5 Best Horror Episodes Of Star Trek, Ranked

"Star Trek" and "scary" aren't words that are often associated with each other. After all, it's a sci-fi franchise that's more about philosophy than action. "Trek" focuses on optimism and exploration, in a world where humanity has finally put internecine conflicts aside because we realized we are only one speck of a larger universe.

On the edge of the final frontier, though, all types of stories are possible (even musicals, as "Subspace Rhapsody" proved last year). "Star Trek: The Original Series" began with "The Man Trap," essentially a monster B-movie in space about a salt-vampire with the mouth of a lamprey. In season 2, the series concocted a whole Halloween special with "Catspaw," about two psychic aliens who have constructed a Gothic castle as a trap for the Enterprise crew.

In the 60-ish years "Star Trek" has existed, it has returned to horror regularly enough to call this a trend. As the omnipotent trickster Q (John de Lancie) warned Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), the galaxy is "not for the timid." Which of the scariest "Star Trek" episodes are the most memorable?

"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" took place on a space station, not a starship. The eponymous station orbited the frontier world of Bajor, recently freed from occupation by the tyrannical Cardassians. In fact, Deep Space Nine itself was not native Starfleet hardware, but a repurposed Cardassian outpost once called Terok Nor.

That causes problems in season 5 episode "Empok Nor," when DS9 needs repairs with parts Starfleet doesn't have. Chief Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney) leads a salvage team to the abandoned Cardassian station Empok Nor, bringing along the semi-friendly Cardassian Garak (Andrew Robinson) to help disarm booby traps. Among said traps are some Cardassian sleeper agents.

"Empok Nor" unfolds like a slasher movie in space, taking place in tight corridors and dark lighting (diegetically because the station is unpowered) as characters are picked off one-by-one. Redshirts (disposable Starfleet crew members) are a common feature of "Star Trek," but the four in this episode feel as much like teenagers targeted by Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees.

If there's a weak link to the episode, it's (I can't believe I'm saying this) Garak. The episode turns him into a villain, justifying it with the Cardassians on Empok Nor having experimented with a drug to amp up xenophobia — yes, a racism drug. The episode ties it together with Garak egging O'Brien about his service in the Federation-Cardassian War (as revealed in the first Cardassian episode, "The Wounded" from "The Next Generation"), so against Garak, O'Brien must again fight a Cardassian foe and become a soldier to do so. In the end, though, it's just not the best use of Garak, the fey, silver-tongued rogue we know and love.

"The Devil in the Dark" features the Enterprise crew summoned to a mining colony, where an unseen creature has been killing workers and leaving only charred corpses behind. They discover the creature, the Horta, is a silicon-based lifeform that more or less looks like a moving pile of molten lava ('60s TV special effects, y'all). Like the lesson Steven Spielberg later took to heart on "Jaws," "The Devil in the Dark" wisely keeps the Horta unseen during earlier parts of the episode — both building up the mystery and compensating for the show's limits in realizing the threat. The episode's opening scene, where a miner is killed by the Horta, shows neither the creature nor his burnt corpse and is all the scarier for it.

I previously mentioned the series premiere "The Man Trap," which had a similar premise of the Enterprise crew hunting/being hunted by an alien monster. That episode was unpopular among cast and crew (William Shatner called it one of the show's worst episodes in his memoir "Star Trek Memories"), but NBC chose it to debut "Star Trek" because it was simple. "The Devil in the Dark" feels like a second go and is a more successful one. It's more atmospheric and ultimately more complex.

"The Man Trap" tries to add nuance by making the Salt Vampire an endangered species that preys on humans because its native environment (and food) has been wiped out. In the end, though, it's a monster that must be killed. In "The Devil in the Dark," Spock (Leonard Nimoy) mind melds with the Horta and discovers it was only attacking because the miners were unknowingly destroying its eggs. Communication with those who are different wins the day, which is a more fitting "Star Trek" ending.

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" has reintroduced the Gorn as its recurring "villain species." (This is the species of the alien lizard that Captain Kirk fought in classic episode "Arena.") What the Klingons were in "The Original Series," the Gorn are in "Strange New Worlds." The cliffhanger ending of season 2 even has the Enterprise locked in combat with the Gorn, the aliens having stolen several of their crew and Captain Pike (Anson Mount) unsure of what to do.

The first Gorn episode of "Strange New Worlds" — "Memento Mori" — showed only their ships. In "All Those Who Wander," penultimate episode of season 1, the Enterprise gets up close and personal with Gorn youths in an "Alien" homage. While investigating a crashed ship that suffered a run-in with the Gorn, the Enterprise crew has to avoid meeting their fate. Like in "Empok Nor," the setting is used to justify darker, more horror-ish lighting than usual on "Star Trek."

Episode writer Dave Perez and director Christopher J. Byrne let their "Alien" fandom show in the construction of "All Those Who Wander." Gorn are revealed to reproduce like Xenomorphs (using living beings as egg incubators), and an unfortunate alien has several Gorn hatchlings burst out of his back, a la the Neomorphs in "Alien: Covenant." The episode even has its own Newt in Oriana (Emma Ho), a feral child who barely survived Gorn captivity.

The futures "Star Trek" and "Alien" promise mankind couldn't be more different, but "All Those Who Wander" shows the former can do an effective cover of the latter.

"Star Trek: Enterprise" was a prequel, following the adventures of the first Starfleet ship to bear the name "Enterprise" in the 22nd century. This should have meant supplies and repairs would be a recurring issue (no Starbases yet), but they rarely were. "Rarely" doesn't mean "never."

In the "Enterprise" season 2 episode "Minefield," the NX-01 gets a chunk of its hull blown up by a cloaked Romulan mine. In the following episode, "Dead Stop," they're still dealing with the damage. Consequences carrying over from one episode to the next? What is this, "Battlestar Galactica"?

A distress signal leads the Enterprise to an automated repair station (voiced by episode director and B'Elanna Torres herself, Roxann Dawson), which repairs the ship for suspiciously low pay. Then Ensign Travis Mayweather (Anthony Montgomery) is found dead, and foul play is in turn discovered. This culminates in the supremely creepy reveal about the station's AI: living beings (abducted from the crews of visited ships) have their brains hooked into the station's core to increase its processing output. Travis is the AI's latest acquisition (his apparently dead body was actually a fake), but fortunately his crewmates are able to rescue him. 

The episode wisely teases the origins of the station by having the characters themselves ponder it, but just as smartly holds back on any revelations. The mystery of the station stands by the episode's end, which makes it all the more memorable because you're still asking questions when the credits roll. 

The machines-using-people-as-batteries twist of "Dead Stop," aired in 2002, can't help but call to mind "The Matrix." Perhaps that's why the more speculative "Star Trek" fans love to postulate the station's hive mind computer is somehow connected to the Borg.

Speaking of...

For "The Next Generation," the choice of scariest episode was a toss-up between "Q Who" and "Schisms." The latter is a season six episode where members of the Enterprise crew report trouble sleeping, and discover that at night they're being abducted and returned by interdimensional aliens. (You'd be forgiven for thinking "TNG" was trying to capture some "X-Files" magic, but "Schisms" actually aired in 1992, a year before that show's debut.)

But it had to come down to this: season 2's "Q Who," the first Borg episode in "Star Trek" and the most personally unsettling "Next Generation" episode. At the end of the first act, Q whisks the Enterprise-D away to a remote sector of space as part of another trial over how "evolved" humanity is.

In that region, Picard and co. meet the Borg. The build-up to the Borg is exquisite; as the Enterprise scans local planets, they're all barren, signaling that our heroes are about to meet a powerful and ravenous foe. The first sight of the Borg cube is accompanied by an ominous theme; composer Ron Jones whipped up something out of "A Nightmare on Elm Street."

"The Best of Both Worlds" is the definitive "Star Trek" Borg episode, but even that one can't compete with how unknowable, unbeatable, and downright terrifying they are in "Q Who."