Scariest, Spookiest Scenes in Trek
- Thread starter Defiler-Of-Redshirts
- Start date
Ugh, I was a wreck after that episode. Hard Time indeed.
The thing that made "Schisms" creepiness so effectively is what makes all the best classic horror thrillers most effective: it gives you subtle hints of the terror a little at a time, so the chills gradually build up little by little as you get more macabre clues (allowing one's scared imagination to fill in a few blanks). In a sense, it had a commonality with the scariest sci-fi feature movie ever made, "Alien." In both cases the scares/dangers are somewhat hidden, dark and mysterious, but keep giving you more and more terrifying hints of the darkness behind the story. That's the style of terror that really leaves nerve-racking unsettled feelings long after.
Indeed. My own "maybe, eventually, to be finished and published" novel is a very tame story about the coming-of-age of a child prodigy musician, but I also wrote a nightmare-fodder short story, "Reduvius Ferox," about a roughly-humanoid-sized insect with a disproportionately long stinger. An assassin, from a race of assassins, who loves her work.
The first time I eveer got scared of Star Trek I was six. It was "Miri", specifically at the beginning when they beam down. That crazed man who attacks Kirk for touching his tricycle? I'm still scared by it because of how young I was. There's just something so wrong about it. Got so scared I turned the TV off and started freaking out.
The only other time I was truly scared was that morgue bit in "Night Terrors".
Non-Trek but still in the same vein, there's this episode of the original Lost in Space where Smith, the Robot and Will Robinson find a factory that makes robots. Near the end Will Robinson gets on this conveyor belt and the machine just turns him into a robot. Not cool. Scared me even worse than Miri.
The only other time I was truly scared was that morgue bit in "Night Terrors".
Non-Trek but still in the same vein, there's this episode of the original Lost in Space where Smith, the Robot and Will Robinson find a factory that makes robots. Near the end Will Robinson gets on this conveyor belt and the machine just turns him into a robot. Not cool. Scared me even worse than Miri.
Oh, god, yes. That traumatized me as a kid.
Hmm.
I've said this before: the first ST episode I saw any part of was "A Taste of Armageddon" (the ending). The first ST episode I saw the beginning of was "Space Seed." The first episode I saw all the way through was "The Devil in the Dark."
I didn't find "Operation: Annihilate" or "Miri" to be particularly scary.
If the first ST episode I'd seen was "The Man Trap," it would have very likely been the last ST episode I ever saw.
I've said this before: the first ST episode I saw any part of was "A Taste of Armageddon" (the ending). The first ST episode I saw the beginning of was "Space Seed." The first episode I saw all the way through was "The Devil in the Dark."
I didn't find "Operation: Annihilate" or "Miri" to be particularly scary.
If the first ST episode I'd seen was "The Man Trap," it would have very likely been the last ST episode I ever saw.
What made that guy in Miri so creepy was how sick and diseased he looked when he flipped out over his tricycle and died. And yes, I'm glad someone else noticed that TNG blood-chilling scene when all the shrouded corpses were suddenly sitting up; it was like the kind of scene you'd see in Shyamalan's very, very few good movies.
Charlie got what he deserved. One of the few Trek characters that I actually hate.
Another O'Brien-centric one is Whispers, the one with the Manchurian clone.
Just that whole experience of everybody you've ever known acting strange, distant and tense around you, as if there was something wrong about you that you just can't place at all, with your own family being creeped out by you... you sense that something's wrong but you're stonewalled at every step, your computer is broken into and you're locked out of sensitive systems, you're being bugged and observed, but no one believes you, and when you finally find the one single person willing to assist you, he suddenly gets a call after which he starts acting just as hostile towards you as anyone else...
It's made all the worse by the fact that the clone was for all intents and purposes completely identical to O'Brien aside from that mental attack trigger. And he died totally confused, scared and alone, at least in the social/emotional sense, the last thing he saw being the real O'Brien looking down at him.
Pure personal horror, especially if you have social anxiety. The episode caused a full-blown attack when I first saw it and I still can't bring myself to rewatch it.
Although not played as much for the creepiness factor, there's also "Remember Me", where Beverly gets to see everyone she knows disappear and nobody else remembers them even existing, and she almost doesn't figure it out until it's too late for her.
From an audience perspective it's somewhat played for laughs near the end when it's just her and Picard, but it's another episode that's a total WTF until you see things from The Other Side(tm).
From an audience perspective it's somewhat played for laughs near the end when it's just her and Picard, but it's another episode that's a total WTF until you see things from The Other Side(tm).
"Violations" - a number of scenes within the memories are creepy.
I'm sort of ambivalent because in some ways I also hated Charlie Evans and in some ways I kind of felt sorry for him (which I think is a good testament to his acting). You have to admit it was pretty hilarious when Spock was on the intercom with McCoy and Charlie made Spock start reciting random lines of poetry: "Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the shadows of the night!" And "Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary!"
The funniest, hilarious part is that McCoy came onto the bridge a moment later and demanded, "What in the blazes is going on?! I had Spock on the intercom and he goes into some kind of poetry reading!!??" I'm sorry but I lost it at that point, busting up laughing as hard as anything I've seen in Star Trek.
I thought those "Operation: Annihilate" abominations looked more like over-easy fried eggs than pancakes. But I certainly agree with your general assertion that those monstrosities were loathsome in the extreme. Loathsome with a capital L.
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The Cat's Paw always scares me. Also The Man Trap (with that salt monster). I also get scared by Barclay turning into a spider. Yipe! I think there are more but these come to mind.