel tube. A shadow cast by nothing. Hiroshima also had some horrific shadows cast one day in 1945.)

The security guards beamed into space in "And The Children Shall Lead" happens "off camera." The viewer isn't given much time to dwell on the experience of it. Is that like being blown out an airlock? Since the ship was under warp at the time, a condition we know nothing about, did the guards even have a moment of consciousness after leaving the transporter chamber, or were they scattered into dimensions we can't imagine? What happens to a mass dropped into normal space at FTL velocities, assuming the beamed energy even reached "normal" space?

HP Lovecraft's "The Shadow Out Of Time" seemed to depict the simple fact of being a different creature to be horrific; there was no pain or suffering, as with Roger Torroway's conversion into a cyborg in Frederik Pohl's Man Plus. Yet John Scalzi's Ghost Brigades, second in the Old Man's War series, depicted men in radically different forms, none of them horrific for that fact.

"That Which Survives" was the first time the transporter was depicted as a continuing, conscious experience, rather than a moment of stasis. And that is what made the transporter accident in ST:TMP so horrific. Frankly, I found it gratuitous and bad writing. We didn't need to see the science officer lost, thus giving the writer an excuse to bring in the only other qualified science officer in all of Starfleet. It didn't even have to be a transporter accident (a mature technology).

Commodore Decker, brilliantly played by William Windom, delivered more horror in his failure to express what he'd experienced than if the episode had shown, in gratuitous, modern CGI detail, the scenes on-screen.

Then there was Capt. Terrell disintegrating himself in TWoK...

 

[somebuddyX]

It's probably not what you're thinking of but I immediately just thought of the end of "The City on the Edge of Forever" where everyone stands around and Kirk's heart is broken in half and then end of episode.
The other one I thought of is the Excalibur being attacked in "The Ultimate Computer." The way the ship seemed to be okay but all the crew were killed instantly, like they were vaporised inside the ship. That may not be what happened but that's how it came across to me.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

For me the moment that's black as pitch is the ending to Let That Be Your Last Battleground. Finally hate wins and wrecks everything.

 

[J.T.B.]

Rojan casually and cold-bloodedly killing the yeoman by crushing her essence block in "By Any Other Name" always stuck with me.

 

[mb22]

Uhura's aged vision of herself in "And the Children Shall Lead". Also Gorgon's face 'uglifying' at the end.

The dying female victim in "The Lights of Zetar".

Gary Mitchell's face superimposed over Kelso as the latter is strangled in WNMHGF.

The witches in "Catspaw".

Not part of broadcast TOS, but Beckwith's hellish fate in Ellison's original "City on the Edge of Forever" script is particularly horrific.

 

[Phaser Two]

The Memory Alpha scene for me. Woo. Chilling.

 

[Herbert]

The Red Hour in Return of the Archons is pretty dark

 

[Warped9]

The Red Hour in Return of the Archons is pretty dark

Yeah, we didn’t see anything explicit, but the implications of a mob, presumably the entire community, in a no-holds-barred riot can send your imagination to some extreme places.

 

[BillJ]

Kirk giving guns to the natives of Neural being the only real solution to the advance of the Klingons.

 

[PCz911]

Charlie X with the lady missing her face. .

if you think about it, it was a horrible death. Suddenly you can’t breathe or see. Gasping for the last breath in the dark. I googled it… 4 to 6 minutes until death.

when I was younger I used to be an avid scuba diver. Never really thought about the not breathing bit.

 

[fireproof78]

if you think about it, it was a horrible death. Suddenly you can’t breathe or see. Gasping for the last breath in the dark. I googled it… 4 to 6 minutes until death.

when I was younger I used to be an avid scuba diver. Never really thought about the not breathing bit.

Reminds me of a line from Heinlein's Space Cadet. The protagonist and crew discover a ship that ended up with a dead crew due to a micro meteor piercing the inner hull as a space walker was coming in the outer door. The captain says "Lieutenant, may have to note to Command to not have the whole ship's company gathered around during space suit operations."

Lieutenant: "Yes, sir. Might be awkward to with a small compliment."

Captain: "It's awkward to loose your breath too."

Yeah, chills.

 

[Ragitsu]

Kirk the Rapist; that was undiluted human impulse and nothing else.

 

[Vger23]

A great deal of “WNMHGB” is pretty dark and heavy. Kirk’s best friend corrupted with superior powers, and the decision to maroon/kill him as a result.

“The Man Trap” deals with having to exterminate the last of a species that is systematically murdering the crew, and the creature causes horrific deaths.

The end of “Charlie X” is very difficult when you realize that Charlie going back may be the only solution to handling the “monster” he has become.

“Dagger of the Mind” shows human mental health professionals completely abusing their power and tormenting helpless subjects in a chamber of horrors.

“Alternative Factor” is about a potential universe-ending rift, and a man must basically be put in hell for eternity to avoid that fate.

“COTEOF” has a very dark theme overall, and a very painful ending.

“Operation: Annihilate” has some dark themes and horrible circumstances (death of Kirk’s family, entire populations being horribly killed, body horror, etc)

“Conscience of the King” is about vengeance and murder, and a human political leader who executed thousands of people based on his own theories of eugenics.

“Mirror, Mirror” asserts that it is easier for civilized men to behave as savages, which is a fairly dark and scary concept (as is the idea of being trapped in that savage realm).

“The Doomsday Machine” deals with guilt, obsession and revenge…as well as mental health and suicide, in a battle against a machine designed for genicode. “Obsession” is very similar, except Kirk is able to vanquish his whale…and there is more body horror with a horrific seemingly indestructible creature.

“Wolf in the Fold” has another terrifying creature that is responsible for mass-murdering females throughout history and paints Scotty as a horribly flawed sexist.

The end of “Private Little War,” with Kirk ordering “100 serpents” is a very painful and dark conclusion to that seemingly hopeless circumstance.

“Patterns of Force” gives us a supposed top-tier Federation historian and professor re-creating one of the most horrific and brutal ideologies the Earth has ever known and imposing it on an alien culture.

“The Omega Glory” shows power and greed corrupt a fellow Starship captain, who was perfectly willing to condemn thousands to death (including two full starship crews) in pursuit of his own goals.

“The Ultimate Computer” deals again with dark mental health issues and a murderous and unhinged AI that takes 100s of Starfleet lives as the result.

“Paradise Syndrome” has Kirk’s wife and unborn child die in front of him.

“…ATCSL” features horrific deaths, childhood grief, childhood manipulation etc.

“Plato’s Stepchildren” is just downright sadistic.

“The Empath” deals with torture, sacrifice, human experimentation, and is really quite gruesome.

“Whom Gods Destroy” is another tale of power corrupting, the fall of a revered Starfleet captain, and mental health issues leading to terrible actions. The blow up a woman before she suffocates in a poison atmosphere. Pretty dark and heavy.

Both “Space Seed” and “The Savage Curtain” establish that there will be countless millions of additional lives lost on Earth due to cruel megalomaniacs being in power before we’ll actually get our shit together.


I alway have a good chuckle at people who criticize DS9, PIC or DSC for being “too dark” when the source material could at times be extremely heavy and dark, especially for the late 1960s.