Star Trek TNG episodes for Halloween range from eerie to revolting.
If you want good Star Trek episodes for Halloween, you might not immediately turn to Star Trek: The Next Generation. OK, there’s “Sub Rosa,” the seventh-season episode in which Dr. Crusher gets intimate with a “ghost.” (Sheesh.) But other than that?
Overall, TNG stands out as the sunniest of the Star Trek series by far. Between Gene Roddenberry’s edict that Enterprise crew members not have conflict among themselves to the fact that our heroes were warping through the galaxy in a vessel often described (and sometimes derided) as a “space Hilton,” TNG might seem about as un-spooky as the franchise has ever been.
But for as bright, cheery, and comfortable a series as it often was, TNG served up its fair share of chills and thrills. Especially in its latter season, under the influence of writer-producer Brannon Braga, TNG trekked into some more terrorizing territory.
Let’s take a quick look at seven Star Trek TNG episodes for Halloween watchlists. Fire up your Paramount Plus subscription or dig out your Blu-ray or DVD boxed sets, and settle in for some TNG tales that are perfect for spooky season.
“Where No One Has Gone Before” (season 1, episode 6)
I admit I put this one first on my list of Star Trek TNG episodes for Halloween in part because it first aired the week of October 26, 1987. But even if it hadn’t, “Where No One Has Gone Before,” while arguably not a “scary” episode overall, still contains a number of unnerving elements.
Consider Captain Picard’s experiences. He steps out of a turbolift into the interstellar void—or at least he thinks he does, thanks to the mind-altering effect of the region of space in which the Enterprise has found itself. Then he briefly believes he encounters his long-dead mother in a corridor, calmly preparing afternoon tea. He’s almost literally seeing a ghost.
Tasha Yar has an even more harrowing time, as she relives memories of running away from rape gangs on the failed colony planet where she grew up. And that anonymous crewman who believes he’s surrounded by raging flames isn’t having much fun, either.
Add composer Ron Jones’ nervous and dissonant score into the mix, and you’ve got an episode certain to give you the shivers when viewed on a late October night.
“Conspiracy” (season 1, episode 25)
The next-to-last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s first season steered the series straight into the sci-fi horror territory so firmly established by the movie Alien about a decade earlier.
Indeed, the episode is likely most famous for featuring Star Trek’s own version of Alien’s “chest-burster.” Commander Remmick (Robert Schenkkan) is host to a monstrous “mother creature” whom Picard and Riker kill in what may well be TNG’s goriest moment. The body horror element invoked the BBC’s wrath in 1991—censors across the pond cut the messy minutes from the episode before broadcasting it.
Even before Remmick’s revolting death, “Conspiracy” gives viewers the creeps, from Picard’s clandestine meeting with other Starfleet officers (unbeknownst to him, already infected by the alien invaders), to the nauseating sight of those officers chowing down on writhing grub worms at Starfleet Command.
If stomach-churning horror is on your holiday agenda, “Conspiracy” is one of the Star Trek TNG episodes for Halloween not to be missed.
“Q Who” (season 2, episode 16)
“Q Who” proved to be one of the most consequential TNG episodes—indeed, one of the most consequential Star Trek episodes, period. It introduced the Borg into the franchise’s mythos, an adversary whose presence would still be shaping storylines in the franchise as late as the final season of Star Trek: Picard.
In 1989, few may have known just how important the Borg would come to be, but “Q Who” was still a riveting and a really creepy episode. Never were the Borg more zombie-like than they were in this initial appearance. Unstoppable and unknowable, they proved too much for the Enterprise to handle—a scary thought for Trek fans at the time, used to seeing our Starfleet heroes prevail over all.
And on’t forget the especially unsettling sight of the Borg nursery! We only saw one little Borg baby, but we heard the haunting cries of many more. Thank goodness Boimler managed to save them all in his simulation in Star Trek: Lower Decks’ “I, Excretus”!
“Schisms” (season 6, episode 5)
According to The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion by Larry Nemecek, “Schisms” suffered from a “scaled-back ending” when the production budget wouldn’t allow for what writer Brannon Braga had envisioned: “a single insectoid claw around Riker’s bed in the alien lab, with only a few sparse bits of light and the ever-present clicking sounds to break up the darkness” (page 221).
Although “Schisms” doesn’t end as Braga originally envisioned, Riker and Ensign Rager’s (Lanei Chapman) harrowing experience in the enigmatic aliens’ lab in the final act still taps into not only primal body horror fears but also late-1990s fascination with stories of abduction (also evidenced in the popularity of The X-Files). And since the aliens’ hooded cloaks prevent viewers from getting too many glimpses of their insect-like appearance, we’re not overly distracted by thinking, “These are just folks in rubber suits.”
The scene in the holodeck in which Riker and his fellow abductees reconstruct the cold, metal slab on which the aliens conduct their experiments is convincingly creepy, especially thanks to the episode’s sound design. Those aforementioned clicks evoke a palpable sense of dread.
And the fact that the aliens’ origin and motives remain unknown at the episode’s end, as with the aliens in “Conspiracy,” is a chillingly perfect capper. It deserves a spot on any list of Star Trek TNG episodes for Halloween.
“Frame of Mind” (season 6, episode 21)
If “Schisms” is a harrowing experience for Commander Riker—and it was—”Frame of Mind” is even more so. This episode gives Jonathan Frakes a chance to shine as an increasingly disheveled and disturbed Riker doubts his sanity.
From the very first scene, in which (unbeknownst to the audience), Riker is rehearsing a play by Dr. Crusher that’s “full of disturbing images—people losing their minds, being tortured by doctors,” viewers are on the edge of their seats wondering what’s “real” and what’s not. (They may also idly wonder why the Enterprise’s kind chief physician is writing a play about doctors who torture, but fiction is fiction, right?)
Paranoia is one of the most powerfully fearful emotions human beings can experience. “Frame of Mind” pulses with paranoia from start to finish, and also boasts some nifty visual effects that literally shatter our carefully constructed barriers between illusion and reality. It’s a psychological tour de force, and perfectly unnerving viewing for the spooky season.
“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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