When I was young, my parents were bona fide Star Trek fans and would watch reruns on the weekends when the show ran in syndication. I was still maybe a decade away from my own mania when I rediscovered it in my late teens, but as a pre-teen, some of the aliens featured in the original series were downright terrifying to me and provided plenty of nightmare fuel for a kid with a very vivid imagination.
1. The Mugato
The episode “A Private Little War” (S02E16) featured the Mugato, which looked like a cross between an albino gorilla and a rhinoceros. As a kid who was already traumatized after a viewing of the original King Kong movie and the 1976 remake, I was already afraid of apes in general, and the stiff movements of this creature and its unchanging facial expression as it attacked Captain Kirk gave me an extreme case of the creeps! The noise it made as it jumped down from the rocks to charge Kirk and McCoy was the stuff of terror, especially once I was in bed and my mom turned the lights off.
2. The Melkotians
In “Spectre of the Gun” (S03E06), Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Chekov run afoul of a race of aliens called the Melkotians. Before they receive their “frontier justice” punishment, one of the Melkots appears to explain why they must all die. Whether it’s the skinny old person's scrawny body and huge head that made me uncomfortable or the glowing, unblinking eyes with the disembodied voice, the image of this alien would stick around in my head for days after first seeing this episode. Ironically, when I rediscovered Star Trek later on, this would be the first episode I ever bought on VHS (blame my crush on Walter Koenig, I suppose!)
3. Balok
When it comes to Balok from “The Corbomite Maneuver” (S01E10), you might ask which scared me, the puppet, its voice, or Clint Howard. Frankly, all three stayed with me throughout childhood, especially the way the puppet’s mouth didn’t move when it spoke. For me, this was audio horror on par with the creepy, tinny operator’s voice at the end of the Pink Floyd song, “Young Lust.” While I’d make my peace with Clint Howard once I became a teenager and began to love horror movies, the elongated green face and menacing voice that was Balok always seemed more like a monster than an alien.
Perhaps it is the mix between sci-fi and horror that makes so many of Star Trek’s aliens so scary, fun, and nightmare-inducing! Come on over to our social media and share which aliens made you lose sleep, and why!