Top 15 Star Trek episodes to watch for Halloween Part 1 (#15-#11)

11. “The Man Trap” – Star Trek: The Original Series

This is one of those Star Trek episodes you’ve probably never seen before but absolutely know it by heart. The plot follows the crew of the Enterprise delivering medical supplies to a planet where a husband and wife team are researching a planet. While there they begin to discover the wife, Nancy, is not what she appears. Now long-dead, the creature who appears to the crew as Nancy is actually a salt vampire. A creature that sucks the salt out of living creatures to survive. Nancy’s now widowed husband, Robert, has been living with the creature as a surrogate for his wife. The creature, however, is not so easily satiated and begins to kill members of the crew.

What makes this episode so horrifying isn’t the slow creeping dread that follows the creature or the fear that your favorite characters are ultimately going to bite the dust, it’s actually seeing the creature itself. Yes, it was the 1960s, and yes, the show did a great job highlighting and creating alien costumes to get viewers immersed in the universe they’re creating. Yet, 55 years later, the design for the salt vampire’s true form remains horrifying.

A grotesque creature, with protruding lips, sunken eyes, and no visible nose; covered in matted hair and lacking any remorse on its face. Designed around disgusting suction cup-covered fingers (tendrils?) that it uses to feed on its victims. There aren’t many things that make me shudder, but that creature is certainly one of them.