Halloween: Star Trek: Enterprise: 3 of the creepiest episodes

Star Trek: Enterprise had its fair share of episodes that you wouldn’t want to watch alone, but they’re perfect for Halloween night

All Star Trek shows take you into the unknown, introduce you to strange concepts, and invite you to question what you think you know about life. But there are some episodes of these series, like Star Trek: Enterprise, that take you a little farther than where you want to go. Just in time for Halloween, these are three of those episodes.

Fight or Flight (Season 1, episode 2)

The crew of the Enterprise is embarking on their first real exploration mission after fighting to save a Klingon in the very first episode. They’re minding their own business when they come across a ship that’s dead in space. Of course, being the inquisitive sort, Captain Archer takes a team over. Only to find alien bodies dangling from the roof of the ship with tubes that are draining fluids out of their bodies. Hoshi wasn’t the only one that screamed.

Archer allows himself to be talked into leaving the bodies alone (by T’Pol), but his conscience gets the better of him, and he returns to remove them. Then the Enterprise ends up being scanned by the killers who find the crew could serve as an alternate source for their needs. And they come very close to getting what they want. Fortunately, Enterprise is saved at the last moment.

Dead Stop (Season 2, episode 4)

The episode is a scary reminder that nothing is free in this world, and if it seems too good to be true, it usually is. As the Enterprise needs repairs, it stops at this repair station that is run by automation. A disembodied voice coming from a computer tells Captain Archer what he needs to do to get the ship repaired. And the price is minimal. Until Ensign Travis Mayweather is killed and Dr. Phlox realizes it’s not really Travis Mayweather.

The ensign’s body was replaced so that his real body, his brain, rather, could be used to power the repair station. Archer and T’Pol find him, and a lot of other unfortunate crewmembers from other ships, hooked up to tubes and tied into the stations processors. Though they manage to save him, they have to leave dozens upon dozens of bodies behind because the neurological damage is too great. Seeing those bodies was creepy enough, but at the end, when the Enterprise is warping away, we see the damaged repair station starting to repair itself. So it would be back in business soon which begs the questions: who created it and what are they getting out of it?

Impulse (Season 3, episode 5)

Vulcan zombies? Definitely the perfect episode for Halloween. The Enterprise tries to save a Vulcan ship that is dead in space, but they encounter trouble with Vulcans who have been contaminated and turned into angry, violent creatures who attack without provocation. Battling their way out of the ship proves to be a challenge with Vulcans chomping outside the doors, and then T’Pol is affected as well. Her animalistic growls and threats are realistic and chilling, especially after seeing what her fellow Vulcans were capable of.

Seriously, the only thing missing from this episode was the theme music from The Walking Dead. And what makes it worse was that none of those Vulcans could be saved. Just as on Dead Stop, they were too far gone neurologically. Vulcans, whose lives are based on logic, literally losing their minds was straight out of the pages of a horror movie.

Honorable Mentions

Vox Sola (Season 1, episode 22)

An alien creature builds a web aboard the Enterprise and cocoons Captain Archer, Trip, and other crewmen, entwining their nervous system with its. The crew is racing to find a way to communicate with the alien before the alien kills them.

Observer Effect (Season 4, episode 11)

Uber creepy aliens—the Organians— observe the effects of an infection on Trip and Hoshi, an infection that is literally killing them. And the aliens are determined not to interfere. The dispassionate way they watch Hoshi and Trip suffer is hair-raising stuff.

While other episodes of the series have chilling moments, these episodes are the ones that really stayed with me long after I watched them and are good reason for a rewatch.