Halloween: Star Trek used classic horror for inspiration in their stories

It’s Halloween, so that means we’re looking at Star Trek and all of the horror tropes, films, and ideas it took as inspiration for the franchise.

Whether it’s Psycho author Robert Bloch writing an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series (S2, Ep 7 – Catspaw), or the villainous Remans design borrowing heavily from Nosferatu, it’s not hard to see that Star Trek borrowed or may have borrowed from various elements from the world of horror. That shouldn’t surprise many people, considering many Star Trek aliens are just repurposed movie monster villains.

So it’s no surprise that Star Trek.com took the time out of its day to take a look at several episodes and films that used classic horror tropes, villains, or ideas to bring the universe of Star Trek to a darker place, where no man dare go before. Some of the choices do push the limits a bit, like Sub Rosa of The Next Generation fame. That episode is only scary due to how bad the concept is.

Others reach for an interesting idea, like the episode of Enterprise entitled “Impulse”, which sees a startling comparison to the George Romero,1973 cult classic the Crazies. The film sees a small town become infected due to a toxic chemical, turning everyone into mindless, homicidal maniacs.

Also, shoutout to Voyager, who really did a great job bringing the horror vibe to the series more than other shows in the Star Trek catalog.

While we won’t give away the full list, we will just point out the most obvious one on here; Star Trek: First Contact is absolutely a zombie movie in space. How is it not? It focuses on a group of people having to survive a swarm of beings that are neither living nor dead, who seek to feed on their knowledge and technology. Swap out specs and IQ points for brains, and they’re literally zombies.

The list is interesting, though you may not agree with all of them. That said it’s still a nice time to help set the mood for Halloween.