“Phantasms” (season 7, episode 6)
Where the previous season’s “Frame of Mind” talked about a play full of disturbing images, the final season’s “Phantasms” is such a play itself. (Incidentally, both episodes originally aired in late October—“Schisms” the week of October 19, 1992, and “Phantasms.” the week of October 25, 1993—making them both doubly appropriate as spooky season Star Trek episodes.)
The ringing telephone inside Data’s chest, Dr. Crusher sipping something through a straw out of Riker’s head, the mouth on Counselor Troi’s shoulder—“Phantasms” is full of disorienting imagery. As Nemecek writes, Braga’s script “delved successfully into the nightmarish side of Data’s dreams” (Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, page 268).
The most famous nightmarish image from the episode is, of course, Counselor Troi laid out on a table in Ten Forward as a cellular peptide torso sheet cake with mint frosting. While the illusion may not be completely successful, the sight of Troi being sliced open with a cake knife, which prefigures Data actually stabbing the real Troi later on—a moment of violence Braga told Nemecek that he was “stunned” made it past censors—is still surreal enough to have cemented itself as one of TNG’s all-time creepiest.
“Genesis” (season 7, episode 19)
Not an allusion to the Genesis Project from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, “Genesis” is a scientifically suspect but visually arresting episode in which various Enterprise crew members “devolve” into a menagerie of monstrous creatures straight out of a Halloween haunted house.
“Genesis” gave Star Trek makeup veteran Michael Westmore an especially dramatic chance to shine. His work leaves an indelible impression on viewers. The award for the episode’s most effective makeup must go to Lt. Barclay’s half-man, half-spider look. At least the long-suffering Barclay got to have the de-evolutionary disease named after him!
From the mildly uncanny to the viscerally shocking to the truly terrifying, then, Star Trek: The Next Generation delivered a host of Halloween-appropriate adventures.
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