Audiences have been wildly fascinated with the horror/thriller genre in sci-fi settings since director Ridley Scott's groundbreaking Alien (1979), starring Sigourney Weaver. 7 years later, Weaver earned her first Oscar nomination for the sequel Aliens (1986) for Best Actress, further legitimizing the horror/thriller genre in sci-fi themed storytelling in space.
Today, with total box office receipts of over $800M in 2024, this genre could be a way for Star Trek creators to attract new horror fans seeking novel ways to be frightened! We love to be scared out of our seats, and Hollywood has fueled our fascination with feeding our fears for decades. Star Trek has in the past dabbled in this horror/thriller genre with varying degrees of success; however, a consideration for new stories in this genre is surely worth expanding.
As a superfan of Star Trek and the sci-fi genre with a mash-up of horror - I was elated to see Star Trek Lower Decks (S1 E1 "Second Contact") included an outbreak of an alien zombie virus that infected half the crew of the USS Cerritos. "Second Contact" was some massively creative storytelling within the confines of an adult animated comedy that certainly proves the amalgam of sci-fi and horror is likely here to stay, thanks to a 1960s layup from TOS.
Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek creators understood this fear-fest phenomenon all too well and heightened their storytelling of the horror/thriller genre in TOS (S2, E14: "Wolf in the Fold"). In "Fold," our intrepid crew of the Enterprise was enjoying the flesh festivities and sights of the hedonistic pleasure planets Argelius, when it appears that Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott ("Scotty") may have killed three Argelian women.
With the help of the Enterprise's computer and interrogations by Captain Kirk, it was determined that a fear-hungry non-corporeal entity known as "Redjac" (short for Red Jack, nickname for 19th Century Earth's Jack the Ripper,) was the real culprit. The entity possessed and coerced individuals to kill others on various worlds across the galaxy to feed its need to exploit fear, anger, and terror. Redjac, even at one point possessed the Enterprise's computer, expressing a chilling laugh that sounded more like a criminally insane android. It was deliciously ghoulish, and I loved it!
Despite the intensity of the horror/thriller tones in the sci-fi setting in "Fold", it was arguably not at the level of "Alien" or movies such as "Event Horizon", "Pitch Black" or "The Cloverfield Paradox", for example. However, the possibility of more Star Trek horror/thriller-themed content is viable and should be pursued in upcoming series or even as a stand-alone movie perhaps. A well-written Star Trek storyline that features nail-biting horror/thriller themes could be just the thing to attract new audiences and fans worldwide.
One of the best interpretations of depicting a sci-fi horror/thriller (albeit briefly) was shown in a Star Trek storyline, which was incorporated skillfully in Star Trek: Discovery (S1 E3 called "Context Is for Kings"). In this eerie, darkly-toned episode we see Commander Michael Burnham and crew access the abandoned USS Glenn to find an escaped Giant Tardigrade.
The creature killed the Glenn's crew and several Klingons, while (with minimal effort) rips through the titanium hull of the ship causing massive structural damage. We later learned that the Tardigrade was to be used or more accurately, harnessed and forced to navigate the spore drive of the USS Discovery to engage in quantum space-time leaps across the galaxy's mycelial network. I enjoyed this rare moment of horror themes within canon; however, Star Trek creators can and should do more.
As Star Trek creators are always looking for new ways to capture new audiences and new themes for telling stories, tackling more series episodes or movies in a horror/thriller sci-fi genre could be a winning combination. If Jason Voorhees can terrorize the crew of a space vessel in the 25th Century in Jason X (2001,) then a Starbase, starship, or a Starfleet Academy facility could be the perfect sci-fi backdrop for a Star Trek horror/thriller adventure in the Alpha Quadrant!