Identity Crisis is another one that gave me nightmares as a child. When Geordi is in the holodeck and discovers the shadow on a wall that doesn't belong to anyone and then has the computer recreate its shape was scary as hell. Then to watch him turn into the same alien was terrifying.
Or, that time when the Galaxy class Enterprise was built, it had a murder on board. The murder wasn't known until sometime years after the launch of the ship.
I watched it in reruns late at night after everyone was in bed! Geordie discovering that shadow was so much creepier than just showing an alien monster.
@@derekscanlan4641Probably because Garak wouldn't fit in any of the current series' timelines. It would be a reach to include him in Picard. None of the others fit. Would leave to see him again though!
No mention of TNG: Identity Crisis? Geordi's holodeck investigation scene, where he discovered there was someone or something else present on an away mission long ago. The holodeck recreated it as a dark ominous shape. Not only an outstanding use of the holodeck, but a very unsettling scene!
I'm so glad Schisms was number one. It all builds to that moment when they're in the holodeck, with the clicking, the table, the bright light, and Geordi says, "I've been in this room before." and I think Riker says, "We all have." Literally gave me chills, even after I've seen it a dozen times over the last 25 years.
I wasn't scared very much of the actual episode but it came at a time when many people actually *believed* in alien abductions and thought that kind of thing was a real thing. I never really thought so but I think some of my friends did. Some people *wanted* to be abducted and thought the aliens were good/nice and would not hurt them, I just thought that the whole "alien abductions" thing was made up and pretend but it didn't seem polite to say so. This was when I was in my teens and it didn't seem polite to say to my teenage and pre-teen friends, "No, this *isn't* something that could really happen in real life or not that I know of anyway," or whatever. Some adults believed in that kind of thing too around back then. It's less popular to actually *believe* in it now. What was scary was, people about my age *thinking* it was scary because they thought that it was something very realistic that could actually happen. Well, okay, technically anything *could* happen, but not likely.
"Schisms" was the first creepy episode that ST:TNG had, back when most people probably didn't expect that from it, so okay, yes, thank you to the video for mentioning that.
And we didn't have The X-Files yet, back then. Just realized that The X-Files would almost certainly have frightened more people more often if it had originally aired about a decade or two earlier. By the middle of the 1990's to the late 1990's, people were getting much more blase about alien abductions and scary TV shows and other things of that sort. Audiences were more used to that kind of material by then. It was still creepy sometimes but we weren't as extremely startled or horrified or terrified as we might have been.
That TNG episode where they're stuck in the time loop that keeps ending in the destruction of the Enterprise really got me as a kid. "All hands abandon ship! All hands abandon..." BOOM. Freaked me out when they all started to remember little things.
Then the avert the collision and are greeted with, "Greetings. I am Captain Frasier Crane of the Federation starship Cheers. No need to introduce yourselves because over here everybody knows your name."
In one of the books the story involves the captain Kelsey Grammer played in this episode. If you liked this episode you should check it out. I think it's called ship of the line.
Yeah. That was a good one. Think it was called Cause and Effect. The collision with the USS Bozeman, which had been trapped in the time loop for like 80 years.
Ok. You missed the actual scariest episode completley- Star Trek: VOY s3e15, "Coda". In this episode we learn that our species' collective near death experiences and visions of heaven could have all been induced by race of extra-dimential beings which wait until the moment of death then use our bionural energy (basically our very souls) for thier own purposes...and I quote, from the entities approximation of Janeway's dead father: _"You're in a dangerous profession, Captain. You face death every day. There'll be another time, and I'll be waiting. Eventually, you'll come into my matrix... and you will nourish me for a long, long time."_ By contrast, in "Schism", they ask the computer to make a table, it makes a thick wooden one, like a dining table. Then, they ask the computer to recline it- so far so good. But then, they ask ONE thing- "Computer, make this a metal table." The computer's *first* choice is to create an autopsy/dentist's chair/table from the bloody 20's, complete with dodgy stands on wheels, ready to be equipped to chop! That was the most disturbing thing about that whole episode. The enterprise computer needs counselling, let alone the crew!
so would you if you had nanites eat your memory core ... borg reconfigure your systems .. various alien entities infect and otherwise try and subvert your systems ... heck the only thing that hasnt happened to the ship is it hasnt had a journey where it gets to stay pristine and they get to just have fun lol
That weird autopsy/dissection table that the computer conjured up in Schisms was creepy as heck! Why does the computer have that in its memory banks anyway?!?
I thought Phantasms was scary. Aliens drinking from straw poked through Riker's brain while he's complaining that Data is not answering an old phone ringing was pretty surreal.
Yes, I thought of Phantasms too. That ‘mouth’ on Geordi’s shoulder was horrible too. For me Night Terrors really was scary. The voice saying “eyes in the dark, one moon circles” gave me the willies as a kid and STILL still gives me the creeps when watching it. And I’m a freakin’ grown man now!
That one still gives me issues to this day... I'm a cake decorator, and every time I do a cake with someone's picture on it I get flashbacks to Troi as a cake...
Yeah, and the one thing that really freaked me out about that scene is that those bodies seem like they're turned around and looking at her. **cringe**
I found that the TNG episode where people on the Enterprise keep disappearing was pretty scary. Every time Dr. Crusher was talking to someone and she turned her head for a second and then the person was gone, that sent shivers down my spine.
You're talking about the episode called "Remember Me." Wes Crusher comes up with the idea of creating a warp bubble in an experiment at a starbase. Before she knows it, Dr. Crusher gets pulled into the warp bubble by accident. Pretty soon, Dr, Crusher begins to notice everyone is disappearing at an alarming rate and she seems to be the only one knows it.
Oooh yes that whole ep!!! Seeing thru 7’s eyes, knowing she can’t react...good thing she’s Borg cuz that was scary stuff. I did however really love and keep rewatching the part where she quietly begs Tuvok to let her continue making adjustments to the power system(with the aliens growing more concerned by the second), and him being loud and stupid...so out of necessity she grabs a phaser and simultaneously de-cloaks and takes hostage one of the alien scientists. She is absolute magic!💗
The bit where one of the aliens joins her in the turbolift and sticks a large metal probe into her chest, forcing her to remain completely still and not react at all so as not to reveal she can see them... TENSION! Or the bit where she goes to tell Janeway what she knows and discovers why the captain has been having splitting headaches- two of the aliens _driving needles into her skull through her temples!_
It wasn't listed but I also liked the 2 part Voyager episode The Year of Hell. To me, everyone dying or getting injured was frightening. That species that annihilated civilizations is scary, too.
@@pitodesign There was also hideous screeches answering Riker and Worf when they called out to each other, and then Worf cried out in a very creepy way, too.
It's a pity. Night Terrors has some amazingly well-executed scare scenes and an overall unsettling atmosphere. But the episode itself is... not good or rewatchable.
The Thaw is criminally underrated. It amazes me how much of the fanbase hates it. It should honestly be included in art school courses about Surrealism. And Michael McKean was a fantastic guest star.
The scariest thing about "The Thaw" is not the clown, but the final moments of the episode. The clown is fading into nothing and the ending is from his point of view. His "I'm afraid" as the screen turns black is so terrifying. The very personification of fear is afraid.
This episode was done well but very similar premise to an Outer Limits episode with patients in a coma being controlled in a dream world by one of them.
@@SnowDaulphin I wouldn't be surprised if that's where the got the idea. Nothing new under the Sun, as they say. Isn't there a saying, "Good writers copy, great writers steal" or something like that?
Erik Swiger I’m sure much of that goes on with so much content in TV but that’s ok as long as you build upon it. Some argued that Star Wars copied ideas from John Wayne and Akira Kurosawa movies.
I am surprised they did not include "Wolf in Fold" The episode that was about Jack the Ripper in Original series. Scottie was blamed for the murders at the start.
The episode that I thought should be number one didn’t even make the list: The Doomsday Machine (TOS). That thing was soulless, relentless, insatiable, and damned near indestructible.
Love some scary Trek. It wasn't an episode but in First Contact the sequence with the Borg assimilating the Enterprise crew was pretty unnerving. The red laser lights coming out of the dark! 🤤
ENT "Regeneration" scared the shit out of me, when I first watched it. The totally clueless crew and the so well known borg. Especially when Phlox is trying to get rid of the nanoprobes and shoves himself into the sickbays CT-thingy. Couldn't sit still during that one.
@@deniseherud thats the one where Riker is doing a phychological thriller style play in Ten Forward i think, for Dr Crusher, about being in a psyche ward on an alien planet. turns out Riker WAS on an alien planet or ship under some abduction situation, and his unconscious mind used the people he knew and cast members from the play he was in, to fabricate something that his brain could understand. he kept switching realities and one of the borg queens makes a cameo. Not Alice Krige but the other one. its a great episode. but his mind conjured up the same psyche ward as the play, meanwhile he actually on some alien table about to be medically experimented on.
killwalker 2019 oh yea I remember that one now! He was doing a play and aliens actually had him in their nut house...I never knew the name ...ty for that👍🏻
I know it would probably never appear in any "scariest ST episodes" list, but TNG's Remember Me really creeped me out the first time I saw it. Even thinking about it gives me goosebumps.
@@AlexDanielCPhT Oh geez yes, I can't say it's the best or my favorite personally, but it's up there. Particularly the scene with Picard's life-signs being read off by the computer and when she looks away for just a second it *stops* But even more than that: "Here's a question you shouldn't be able to answer: Computer, what is the nature of the universe?" "The universe is a spheroid region, 705 meters in diameter." Fuckin' CHILLS.
Not quite horror material, but I remembered that episode vaguely from when I was a child and rewatched it again recently. I can say with some certainty that it is my favorite of the Beverly centric episodes.
Absolutely agreed... remember watching that as a kid -- 10 years old or whatever... and for a kid interested in sci-fi and physics, etc. right around the time I remember having some real existential dread about the universe and black holes and before the universe, or after the universe, or outside the universe... and really about the nature of death and nothingness. Hearing the computer basically validate that that nothingness was so close (even to a fictional character) really really got to me.
I suppose it's scary because it's like life. You meet lots of great people, then one by one they all die until you're left completely alone. And then you die.
I think you should have added Star Trek Voyager's "Course: Oblivion". That episode was truly unsettling and the ending to this day leaves me feeling so uneasy.
Just seeing that scene with Dr Crusher and the corpses in this video gave me goose bumps. Also, honorable mention to the Voyager episode "One", where the entire crew in put into stasis for months with only Seven of Nine to run the ship. At first she has the Doctor to talk to but his program goes offline, leaving Seven alone and eventually hallucinating after months of solitude.
I love the episode Empok Nor! It has some really tense moments, and the atmosphere is pretty scary. But it's also has a sad undertone - the crew already viewed Garak as dangerous/untrustworthy (which, to be fair, was a reasonable assumption), and you can see his remorse at the end of the episode, even if he knew it wasn't his fault. Another episode I found scary/stressful is "One", when Seven of Nine has to control the ship by herself, as it goes through a radioactive nebula which forced the rest of the crew into stasis chambers, and she slowly beings to feel the effects of isolation, hallucinates etc... The effects used to display all of this were very eerie.
As far as phycalogical horrors go, I think TNG episode Chain of Command parts 1 and 2 should have been mentioned. The whole torture concept went pretty deep there.
A great episode no doubt,especially when the CARDASIAN infant is allowed to see the battered Alien(to him)PICARD and is told by his father the tormenter that "Humans love their children but not as much or like CARDASIANS love theirs,passing his prejudice to another generation.
I don't know. Identity Crisis messed me up pretty bad for years. Something about the way the altered crew members moved seemed surreal. And the reveal of something invisible casting a shadow? That one haunted me.
"Whose shadow is that?" is like a threshold moment, like Hudson's "Stop your grinnin' an' drop your linen!" line in Aliens. When you hear it, you get that feeling of the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end. Here it comes ...
The Voyager episode where Bi’Lanna has to repair the Maylon ship that’s leaking radiation and is also really spooky! I jump every time the radiation gremlin comes out of the vapor! And: also, the one where Bi’Lanna and the doctor go aboard an adrift ship where only a hologram man remains and all of the organic people are dead. THAT one I can barely watch! It’s horrifying.
This one is so creepy!!! I love it because it's so good but I can only watch it in bright daylight since it's so scary. Still gives me nightmares like it did back when I was 8, watching it for the first time
Fun fact, due to the negative response the studio got to the aliens in "Conspiracy". They were then dropped as the new TNG villain. And instead the Borg were invented for the build up they did at the end of S1. Later in the ST;EU, the parasite aliens were revealed to be somewhat related to the Trill and had been at war with them.
It's been a long, long time since I've seen Conspiracy, but at the end didn't the aliens send a signal to another galaxy (Andromeda in fact I think?) telling their brethren to "try again" or something like that? I always wished we would have gotten more out of that story, it was a terrific little plot to start out a big bad. I guess if they did a book with them and they were related to the Trill somehow, they wouldn't have been from Andromeda, or that both species were originally from Andromeda maybe. Good stuff though, still one of my favorite episodes of Trek to this day.
@@LordLOC Close. The Blue Gills were from this galaxy, according to Data. The final lines of the episode are:- DATA: Captain, I have attempted to trace the message Remmick was sending. I believe it was aimed at an unexplored sector of our galaxy. LAFORGE: Any idea what the message was, Data? DATA: I believe it was a beacon. PICARD: A beacon? DATA: Yes, sir. A homing beacon, sent from Earth. [Enterprise sails out of shot, as Remmick's beeping electronic signal echoes and we see a distant nebula in the middle of the screen]
The aliens in Conspiracy were good and all, but I'm glad we got the Borg as opposed to more of them. In a perfect world, we would have gotten both instead of episodes like IRISH IN SPACE!!!
TNG's "Genesis" is a fantastic episode that is somewhat underrated. Gates McFadden (aka Dr. Crusher) directed them episode and later claimed that Rick Berman thought it was too dark and never asked her to direct again.
@Jayne Eyre Q Who? In season 2 was their 1st appearance. So if you remember Q in it, it's that one. They didn't return until the end of season 3 in Best of both Worlds.
Q Who is definitely #1 for non 'psychological' terror no one likes to be introduced to omnipotent beings that aren't mollified with a simple 'I need you' no negotiation or verbal trickery to manufacture an escape. Guinan speaks!!111 humanity blindly groping around the galaxy; inches from extinction to hell with episodes that 'make crew feel like they're losing their minds' the entire crew(and their families light years away) has already consigned themselves to death/enslavement
here's the thing i love the most about the upright corpses scene, though: dr. crusher reacts exactly as you'd expect for someone with advanced medical education and experience. rather than freak out and horror-movie scream or whatever, she identifies the error and takes control of her perceptions. the show _literally_ has her do exactly what a psychologist or msw would have a client in the same kind of crisis do. dr. crusher does this a lot, actually. explicit skepticism is one of her strongest character traits... to varying degrees of absurdity ("you're not nana! nana's dead! *leever aloooone!* ").
Frame of Mind deserves a shout, not because it itself is terrifying, but because of how unsettling the performance of Jonathan Frakes is in that episode
CGI has come along way since then, but when it first came out yeah it was! What could be scarier than some freaky ass aliens from something called fluidic space absolutely demolishing the Borg like it's child's play?!?
For me it's number 7, the "Thaw". Reason is the system can scan for your deepest fears and have you experience them. Many things can happen to you over and over that wouldn't be possible in the real world. And most of all, having the knowledge that you have no control and now way to escape. And the writing and acting was top notch.
"Schism" is also one of the best holodeck episodes, I think. Beginning with, "computer, give me a table" and ending with an absolute nightmare scenario, complete with the scary clicking language of the aliens. Best. :-)
TNG S7E6 "Phantasms" With the surreal, freaky and body-violating dreams Data has. The mouth on the neck! The shrieking noise Data makes when he opens his mouth really disturbs me to this day!
CANNOT believe the two scariest episodes of Star Trek were left out of this list. Both TNG, the first is season 4 episode 5 "Remember Me" where crew members slowly start to dissapear and Dr Crusher is made to feel like she is going insane until she's the only one left and season 6, episode 21 "State of Mind" where Riker takes part in a psychologically disturbing play only to find himself locked in a Romulan insane asylum being told that he is not a member of Starfleet and never was. Anyone else agree?
Yes yes yes! This whole list! Although I think the scariest SCENE of Star Trek is the one with Beverly and the corpses. Literally I get chills every time I re-watch it.
The TNG episode where it appears there are hundreds of Enterprises from alternate universes, and we see one of the Rikers describes that in his reality the Borg are everywhere, they're in a battle and losing, the captain is dead and he declares he's not going back. Then his heavily damaged and weakened Enterprise is destroyed. The picture of another reality where everything is lost to the Borg was very chilling to me.
The first episode which comes to my mind as a scary star trek episode was doctor's orders from enterpise season 3. The constant anxiety shows perfectly what extreme isolation in a dark place does the the mind, and makes you take your steps trough your own empty house a bit slower after watching, as the effect perfectly bleeds trough
7:36 that scene scared the bejeepers out of my when I first saw it. They're not just sat upright - they've all turned to look at her. Truly the stuff of nightmares.
I remember one Enterprise episode where they found an alien ship with the crew dead and being drained of their bodily fluids. That was pretty creepy, to make matters worse the ones that did it to them came back (Of course) and their ship was far superior to the NX01, nothing was damaging it until they convinced a nearby alien vessel to aid them. Also there was that spacestation that ran on wetware, basically organic brains. AKA what's in your head. They blew the station up and it started repairing itself.
The clown did not "accidentally" scare two of the inhabitants to death, it set an example to keep the others there. No accident involved, just instilling more fear in the remaining ones to empower himself.
Another terrifying episode was Vanishing Point, where Dr. Crusher was pulled into a temporary and shrinking universe where the crew just disappeared until she was the only person in the universe
Night Terrors is the creepiest to me, not only for that scene with Crusher (yes THE scariest scene) but the concept of going mad and hallucinating from lack of sleep and the mounting tension is incredibly frightening
I spent a chunk of my childhood watching Star Trek: The Next Generation re-runs with my dad every single night, but even then I had mostly forgotten some of these episodes until this list mentioned them. Conspiracy wasn't that far out of memory because another video I'd seen somewhat recently mentioned it. Meanwhile, Deanna Troi flying through a creepy dream sequence, as well as the body bags in the cargo bay sequence in Night Terrors, as well as the alien abduction themes in Schisms, were absolutely some of the most interesting and unsettling episodes. Schisms is extra unsettling to me because alien abduction is one of my fears..
I remember an episode of voyager season 4 where a mad hologram killed an entire crew. I remember their collected body parts being revealed near the end.
When I was a kid, we would often watch the original Star Trek series that had Captain Kirk and Spock. The episodes which had Captain Pike in his chair would more often than not freak me out. 😄
@@joerider3769 😄 Then I am glad to be not the only one. How about when the USS Enterprise would whoosh past the screen during the intro credits? That would freak me out so much when a kid too. 🤪
Surprised you didn't mention the sounds from the darkness in the holodeck during Schisms. Just...super effective and creepy (though the corpses from Night Terrors is still worse in my mind and still scares me 30 years later)
That episode of Voyager comes to mind where the aliens who are slightly out of phase are experimenting on the crew and they are walking around with devices all over them and dont know it. Janeway has a killer headache from it all.
I mostly agree with your list. However, your #1 "Schisms" is an episode I never found scary at all. I watched this for the first time when I was 10 or so, and while I liked and remembered the episode, it was not because it was scary. It was a nice mystery story, which is what I liked it for, but that's all. Some of the other episodes on your list, yes, those scared me!
7:16 it wasn't the patch of space that was preventing them from dreaming, it was the presence of the aliens the other side of the Tyken's Rift. We know this, because Bela Tyken (the Melthusian captain who first encountered the phenomenon) didn't go crazy through lack of dreaming. Also: Where the frell was Violations?! I was only TWELVE when that was first shown on BBC2.
I agree those were probably some of the scariest Star Trek episodes the one that I think could even be a part 2 is I don't know the name of the episode that there was an episode of DS9 when Keiko was possessed by the evil Prophets and Miles O'Brien had to find a way to exorcise her and yet wasn't allowed to tell anybody that his wife was possessed
The "sit up" of the dead in "Night Terrors" is just the perfect moment. They don't make noise, they don't move, they don't even turn to look at her. They just... sit up. And kudos for Dr. Crusher for having the mental fortitude to fight back. I believe I would have made a very calm, very measure b-line for the cargo bay doors. ALSO... at the 11:47 time marker. There are clearly Phillips head screws holding that console face down. Good to see some things transcend time. Assuming the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" maxim still plays.
As a kid the first Voyager episode I watched was Phage. I was so scared I could not watch the Voyager series for some time. Today I still have trouble watching this episode.
The Voyager episode 'Waking Moments' is the stuff of disturbing nightmares; I haven't watched it in years, but when I saw the title for this video, this episode is the first one that came to mind!!
7:20 While that patch of space was physically trapping then there, it was *NOT* preventing them from sleeping/dreaming. Another ship was also trapped there. And in fact the cause of their sleep/dream deprivation was in fact caused by how the other ship was communicating what they needed to get everyone to get out of that patch of space.
The Man Trap was a great episode, but I wonder why, once they figured out what the creature was, they just didn't give it some salt, let it turn into something pretty, and study it. Big opportunity lost there.
You've got a good point. This episode indulged in fear of the Other, which I don't think really lived up to Roddenberry's idealism. They redeemed themselves with Devil In The Dark, when they discovered that the Other had a valid point of view, and started to work together with her.
For me, DS9 S04E19 (Hard Time) is still one of the most scariest things I've seen. Miles being injected with a memory of being 20 years in isolation with constant flashbacks and manifestations of his mind, culminating in being so very close to taking his own life? Pure horror...
I just watched Violations for the first time yesterday. I'm wondering if certain networks weren't playing it back in the day because of the dark subject matter and that's why I'd never seen it.
Lol.. I commented about that one before I saw yours.. but I remember it being pretty darn SCARY to a 10 year old me at the time. Frame of Mind and the one where Beverly asks the computer the size of the universe and it answers "760 meters...." most definitely added to my existential dread about existence and consciousness and death (Edit: in a good way, though... they terrified me for sure - but were definitely thought provoking and I'm sure good for a young mind, even if they gave me some nightmares)
The skin of evil was another one that creeped me out and was surprised that it didn't made on this list. An evil entity pulled a shuttlecraft down to the planet containing Diana Troi and the crew was trying to rescue her.
The Thaw is one of my favorite Voyager episodes and I wonder if the story was inspired by Harlan Ellison's 'I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream' with all the parallels that are there: Evil A.I. becomes self aware and toys with 6 human captives by manipulating there worst fears and worst traits.
Reading the title and thinking about the scene where they all stand in the holodock of the E and puzzling together a room with a certain chair in it out of the back of their combined memories. While getting closer to the image they all share, they get more anxious until Riker says:..."I was that room." And the rest of the group is nodding in agreement and fear... While beeing suspenseful as hell this scene also shows one of the more practical uses of the holodeck. Watching the video,...very good list, well done!
Night Terrors really was one hell of a ride but the episode that gave me the highest heartrate (of both excitement and terror) was the one when the TNG crew was catapulted billions of lightyears and further past reality. To me, a future astronomer, it was incredibly exiting
Nice picks but does not make you question the nightmare-ish reality, you find yourself in. TNG's "Frame of Mind" is in Alfred Hitchcock style that leaves you question if reality it is real. Nothing scarier than loosing your mind
I always found season 6s episode 5 Schisms TNG"s scariest episode! The bit where Riker, Jordie and Dianne Troy are recreating their memories on the hollow deck and those clicking sounds start freaked me right out. i was like 7 when i first saw it, was the 7 or 8pm slot on whatever channel it was on back in the 90s... you know back when there was only 5 channels LOL. But yea as much as its not considered scary by todays standards, it still left an impression, even at 30 years old, when most horrors dont even make me flinch... Schisms still gives me the willies! XD
In TNG, there was an episode (dont remember the title)where Geordi was among a team that explored an abandoned research camp, and afterwards all the team members save for Geordi and another had gone missing, under some compulsion to return to the camp. Geordi takes camera footage of the investigation of the site and finds an odd shadow, then has the footage recreated on the holodeck, where he slowly deduces through removing all familiar parts of the scene, and creates the silhouette of a figure that had to be what created the shadow, but couldnt be seen by anyone around it. Geordi piecing together an unseen entity in a 3D space, though a simulation, was pretty eerie. I think it was the episode before Night Terrors.
Well done Craig, yes the episode was called "Identity Crisis" it was actually a much more scary and tragic episode, given the fates of several Starfleet crew they couldn't save from Geordi's old ship the U.S.S. Victory.
Identity Crisis is another one that gave me nightmares as a child. When Geordi is in the holodeck and discovers the shadow on a wall that doesn't belong to anyone and then has the computer recreate its shape was scary as hell. Then to watch him turn into the same alien was terrifying.
Or, that time when the Galaxy class Enterprise was built, it had a murder on board. The murder wasn't known until sometime years after the launch of the ship.
oh boy i was just like "wtfwtfwtf what is this"
TNG was full of scary episodes!
I watched it in reruns late at night after everyone was in bed! Geordie discovering that shadow was so much creepier than just showing an alien monster.
yeah that was spooky.
Schisms is possibly the best representation of an abduction experience outside of an X-files episode.
Not really scary though.
@@ivaneames4354 I agree, in fact I didn't find it scary at all.
Fire in the Sky is by far the scariest.
Logical and true
Neelix needed. a flash light under his face during his scary story.
Andrew Robinson as Garak is hardly often overlooked. He's an insanely popular character with a huge fanbase.
@@jsullivan2112 that's a possibility too, but mayhaps I'm biased. I've been a longtime fan, even before DS9. 😎
@@jsullivan2112 Leondard Nimoy did break out of Star Trek as a director.
Agreed
he was my favourite when it was airing. I don't think he was at all overlooked. bloody legend, that lad!
why have they never used him again?
@@derekscanlan4641Probably because Garak wouldn't fit in any of the current series' timelines. It would be a reach to include him in Picard. None of the others fit. Would leave to see him again though!
How do you know Riker is having issues? They make Frakes' hair slightly messy.
Never more true than in Parallels!!!
@@tracygarrett3952 i wont go back!
"Identity Crisis" always terrified me as a child, especially the scene where Geordie analyzes the images and finds an extra shadow
YES this ^^^^
Yes it was great tension building in that scene absolutely genius using minimal budget just great writing.
No mention of TNG: Identity Crisis?
Geordi's holodeck investigation scene, where he discovered there was someone or something else present on an away mission long ago. The holodeck recreated it as a dark ominous shape. Not only an outstanding use of the holodeck, but a very unsettling scene!
I was waiting for this one, too! I don't exactly know why, but that holodeck scene still creeps me out to this day.
@@angrboda45 me too, it feels like the "shape" is in there with him, even though we know it's fake
I'm so glad Schisms was number one. It all builds to that moment when they're in the holodeck, with the clicking, the table, the bright light, and Geordi says, "I've been in this room before." and I think Riker says, "We all have." Literally gave me chills, even after I've seen it a dozen times over the last 25 years.
Yep that scene manages to be super creepy without showing a thing.
I wasn't scared very much of the actual episode but it came at a time when many people actually *believed* in alien abductions and thought that kind of thing was a real thing. I never really thought so but I think some of my friends did. Some people *wanted* to be abducted and thought the aliens were good/nice and would not hurt them, I just thought that the whole "alien abductions" thing was made up and pretend but it didn't seem polite to say so.
This was when I was in my teens and it didn't seem polite to say to my teenage and pre-teen friends, "No, this *isn't* something that could really happen in real life or not that I know of anyway," or whatever.
Some adults believed in that kind of thing too around back then. It's less popular to actually *believe* in it now.
What was scary was, people about my age *thinking* it was scary because they thought that it was something very realistic that could actually happen.
Well, okay, technically anything *could* happen, but not likely.
"Schisms" was the first creepy episode that ST:TNG had, back when most people probably didn't expect that from it, so okay, yes, thank you to the video for mentioning that.
And we didn't have The X-Files yet, back then.
Just realized that The X-Files would almost certainly have frightened more people more often if it had originally aired about a decade or two earlier.
By the middle of the 1990's to the late 1990's, people were getting much more blase about alien abductions and scary TV shows and other things of that sort. Audiences were more used to that kind of material by then. It was still creepy sometimes but we weren't as extremely startled or horrified or terrified as we might have been.
That TNG episode where they're stuck in the time loop that keeps ending in the destruction of the Enterprise really got me as a kid. "All hands abandon ship! All hands abandon..." BOOM. Freaked me out when they all started to remember little things.
Then the avert the collision and are greeted with, "Greetings. I am Captain Frasier Crane of the Federation starship Cheers. No need to introduce yourselves because over here everybody knows your name."
In one of the books the story involves the captain Kelsey Grammer played in this episode. If you liked this episode you should check it out. I think it's called ship of the line.
Yeah. That was a good one. Think it was called Cause and Effect. The collision with the USS Bozeman, which had been trapped in the time loop for like 80 years.
Richard Payne It’s called Cause And Effect. It’s my favorite episode of TNG ever.
@@wgb01001 The episode was called cause and effect the book I'm recommending was Ship of the Line.
Ok. You missed the actual scariest episode completley- Star Trek: VOY s3e15, "Coda". In this episode we learn that our species' collective near death experiences and visions of heaven could have all been induced by race of extra-dimential beings which wait until the moment of death then use our bionural energy (basically our very souls) for thier own purposes...and I quote, from the entities approximation of Janeway's dead father:
_"You're in a dangerous profession, Captain. You face death every day. There'll be another time, and I'll be waiting. Eventually, you'll come into my matrix... and you will nourish me for a long, long time."_
By contrast, in "Schism", they ask the computer to make a table, it makes a thick wooden one, like a dining table. Then, they ask the computer to recline it- so far so good. But then, they ask ONE thing- "Computer, make this a metal table."
The computer's *first* choice is to create an autopsy/dentist's chair/table from the bloody 20's, complete with dodgy stands on wheels, ready to be equipped to chop!
That was the most disturbing thing about that whole episode. The enterprise computer needs counselling, let alone the crew!
1. i just watched Coda a few days ago lol. i like that episode.
2. Computer needing counselling. 😂😂😂.
3. Nice rundown.
so would you if you had nanites eat your memory core ... borg reconfigure your systems .. various alien entities infect and otherwise try and subvert your systems ... heck the only thing that hasnt happened to the ship is it hasnt had a journey where it gets to stay pristine and they get to just have fun lol
That weird autopsy/dissection table that the computer conjured up in Schisms was creepy as heck! Why does the computer have that in its memory banks anyway?!?
What about that ep of Voyager where the dead crewman comes back having been resurrected by aliens as their daughter...that was messed up
Personally i think janeway met the father of lies-the devil and decided she didnt want to go to hell. Smart girl
I thought Phantasms was scary. Aliens drinking from straw poked through Riker's brain while he's complaining that Data is not answering an old phone ringing was pretty surreal.
Yes, I thought of Phantasms too. That ‘mouth’ on Geordi’s shoulder was horrible too.
For me Night Terrors really was scary. The voice saying “eyes in the dark, one moon circles” gave me the willies as a kid and STILL still gives me the creeps when watching it. And I’m a freakin’ grown man now!
That one still gives me issues to this day... I'm a cake decorator, and every time I do a cake with someone's picture on it I get flashbacks to Troi as a cake...
Then, you need to watch Star Trek: Acid Party; 40 minutes of pure craziness with an unexpected ending....LOL!
when night terrors was broadcast for the 1st time i was about 10. it was definitely spooky for stng at the time.
Yep. The Sigmund Freud phone call always gave me the chills.
I got the chills when you showed the scene with the bodies and Dr Crusher. Still soo spooky.
That WAS freaky....
Yeah, and the one thing that really freaked me out about that scene is that those bodies seem like they're turned around and looking at her.
**cringe**
@@thfpt And you heard the body bags rustle... :O
I remember watching this episode as a child! One of the scariest episodes for sure.
@@andrewjoaquin2796 Watched it again for the first tiem in many years only the other day. Had forgotten about that. Yes, it is creepy.
I found that the TNG episode where people on the Enterprise keep disappearing was pretty scary. Every time Dr. Crusher was talking to someone and she turned her head for a second and then the person was gone, that sent shivers down my spine.
You're talking about the episode called "Remember Me." Wes Crusher comes up with the idea of creating a warp bubble in an experiment at a starbase. Before she knows it, Dr. Crusher gets pulled into the warp bubble by accident. Pretty soon, Dr, Crusher begins to notice everyone is disappearing at an alarming rate and she seems to be the only one knows it.
Not only that, the very person you're talking to is immediately forgotten by everyone else as though they were never there
For scary atmosphere I vote for Voy: Scientific method. Part when 7of9 walk thru corridors and see aliens that experiment on crew is very good.
Oooh yes that whole ep!!! Seeing thru 7’s eyes, knowing she can’t react...good thing she’s Borg cuz that was scary stuff. I did however really love and keep rewatching the part where she quietly begs Tuvok to let her continue making adjustments to the power system(with the aliens growing more concerned by the second), and him being loud and stupid...so out of necessity she grabs a phaser and simultaneously de-cloaks and takes hostage one of the alien scientists. She is absolute magic!💗
Yep!
Yes, that episode was disturbing! Couldn't think of the title.
The bit where one of the aliens joins her in the turbolift and sticks a large metal probe into her chest, forcing her to remain completely still and not react at all so as not to reveal she can see them... TENSION! Or the bit where she goes to tell Janeway what she knows and discovers why the captain has been having splitting headaches- two of the aliens _driving needles into her skull through her temples!_
It wasn't listed but I also liked the 2 part Voyager episode The Year of Hell. To me, everyone dying or getting injured was frightening. That species that annihilated civilizations is scary, too.
The best line of the Star Trek reboot: “Space is danger and disease wrapped in darkness and silence.” Well said Bones!
"Where Silence Has Lease". The moment Nagilum appears on the view screen all but soiled my pants as a kid. I had nightmares about him for years!
I had a similar reaction to the TOS episode with the Horta. Acid spraying monsters were my nightmare fuel for what felt like years.
The part with Riker and Worf on the empty Galaxy class ship - "Two bridges?"
@@pitodesign There was also hideous screeches answering Riker and Worf when they called out to each other, and then Worf cried out in a very creepy way, too.
@@Foebane72 And then the ship started fading away on main screen, and they were still aboard! :-O
Oh yes! I forgot about this episode.
TNG's 'Night Terrors' is one of my favorite episodes. When it comes on, the lights go off! That body bags scene is pure nightmare fuel!
A Centaur yes!!!!!!!!😱 Even the unflappable Dr Crusher was completely gobsmacked! When all the bodies sat up, I nearly laid down,,,dead😂💀👻
Should have been number one!
@@deniseherud Always! :O
"So I started blasting"
It's a pity. Night Terrors has some amazingly well-executed scare scenes and an overall unsettling atmosphere. But the episode itself is... not good or rewatchable.
The Thaw is criminally underrated. It amazes me how much of the fanbase hates it. It should honestly be included in art school courses about Surrealism. And Michael McKean was a fantastic guest star.
Michael McKean and Kate Mulgrew were a great dynamic in that episode.
The scariest thing about "The Thaw" is not the clown, but the final moments of the episode. The clown is fading into nothing and the ending is from his point of view. His "I'm afraid" as the screen turns black is so terrifying. The very personification of fear is afraid.
And Janeway says, "I know."
This episode was done well but very similar premise to an Outer Limits episode with patients in a coma being controlled in a dream world by one of them.
@@SnowDaulphin I wouldn't be surprised if that's where the got the idea. Nothing new under the Sun, as they say. Isn't there a saying, "Good writers copy, great writers steal" or something like that?
Erik Swiger I’m sure much of that goes on with so much content in TV but that’s ok as long as you build upon it. Some argued that Star Wars copied ideas from John Wayne and Akira Kurosawa movies.
Moral of the story: Janeway is more frightening than fear itself.
I am surprised they did not include "Wolf in Fold" The episode that was about Jack the Ripper in Original series. Scottie was blamed for the murders at the start.
And it’s TOS... I don’t know many 60’s non-horror shows had the guts to actually imply/show murder happening in real time (almost seen on screen).
True, WhatCulture was sloppy in not including it here.
One of my fav tos episodes for sure
We are told these women have been stabbed repeatedly but hear one scream...
That episode is too ridiculous for me. Not TOS's finest hour in my opinion.
The episode that I thought should be number one didn’t even make the list: The Doomsday Machine (TOS). That thing was soulless, relentless, insatiable, and damned near indestructible.
Eeeh, but was it scary? It was tense and suspenseful. But I never felt afraid of it or scared. Just that the stakes were really high.
The two that were chased by a giant black cat and became cockroaches 😨
Fantastic episode, one of TOS's best, but not quite horror material.
Love some scary Trek. It wasn't an episode but in First Contact the sequence with the Borg assimilating the Enterprise crew was pretty unnerving. The red laser lights coming out of the dark! 🤤
HELL YES. AND the Picard Borg jump scary at the movies start.
Creepy Trek: Masks and Sub Rosa.
ENT "Regeneration" scared the shit out of me, when I first watched it. The totally clueless crew and the so well known borg. Especially when Phlox is trying to get rid of the nanoprobes and shoves himself into the sickbays CT-thingy. Couldn't sit still during that one.
Yea that episode was intense!!
Yeah that Borg episode was good!
I always thought "Frame of Mind" was a particularly unsettling TNG episode.
Same here! That episode would have been in my top 10 scariest episodes.
definitely a good one
Which was that one? I don’t recall it at all....
@@deniseherud thats the one where Riker is doing a phychological thriller style play in Ten Forward i think, for Dr Crusher, about being in a psyche ward on an alien planet.
turns out Riker WAS on an alien planet or ship under some abduction situation, and his unconscious mind used the people he knew and cast members from the play he was in, to fabricate something that his brain could understand. he kept switching realities and one of the borg queens makes a cameo. Not Alice Krige but the other one.
its a great episode.
but his mind conjured up the same psyche ward as the play, meanwhile he actually on some alien table about to be medically experimented on.
killwalker 2019 oh yea I remember that one now! He was doing a play and aliens actually had him in their nut house...I never knew the name ...ty for that👍🏻
You missed Frame of Mind (TNG), Scientific Method (VOY), and Macrocosm (VOY). Macrocosm particularly scary given the current state of the world.
I know it would probably never appear in any "scariest ST episodes" list, but TNG's Remember Me really creeped me out the first time I saw it. Even thinking about it gives me goosebumps.
@@AlexDanielCPhT Oh geez yes, I can't say it's the best or my favorite personally, but it's up there. Particularly the scene with Picard's life-signs being read off by the computer and when she looks away for just a second it *stops*
But even more than that:
"Here's a question you shouldn't be able to answer:
Computer, what is the nature of the universe?"
"The universe is a spheroid region, 705 meters in diameter."
Fuckin'
CHILLS.
Good choice
Not quite horror material, but I remembered that episode vaguely from when I was a child and rewatched it again recently. I can say with some certainty that it is my favorite of the Beverly centric episodes.
Absolutely agreed... remember watching that as a kid -- 10 years old or whatever... and for a kid interested in sci-fi and physics, etc. right around the time I remember having some real existential dread about the universe and black holes and before the universe, or after the universe, or outside the universe... and really about the nature of death and nothingness. Hearing the computer basically validate that that nothingness was so close (even to a fictional character) really really got to me.
I suppose it's scary because it's like life. You meet lots of great people, then one by one they all die until you're left completely alone. And then you die.
Star Trek Voyager S4 E25 "One"
Seven only member of the crew awake
Her mind playing tricks
Yea that was scary
But she grabbed her favorite Big Gun and everything was fine...he was *not* going to be accommodated, imaginary or not😂💗
I definitely expected that episode to be on this list! It had a great spooky atmosphere.
Ooh that one is on tonight on the all Star Trek 6 nights a week. Will watch it tomorrow morning. It’s called Heros and Icons
Yep, another really good choice. I don't think a single other episode in all of Star Trek portrayed Isolation in such an unnerving manner!
I think it's kind of funny; Capt. Janeway, in "The Thaw", actually manages to scare "fear" into releasing the people connected to it.
One of Janeway's most badass moments.
"I knooooooooooooow."
...drat.
I think you should have added Star Trek Voyager's "Course: Oblivion". That episode was truly unsettling and the ending to this day leaves me feeling so uneasy.
Just seeing that scene with Dr Crusher and the corpses in this video gave me goose bumps.
Also, honorable mention to the Voyager episode "One", where the entire crew in put into stasis for months with only Seven of Nine to run the ship. At first she has the Doctor to talk to but his program goes offline, leaving Seven alone and eventually hallucinating after months of solitude.
I love the episode Empok Nor! It has some really tense moments, and the atmosphere is pretty scary. But it's also has a sad undertone - the crew already viewed Garak as dangerous/untrustworthy (which, to be fair, was a reasonable assumption), and you can see his remorse at the end of the episode, even if he knew it wasn't his fault.
Another episode I found scary/stressful is "One", when Seven of Nine has to control the ship by herself, as it goes through a radioactive nebula which forced the rest of the crew into stasis chambers, and she slowly beings to feel the effects of isolation, hallucinates etc... The effects used to display all of this were very eerie.
'Scuse me, but I find TNG's "Frame of Mind" utterly terrifying.
I refuse to ever watch it again. Once was enough. Props to Frakes for making it look authentic.
That's because it's not scary. But it is quite the trip.
That is literally one of my fav eps it's tense and scary and the viewer feels as unsettled as Riker. Now I wanna go watch it again.
@@datawolf39 Watched it yesterday after watching the vid, and before posting my comment above.
Really?
As far as phycalogical horrors go, I think TNG episode Chain of Command parts 1 and 2 should have been mentioned. The whole torture concept went pretty deep there.
More depth than the The Empath with a classic method actor taking it all in with “There Are Four Lights!”
A great episode no doubt,especially when the CARDASIAN infant is allowed to see the battered Alien(to him)PICARD and is told by his father the tormenter that "Humans love their children but not as much or like CARDASIANS love theirs,passing his prejudice to another generation.
now, how many lights do you see...
thErE aRE FOuR lIGhTs
Ah man, that episode is so good!
I don't know. Identity Crisis messed me up pretty bad for years. Something about the way the altered crew members moved seemed surreal. And the reveal of something invisible casting a shadow? That one haunted me.
Whenever I watch it and he recreates the shadow creature in the holodeck it is almost too much for me.
"Whose shadow is that?" is like a threshold moment, like Hudson's "Stop your grinnin' an' drop your linen!" line in Aliens. When you hear it, you get that feeling of the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end. Here it comes ...
Having Night Terrors/Identity Crisis was definitely the scariest dual episode VHS from the entire series.
The Voyager episode where Bi’Lanna has to repair the Maylon ship that’s leaking radiation and is also really spooky! I jump every time the radiation gremlin comes out of the vapor! And: also, the one where Bi’Lanna and the doctor go aboard an adrift ship where only a hologram man remains and all of the organic people are dead. THAT one I can barely watch! It’s horrifying.
That was a good episode!
This one is so creepy!!! I love it because it's so good but I can only watch it in bright daylight since it's so scary. Still gives me nightmares like it did back when I was 8, watching it for the first time
Fun fact, due to the negative response the studio got to the aliens in "Conspiracy". They were then dropped as the new TNG villain. And instead the Borg were invented for the build up they did at the end of S1.
Later in the ST;EU, the parasite aliens were revealed to be somewhat related to the Trill and had been at war with them.
Traded one bit of nightmare fuel for another.
Wow!
It's been a long, long time since I've seen Conspiracy, but at the end didn't the aliens send a signal to another galaxy (Andromeda in fact I think?) telling their brethren to "try again" or something like that? I always wished we would have gotten more out of that story, it was a terrific little plot to start out a big bad. I guess if they did a book with them and they were related to the Trill somehow, they wouldn't have been from Andromeda, or that both species were originally from Andromeda maybe. Good stuff though, still one of my favorite episodes of Trek to this day.
@@LordLOC Close. The Blue Gills were from this galaxy, according to Data.
The final lines of the episode are:-
DATA: Captain, I have attempted to trace the message Remmick was sending. I believe it was aimed at an unexplored sector of our galaxy.
LAFORGE: Any idea what the message was, Data?
DATA: I believe it was a beacon.
PICARD: A beacon?
DATA: Yes, sir. A homing beacon, sent from Earth.
[Enterprise sails out of shot, as Remmick's beeping electronic signal echoes and we see a distant nebula in the middle of the screen]
The aliens in Conspiracy were good and all, but I'm glad we got the Borg as opposed to more of them. In a perfect world, we would have gotten both instead of episodes like IRISH IN SPACE!!!
TNG's "Genesis" is a fantastic episode that is somewhat underrated. Gates McFadden (aka Dr. Crusher) directed them episode and later claimed that Rick Berman thought it was too dark and never asked her to direct again.
Kind of surprised the Borg's first two appearances didn't make the list; Q Who and Best of Both Worlds P1 were each scary in their own way.
Q Who is the only tv show that I remember giving me nightmares. Definitely should have been mentioned.
If Picard had been voting, #1 would have been one of the episodes where Lwaxana Troi is out to marry him.
@Jayne Eyre Q Who? In season 2 was their 1st appearance. So if you remember Q in it, it's that one. They didn't return until the end of season 3 in Best of both Worlds.
Q Who is definitely #1 for non 'psychological' terror
no one likes to be introduced to omnipotent beings that aren't mollified with a simple 'I need you'
no negotiation or verbal trickery to manufacture an escape.
Guinan speaks!!111
humanity blindly groping around the galaxy; inches from extinction
to hell with episodes that 'make crew feel like they're losing their minds'
the entire crew(and their families light years away) has already consigned themselves to death/enslavement
here's the thing i love the most about the upright corpses scene, though: dr. crusher reacts exactly as you'd expect for someone with advanced medical education and experience. rather than freak out and horror-movie scream or whatever, she identifies the error and takes control of her perceptions. the show _literally_ has her do exactly what a psychologist or msw would have a client in the same kind of crisis do.
dr. crusher does this a lot, actually. explicit skepticism is one of her strongest character traits... to varying degrees of absurdity ("you're not nana! nana's dead! *leever aloooone!* ").
Frame of Mind deserves a shout, not because it itself is terrifying, but because of how unsettling the performance of Jonathan Frakes is in that episode
The de-evolution episode was one of my favorite episodes of TNG. It was highly unrealistic but a fascinating concept.
You forgot about voyager's first contact with Species 8427. THAT was the scariest episode of all time!
you mean 8472 8427 is completely different ;).
Yes, two numbers swapped is completely different. You are not being pedantic at all.
CGI has come along way since then, but when it first came out yeah it was! What could be scarier than some freaky ass aliens from something called fluidic space absolutely demolishing the Borg like it's child's play?!?
Great list, I'd definitely add VOY - One, TNG - Frame of Mind and TNG - Phantasms, the last one really scared the sh*t out of me when I was a kid:)
For me it's number 7, the "Thaw". Reason is the system can scan for your deepest fears and have you experience them. Many things can happen to you over and over that wouldn't be possible in the real world. And most of all, having the knowledge that you have no control and now way to escape. And the writing and acting was top notch.
"The Thaw" was basically "It" in Star Trek form. Complete with the scary clown.
"Schism" is also one of the best holodeck episodes, I think. Beginning with, "computer, give me a table" and ending with an absolute nightmare scenario, complete with the scary clicking language of the aliens. Best. :-)
TNG S7E6 "Phantasms"
With the surreal, freaky and body-violating dreams Data has. The mouth on the neck! The shrieking noise Data makes when he opens his mouth really disturbs me to this day!
STTNG - Frame of Mind. STV - Memorial. Both of these were terrifying state of mind episodes.
I had the opposite reaction to Bebe Neuwirth offering to trade escape for sex. It was totally out of character for Riker to even think twice about it.
My number one was Armus from Skin of Evil. Maybe not the scariest episode overall, but his design and threat level always got me when I was a child.
CANNOT believe the two scariest episodes of Star Trek were left out of this list. Both TNG, the first is season 4 episode 5 "Remember Me" where crew members slowly start to dissapear and Dr Crusher is made to feel like she is going insane until she's the only one left and season 6, episode 21 "State of Mind" where Riker takes part in a psychologically disturbing play only to find himself locked in a Romulan insane asylum being told that he is not a member of Starfleet and never was. Anyone else agree?
Yes yes yes! This whole list! Although I think the scariest SCENE of Star Trek is the one with Beverly and the corpses. Literally I get chills every time I re-watch it.
The TNG episode where it appears there are hundreds of Enterprises from alternate universes, and we see one of the Rikers describes that in his reality the Borg are everywhere, they're in a battle and losing, the captain is dead and he declares he's not going back. Then his heavily damaged and weakened Enterprise is destroyed. The picture of another reality where everything is lost to the Borg was very chilling to me.
The first episode which comes to my mind as a scary star trek episode was doctor's orders from enterpise season 3. The constant anxiety shows perfectly what extreme isolation in a dark place does the the mind, and makes you take your steps trough your own empty house a bit slower after watching, as the effect perfectly bleeds trough
had to scroll way too deep to find the first mention of that episode
In Star Trek an alien abduction is just regular kidnapping.
7:36 that scene scared the bejeepers out of my when I first saw it. They're not just sat upright - they've all turned to look at her. Truly the stuff of nightmares.
I remember one Enterprise episode where they found an alien ship with the crew dead and being drained of their bodily fluids. That was pretty creepy, to make matters worse the ones that did it to them came back (Of course) and their ship was far superior to the NX01, nothing was damaging it until they convinced a nearby alien vessel to aid them.
Also there was that spacestation that ran on wetware, basically organic brains. AKA what's in your head. They blew the station up and it started repairing itself.
The clown did not "accidentally" scare two of the inhabitants to death, it set an example to keep the others there. No accident involved, just instilling more fear in the remaining ones to empower himself.
Another terrifying episode was Vanishing Point, where Dr. Crusher was pulled into a temporary and shrinking universe where the crew just disappeared until she was the only person in the universe
Yeah I'm pretty sure that was called Remember Me
Night Terrors is the creepiest to me, not only for that scene with Crusher (yes THE scariest scene) but the concept of going mad and hallucinating from lack of sleep and the mounting tension is incredibly frightening
I spent a chunk of my childhood watching Star Trek: The Next Generation re-runs with my dad every single night, but even then I had mostly forgotten some of these episodes until this list mentioned them.
Conspiracy wasn't that far out of memory because another video I'd seen somewhat recently mentioned it. Meanwhile, Deanna Troi flying through a creepy dream sequence, as well as the body bags in the cargo bay sequence in Night Terrors, as well as the alien abduction themes in Schisms, were absolutely some of the most interesting and unsettling episodes. Schisms is extra unsettling to me because alien abduction is one of my fears..
I remember an episode of voyager season 4 where a mad hologram killed an entire crew. I remember their collected body parts being revealed near the end.
That was scary. Leland Orser played that role chillingly. And then he went and gave us an even scarier character in ENT's Carpenter Street.
When I was a kid, we would often watch the original Star Trek series that had Captain Kirk and Spock. The episodes which had Captain Pike in his chair would more often than not freak me out. 😄
The Cage/Menagerie was terrifying to me! Being held captive like that! Too cerebral, my arse!
@@joerider3769 😄 Then I am glad to be not the only one. How about when the USS Enterprise would whoosh past the screen during the intro credits? That would freak me out so much when a kid too. 🤪
Surprised you didn't mention the sounds from the darkness in the holodeck during Schisms. Just...super effective and creepy (though the corpses from Night Terrors is still worse in my mind and still scares me 30 years later)
In "The Man Trap", the couple's name is "Crater" , not "Carter"
Just FYI
thank you
may have had Samantha Carter on his mind .. who wouldnt ;)
It's almost like the presenter has never watched the show.....
You should do top 10 saddest episodes
Great idea, but I would pass on watching that.
RoGER NO, They did, check the playlists!!
That episode of Voyager comes to mind where the aliens who are slightly out of phase are experimenting on the crew and they are walking around with devices all over them and dont know it. Janeway has a killer headache from it all.
Damn, I need to rewatch Voyager because I don't remember that...
I think I have to echo an earlier comment, but "Catspaw" from TOS was pretty frightening to me...
No it wasn't, lol!
Lol the Thaw really got to me as a kid lol, the Janeway hologram was great :)
Empok Nor is my #1 that spooks my every time I watch it.
Yeah I'd agree with you there.
@@skywipe1949 there's something about a psychological slasher fic in star Trek that really does it for me lol.
@@TrekkieBrie And nobody is better at playing the slasher than Andrew Robinson.
Hari Seldon let’s remember, Robinson played the serial killer in the original Dirty Harry movie.
@@SwordsmanRyan Naturally. And when Worf beat him up, you could tell it wasn't done by Clint Eastwood because he looked too good.
I mostly agree with your list. However, your #1 "Schisms" is an episode I never found scary at all. I watched this for the first time when I was 10 or so, and while I liked and remembered the episode, it was not because it was scary. It was a nice mystery story, which is what I liked it for, but that's all. Some of the other episodes on your list, yes, those scared me!
7:16 it wasn't the patch of space that was preventing them from dreaming, it was the presence of the aliens the other side of the Tyken's Rift. We know this, because Bela Tyken (the Melthusian captain who first encountered the phenomenon) didn't go crazy through lack of dreaming.
Also: Where the frell was Violations?! I was only TWELVE when that was first shown on BBC2.
These scariest episodes are actually some of my favorite ones. Especially that last one 😊
I've always found "Course Oblivion" from Voyager to be one of the more unnerving episodes to watch.
I agree those were probably some of the scariest Star Trek episodes the one that I think could even be a part 2 is I don't know the name of the episode that there was an episode of DS9 when Keiko was possessed by the evil Prophets and Miles O'Brien had to find a way to exorcise her and yet wasn't allowed to tell anybody that his wife was possessed
Season5, Episode 5 "The Assignment"
That one was creepy and Keiko tookon a whole new vibe!
C'mon Trek Culture, you've got to put the season number/episode number in the description box so that we can run and see these episodes.
this exactly - i refer to these lists for what to go back and rewatch
Thought “ Revulsion” Voyager about a killer hologram was scary
we now need a full-mix of "Darkness and Silence" - please make it happen.
The "sit up" of the dead in "Night Terrors" is just the perfect moment. They don't make noise, they don't move, they don't even turn to look at her. They just... sit up. And kudos for Dr. Crusher for having the mental fortitude to fight back. I believe I would have made a very calm, very measure b-line for the cargo bay doors.
ALSO... at the 11:47 time marker. There are clearly Phillips head screws holding that console face down. Good to see some things transcend time. Assuming the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" maxim still plays.
As a kid the first Voyager episode I watched was Phage. I was so scared I could not watch the Voyager series for some time. Today I still have trouble watching this episode.
The Voyager episode 'Waking Moments' is the stuff of disturbing nightmares; I haven't watched it in years, but when I saw the title for this video, this episode is the first one that came to mind!!
I jokingly called "Impulse" "28 Solar Units Later".
7:20
While that patch of space was physically trapping then there,
it was *NOT* preventing them from sleeping/dreaming.
Another ship was also trapped there.
And in fact the cause of their sleep/dream deprivation was in fact caused by how the other ship was communicating what they needed to get everyone to get out of that patch of space.
The Man Trap was a great episode, but I wonder why, once they figured out what the creature was, they just didn't give it some salt, let it turn into something pretty, and study it. Big opportunity lost there.
Yeh. Kinda understandable though, since Kirk's approach to threatening things is usually to shoot first and ask questions later.
@@eddroddy1281 unless female then its woo first shoot second and question after ... usually about romulan ale
@@0623kaboom to true sir.
You've got a good point. This episode indulged in fear of the Other, which I don't think really lived up to Roddenberry's idealism. They redeemed themselves with Devil In The Dark, when they discovered that the Other had a valid point of view, and started to work together with her.
Shouldn't be on the list
For me, DS9 S04E19 (Hard Time) is still one of the most scariest things I've seen.
Miles being injected with a memory of being 20 years in isolation with constant flashbacks and manifestations of his mind, culminating in being so very close to taking his own life? Pure horror...
A good episode, but I really hate how none of that experience lingers with O Brien and never gets mentioned again, like ever.
I really think TNG's "Violations" and TOS's "Wolf in the Fold" should've made the list somehow, honourable or whatever.
I just watched Violations for the first time yesterday. I'm wondering if certain networks weren't playing it back in the day because of the dark subject matter and that's why I'd never seen it.
Actually, Violations is pretty creepy and touching on a rough subject matter.
The next generations frame of mind wasn't scary but by far the most unsettling episode of the series. To me at least
Psychological horror where the audience felt like Riker and had no idea what was real or not. Unsettling for sure.
OMG totally - super unsettling
Lol.. I commented about that one before I saw yours.. but I remember it being pretty darn SCARY to a 10 year old me at the time. Frame of Mind and the one where Beverly asks the computer the size of the universe and it answers "760 meters...." most definitely added to my existential dread about existence and consciousness and death
(Edit: in a good way, though... they terrified me for sure - but were definitely thought provoking and I'm sure good for a young mind, even if they gave me some nightmares)
That's what makes it scary. Psychological horror...not knowing what's real burns up your 🧠!
I remember watching Genesis and it scared me the most when Marina (Deanna Troi) emerged from the bathtub.
hell no
the scariest thing was barclay jumping at the window in engineering
@@a.l.e.x8118 And mutated Worf hunting Picard spitting that venom on his right hand while in the Jeffery's tube above Picard.😱
@@a.l.e.x8118 Plus I couldn't have been the only one to jump back scared shitless when Man-Spider Barclay showed up in engineering.
That made me think of the scene in the haunted hotel room in Kubrick's The Shining.
Not whole scary episode, but the scene in "Charlie X" where you've got the woman with no face.
That still scares me!
Good one !
The skin of evil was another one that creeped me out and was surprised that it didn't made on this list. An evil entity pulled a shuttlecraft down to the planet containing Diana Troi and the crew was trying to rescue her.
The Thaw is definitely the one that messes me up the most. Truly horrifying.
Schism. Its the clicks. Omg the clicking noise was so spine tingling.
The Thaw is one of my favorite Voyager episodes and I wonder if the story was inspired by Harlan Ellison's 'I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream' with all the parallels that are there: Evil A.I. becomes self aware and toys with 6 human captives by manipulating there worst fears and worst traits.
Reading the title and thinking about the scene where they all stand in the holodock of the E and puzzling together a room with a certain chair in it out of the back of their combined memories. While getting closer to the image they all share, they get more anxious until Riker says:..."I was that room." And the rest of the group is nodding in agreement and fear...
While beeing suspenseful as hell this scene also shows one of the more practical uses of the holodeck.
Watching the video,...very good list, well done!
Didn't realise Bryan Fuller wrote Empok Nor - that explains so much. It's one of my favourite episodes
Night Terrors really was one hell of a ride but the episode that gave me the highest heartrate (of both excitement and terror) was the one when the TNG crew was catapulted billions of lightyears and further past reality. To me, a future astronomer, it was incredibly exiting
that little Darkness and silence song at the end, is that going to be fully done in some way? i was liking where it was going.
Nice picks but does not make you question the nightmare-ish reality, you find yourself in. TNG's
"Frame of Mind" is in Alfred Hitchcock style that leaves you question if reality it is real.
Nothing scarier than loosing your mind
I always found season 6s episode 5 Schisms TNG"s scariest episode! The bit where Riker, Jordie and Dianne Troy are recreating their memories on the hollow deck and those clicking sounds start freaked me right out. i was like 7 when i first saw it, was the 7 or 8pm slot on whatever channel it was on back in the 90s... you know back when there was only 5 channels LOL. But yea as much as its not considered scary by todays standards, it still left an impression, even at 30 years old, when most horrors dont even make me flinch... Schisms still gives me the willies! XD
A good list
The only one I would have added was STV Revulsion
That ep is terrifying.
In TNG, there was an episode (dont remember the title)where Geordi was among a team that explored an abandoned research camp, and afterwards all the team members save for Geordi and another had gone missing, under some compulsion to return to the camp. Geordi takes camera footage of the investigation of the site and finds an odd shadow, then has the footage recreated on the holodeck, where he slowly deduces through removing all familiar parts of the scene, and creates the silhouette of a figure that had to be what created the shadow, but couldnt be seen by anyone around it. Geordi piecing together an unseen entity in a 3D space, though a simulation, was pretty eerie. I think it was the episode before Night Terrors.
Well done Craig, yes the episode was called "Identity Crisis" it was actually a much more scary and tragic episode, given the fates of several Starfleet crew they couldn't save from Geordi's old ship the U.S.S. Victory.
"It's a flux coupler..." I guess I gotta watch that one now to get it out of my head.