Star Trek Episodes To Help You BOOOOOO-ldly Go This Halloween

With its mission of portraying a positive, optimistic future for mankind, Star Trek isn’t really known as contributing anything to the horror genre. But this Halloween, you may want to booooo-ldly go with these kind-of horror installments to the franchise.

TOS: Catspaw

This is the most famous Trek/horror episode, and was famous released a few days before Halloween in 1967 to tie into the holiday. The highlight of the episode (for me at least) is hearing William Shatner mispronounce the word “telekinesis.” (He says it “tele-KEN-isis.”)

Runner-up: Wolf in the Fold (Jack the Ripper in space? C’mon you can’t beat that. You can’t beat that with a stick.)

TNG: Schisms

This episode is most famous for the “Ode to Spot” cold open, but it is a genuinely creepy abduction story. One of the most effective uses of the holodeck too. Bonus points for its original release being just before Halloween.

Runner-up: Check out Sub Rosa for a pretty good ghost story or Clues for a very good mystery story.

DS9: Empok Nor

Our standard space station sets become a haunted house when Cardassians run amok.

Runner-up: There are some bad choices, like The Assignment or The Muse, but I’d go with Dramatis Personae, which features a lot of mind control and Sisko (spoiler alert) building a clock.

VOY: The Thaw

So to help wash the terror out of my eyes from binge-watching American Horror Story– while still appreciating the Halloween scare that only a creepy clown can give you – I recently rewatched Voyagers The Thaw, featuring one of Spinal Tap’s lead guitarists as the embodiment of fear.

Runner-up: The Haunting of Deck 12

ENT: Vanishing Point

A fun little ghost story starring Enterprise’s inimitable Hoshi Sato, Vanishing Point feels like it would make a good Twilight Zone episode, especially with the twist ending(s).

Runner-up: If you’d rather just find inspiration for good “slutty” Star Trek costumes, check out in In a Mirror, Darkly.

 

Wanting even more Halloweeny goodness?
So, you’ve watched all of the spooky Star Trek episodes you can think of, and you’re still reeling for more Halloween fun? Look no further than the Star Trek comics, specifically the fourth issue of Marvel’s 1980 series, “The Haunting of Thallus!“. It is self-advertised to be “The starship Enterprise’s weirdest voyage”.

Trek02

Now, if all that still isn’t good enough for you, check out this article on Comics Alliance about when the Enterprise found a haunted house in space.

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Imaginative but all the same I will pass on the aforementioned offerings.

#1. Randall Williams – October 30, 2014

” Imaginative but all the same I will pass on the aforementioned offerings.” — Randall Williams

Since you passed on the treats, does this mean you are going to prank TrekMovie for Halloween?

I love these. Wolf in the Fold was one of my Faves.
As a Kid hearing Jack the Ripper say. DIE! DIE! Kill you all! was kinda scary.

VOY: The Thaw — Um. No. What a waste of Michael McKean.

Schisms, Sub Rosa, and Clues are also among the least interesting TNG eps. Face it, Sub Rosa is just plain dumb, and Schisms is only a BEM story.

Wolf in the Fold is scarier than Catspaw, imho.

As for Enterprise, how could you miss the Zombie Vulcans of the Expanse? Impulse, I think.

@4. You realize those are just your opinions and do not reflect the opinion of the entire audience right? I’d rather watch The Thaw than watch Shatner overact and try to be scary, which he isn’t, but again that is just my opinion.

PS. Of course I don’t get scared by fiction, never have, I watch horror films to laugh at how people die, on the rare occasion when I watch one. I usually avoid them due to bad plot, direction, acting, and effects.

How could you forget Night Terros (TNG)…one of my all time faves especially the Dr Crusher Morgue scene!!

Ugh, Catspaw. I have seen it a few times, and there are some redeeming qualities in it. Like Kirk turning to the skeleton right before he said “Bones.”
But it’s just a bad episode. What makes it worse are the pipe-cleaner aliens at the end. I was hoping that CBS would totally change them for the remastered version….

Trek just doesn’t do “scary” very well.

Impulse from Enterprise is the creepiest show that one had to offer.

I think a decent creepy episode for Halloween would be Conspiracy.

First time I saw Catspaw was the age of about 5 in my parent’s basement TV room, by myself with the lights out. Didn’t know anything about it until the witches showed up in the beginning. Picture 5 year old boy, heart racing, running up basement stairs. Scared for life!

Ah I remember that Marvel comic; I have it stashed away somewhere. Was the first issue post-TMP, if I recall correctly. Like most of the first Marvel run, it was pretty goofy.

Fun article, Mr. Whitley.

Really like “Catspaw”. A great Gerald Fried score. Was interesting hearing him speak about using all the members of the clarinet family for that score including contra-bass for the cats. Interesting. He’s the last surviving member of composers from the original show. 86 and still kicking. Long live!

That “telekinesis.” (He says it “tele-KEN-isis.” was my call in a post a few years ago too. I count it among my list of Shatner pronunciations. Only Shatner can turn a word like that. Here’s a list a made off the top of my head seven years ago on here on Shatner-isms

https://trekmovie.com/2007/10/25/boo-catspaw-remastered-airs-this-weekend/

…i DO like the slutty costumes! =D

sci-fi & horror – the perfect match! =)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! =D

I think ‘Impulse’ [ENT] would be a pretty good Halloween episode.

…also, ‘Faces’ [VOY] is pretty gruesome and scary too…

I agree with #11 – where the hell is Conspiracy?!

Impulse takes the prize as best ENT scary episode

Jared — I also am binging on American Horror Story. I’m watching the current season while catching up on Zachary “Welcome to my Rumpus Room” Quinto in Season 2, Asylum. It gushes!

5 Who cares — yeah, those would be my opinions. You are welcome to your own opinions… until I get this Tantulus Field working.

14 — Andy Patterson — Don’t forget ‘The Gamesters of Triskelion” and… “What’s happening to Lt. YOU-hoorah!!!”

The Thaw? Ugh. No, thanks. That’s one of Star Trek’s all-time worst episodes.

The “Genesis” episode of TNG is pretty damn creepy, IMO.

I kinda like TNG’s Genesis myself,if that’s the one directed by Gates and has fun de-evolving crewmembers and such,lol.

J-R!

Beat me to it Brian,lol! Must’ve posted around the same time. But yeah,I remember the first time seeing that one and loved it!

I love horror movies and don’t find them dumb,badly acted,bad story,bad effects,and so on,all the time. No worse than some Trek episodes I could mention. lol

@18. Lol, as if you will ever have even the slightest influence on my opinions of anything.

@20. It’s not nearly as bad as DS9s “For the Uniform”, good lord I hate that episode, no other captain in Star Trek would have gotten away with the treaty violations Sisko commited in that episode. They should have carted Sisko off with Eddington at the end.

And Lorne Greene playing the Admiral Kirk is talking to. Should see if that issue is available online.

#14. Andy Patterson – October 30, 2014

I wonder how many of those “mispronunciations” are just his native Canadian accent?

As far as horror episodes go, what about Voyager’s “Scorpion”? It introduces Species 8472, and it had some horror themes in it.

One more might be “The Return of the Archons.”

The natives of Landru’s planet kind of act like zombies, not to mention the story is very similar to “The Purge,” a very recent sci-fi/horror film which had a sequel just come out.

@19

Ah, yes.

There’s a few more. But that original list was off the top of my head. After hearing a recent book on tape he did I now have a list of some curse words done in his peculiar way.

28 – Marc Henson — Totally agree that “The Purge” looks like a straight lift from “Return of the Archons.” I guess if Hollywood adds in “teens,” it gets to retread every story or genre.

Always loved the DS9 episode Empok Nor.

Can’t remember the episode title but there is an Enterprise episode where the doctor is left in charge while the crew is in stasis asleep in their cabins. A similar Voyager episode with the Doctor and Seven.

When I was a kid growing up in a conservative Texas town, when that first wave of Star Trek reruns started to hit the country, there were five episodes that they left out from that first run I saw. They were deemed too scary, controversial or whatever. I distinctly remember a year or two later when it was announced that we’d get to see those five finally. So for a whole week I saw a brand new episode I’d never seen yet.

They were: the second pilot with spooky Gary Mitchell and Sally Kellerman. – It creeped me out
There was “Lights of Zetar”
“Wolf in the Fold” with Jack the Ripper
The one with the three god like beings in the round receptacles who took over Kirk, Spock and Diana Muldaur’s bodies,…and I guess the fifth one was” Cat’s Paw”, although I don’t remember that detail for some reason as much as the others.

They all scared or creeped me out but it was just fun to see new Trek. It was a treat.

I remember speaking about this week of new Treks with friends at church the week before and we all discussed them in Sunday School the week after.

Love watching Catspaw this time of year, too much fun..

WITCH 3: Go back! Remember the curse!
WITCH 1: Wind shall rise.
WITCH 2: And fog descend.
WITCH 3: So leave here, all, or meet your end.
(Maniacal cackling as they vanish. )
KIRK: Spock. Comment?
SPOCK: (with perfect comedic timing)…Very bad poetry, Captain.

Cracks me up every time!

Voyager’s ‘The Haunting of Deck Twelve’ would seem an obvious choice.

8: At least they got rid of the strings. ;^)

@32

A friend of mine reminded me the 5th forbidden episode was “And the Children Shall Lead Them”, not “Catspaw”

Andy Patterson —

http://www.comiccollectorlive.com/LiveData/Issue.aspx?id=9e731759-316a-4dd8-a2bd-1c6710ba77e3

Notice the article title near the bottom left: “Star Trek Censored in Texas.” I seem to recall some fundamentalists did not appreciate the idea of a depiction of ‘possession’ in “Return to Tomorrow.”

Star Trek: First Contact. It’s kind of a zombie movie. And I remember being really creeped by Khan’s little pets as a kid.

Happy Halloween. A bit off topic for this thread but not this site & since its slow here right now: Saw this on tv today:

The Agenda with Steve Paikin: Cloud DX: Live Long and Prosper
http://tvo.org/video/208037/cloud-dx-live-long-and-prosper

Dr. Sandeep “Sonny” Kohli is the lone Canadian finalist in the XPrize race to develop a real-world version of the Star Trek medical device the Tricorder. The goal is to build a portable, wireless device that fits in the palm of the hand and monitors and diagnoses more than a dozen health conditions. He tells Steve Paikin more about his device.

Hey CmdrR,

That’s a good find. Very cool actually. Thanks.

Good to see you around here still. Been a long while since I’ve been here.

I think Wolf in the Fold before I think Catspaw. I know there are more halloween type aspects when it comes to Catspaw but Honestly Wolf in the Fold was a bit more scary as a kid. And I do agree with the above poster who suggested the Zombie Vulcan Episode of Enterprise.

#39. Andy Patterson – October 30, 2014

You’ve seen the cover now read the article on page 42:

https://archive.org/stream/starlog_magazine-005/005_djvu.txt

and there were 7 censored episodes.

Ahhh, nobody’s mentioned TNG’s “Frame of Mind”? Blasphemy! Total mind-bending “what is reality” episode with lots of downright disturbing moments and twists. Calling it as freakiest Trek episode ever and a hellova performance by Fakes.

Happy Samhain, fellow Trekkers. :-)

So much as this likely does not count, I read a killer comic called ‘Who Killed Captain Kirk?’ in which the movie era tos cast all shared a grand scale hallucination in which they journeyed through the seven circles of HELL. Was scary as ;p

Being from the Dallas area, I seem to recall that they dedicated a whole week to unveil those banned episodes in the late 70’s, quite an event that was. But they held strong on And the Children Shall Lead and didn’t air that one until 1982. Watching an episode of brand new TOS, that you had no idea even existed, was quite an event back then, even if the episode was a stinker! lol

@40

Cool. Isn’t that what makes the internet so great? I shall look at it. A nearly 40 year old mystery solved. Thanks.

and @43 You may be right. Starting to put all the pieces together. You’re right, it was cool to see new stuff.

McCoy: Happy Halloween, Spock, you old green-blooded hobgoblin!

Spock: Why, thank you… “Bones.”

Kirk: You don’t even have to dress up, Spock. You’ll be a natural.

Spock: That is racist, Mr. Kirk.

Kirk: What?! McCoy called you a hobgoblin. All I said was…

Spock: Sir, you are presuming I am the man you knew in another universe. Here, in this alternate reality, I have feelings… and a lawyer.

Uhura: Calm down, Spock. Stop by my cabin later and I’ll let you pet my black kitty.

Chekov: (Wilhelm Scream)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, EVERYONE!!!

I would add “Wolf in the Fold” from TOS and maybe Nemesis with the Vampires….sorry, I mean Remans :-D