Halloween: What Star Trek franchise could be considered the “horror” franchise?

It’s Halloween, so it’s time to ask what Star Trek series is the horror franchise?

With it being Halloween, I thought it’d be fun to talk about what franchise can lay claim to being the “horror” franchise of Star Trek. While each show is defined by the location and captain, each series also has its own sub-genre that it can fall into. We’ll talk more about what genre each franchise of Star Trek should be identified as in a later column, but tonight we’re just talking spooks.

Heading into this column, I thought the biggest candidate was Star Trek: Voyager. By my own criteria, I still think that, but I’ll explain why in a different article. I wanted a more accurate perception, however, one backed up by facts.

So I took the time to go through about a dozen lists and video lists of the “Scariest”/”Spookiest” episodes of Star Trek across the franchise and cobbled together a tally of sorts.

What Star Trek series had the most Halloween-worthy entrants?

Essentially, regardless if they counted the same episodes, I would score points to any franchise that got an episode listed, even if it’s the same episodes. The consistency across the lists was what I was looking for.

Wouldn’t you know it, I ended up finding out that The Next Generation had the most episode appearances on the most lists. They may only have two or three more “spooky” episodes than the rest of the Star Trek franchises, but their most spooky episodes topped the other franchises’ most spooky episodes pretty decisively.

I gave Next Generation a score of 25, with Voyager in second with 16, Enterprise and Deep Space Nine tied in third with 14, the Original Series in fourth with 12, and tied for last were Discovery and The Animated Series.

Reminder, these aren’t episodes we’re counting, just the number of times an episode, even if it was the same one, was counted across the lists we counted. I wouldn’t define The Next Generation as a horror franchise but some of those episodes truly are too scary to finish. Either because of the pure spook-factor or because they’re just so bad.

What franchise do you think is Star Trek’s “horror franchise?”