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These creepy Star Trek aliens are guaranteed to make your skin crawl.
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00:00Hello my friends, how are you? Sean Ferrick here for TrekCulture, and as you might have noticed,
00:06things are a little different today. I'm wearing sunglasses. I just thought that the day that was
00:12in it, I might just celebrate the fact that I can barely see. We've got lovely weather. Oh yeah,
00:16and that thing. We are here at the Vasquez Rocks. I have come on a wee away mission,
00:22because we are going to talk about some of the creepiest aliens, and I think you know which one
00:29of them is going to be on this list. But before I get into that, I'm Sean Ferrick for TrekCulture,
00:33and here are the 10 creepiest aliens in Star Trek. Number 10, Armas. Six foot tall, big thing of goo.
00:43Creepy to begin with, but then you find out what Armas does in the course of the episode.
00:48The Next Generation's first season was not without its bumps, but the episode Skin of Evil delivered
00:54one of the most shocking moments in Star Trek history, as we saw Lieutenant Tasha Yar get thrown
01:01across, let's be honest, Planet Hell. Planet Hell was of course Vagra 2 in this episode. This time,
01:07the inhabitants of that planet had decided that they were going to leave all of their negative
01:10energy before, and in doing so, they created Armas. Armas was a creature made of all of the ill will
01:18and evil, but unfortunately, they never stopped to think, wait, is this a bad idea? Well, Councillor
01:25Troi found out it was a pretty bad idea when her shuttle was brought down by Armas. A landing party
01:32was sent after to save her, and Tasha Yar, unfortunately, decided to poke the bear at just
01:38the wrong moment. Not simply content with killing Tasha Yar, Riker was dragged across the sand into the
01:44body of Armas in one of the creepiest, and often parodied, scenes in that first season
01:51of Star Trek. Armas may be many things, in an episode that may be many things, but he is
01:57still deeply, deeply unsettling. Number 9, Salt Vampires, M113 creature. The very first episode
02:06of Star Trek that was shown on television was not actually the pilot, it was the Man Trap,
02:12the episode focusing on Dr. McCoy and his lost love Nancy Crater. Throughout the course of the
02:17episode, we see a lot of Nancy, but the real Nancy remains lost, because what we find is one of the
02:24most iconic baddies of the original series. The Salt Vampire, you have probably seen this, even if you've
02:32never seen an episode of Star Trek, you've got those kind of dreads that are hanging there matted,
02:37you've got those long fingers with those suckers on the underside, you've got that open gaping mouth,
02:43but that's only when the creature's been revealed. One of the even creepier elements to this is the
02:49fact that it can assume the form of others. The impersonation is so perfect that Dr. McCoy struggles
02:54to believe that this isn't the real Nancy Crater, and it takes Spock attacking quote unquote Nancy,
03:02for him to actually realize the real Nancy probably couldn't take a punch the way that this creature
03:06did. While this vampire has turned up in many parodies, as much of the original series Aliens
03:12have, that doesn't change the fact that the fact that it could be anyone has such an emotional beat
03:18to it and such a creepy beat to it as well. I suppose, depending on how you look at it, the fact that they
03:24kill the very last one is either absolutely brilliant or a big misdirect, because one turns up in
03:30lower decks as well. Number eight, Gorgon. The third season of the original series of Star Trek is
03:37mixed at best, bearing in mind it opens with Spock's brain and closes with the line,
03:42she could have had a great life if only she hadn't been a woman. Listen, mistakes were made. One of the
03:47episodes this season, and the children shall lead, often ranks among the lowest in the ratings when it
03:54comes to Star Trek. And there is a degree of fairness to that. There's a degree where that's maybe a bit
04:00harsh. The Gorgon in this was played by guest performer and lawyer Melvin Belly, who in a bit of
04:07stunt casting rocked up as this wonderful green friendly angel of the children, those same kids who
04:15just killed all their parents. The episode effectively shows a bit of a village of the damned, children of the
04:21corn vibe when it takes the kids eventually realizing what has happened and breaking down in tears to
04:30remove the power of the Gorgon. That's where Gorgon is creepy, not in its admittedly very rushed makeup
04:38appearance, more so that it will con you into smiling your way through the slaughter of the ones that mean
04:45the most. And if that's not creepy, then I don't think I want to be your friend. Number seven, the Beta
04:5112A entity. Now you might already have realized that we've got a few original series aliens on this list
04:57because quite frankly, what was wrong with the writers back in the 60s? There was some serious
05:02horror going on. And this isn't the last one either, I can tell you. In the episode, The Day of the Dove,
05:08we are introduced to a few things that will become iconic in Star Trek history. For example, Michael and
05:13Sarah appears for the first time as Kang. We also get the first appearance of the Klingon D7 battle
05:20cruiser. We also get Mara, Kang's mate slash wife slash it's not really clear in the episode. But what
05:27we also get is everyone going flipping nuts. The point of this entity is that it is a non-corporeal being
05:34that, like many others in the Star Trek universe, feeds off those negative energies that the people put
05:40out. Not only that, but it amplifies them as well. So you see everyone running around with swords
05:46because tearing each other apart is effectively brunch to this thing. By the time we meet it,
05:51it had already caused the destruction of the Klingon ship. So thanks very much to the remastered version,
05:57so we can see a nicer version of it. But those Klingons suddenly arrive on the Enterprise,
06:01they're beamed over, they're saved. Yeah, no. So hijinks ensue, lots of sword fighting. It's only
06:09stopped at the end by the combined laughter of Kirk and Kang in one of the first, and honestly most fun,
06:19joining together of Starfleet and the Klingons that we get in Star Trek.
06:23Number six, Red Jack. The original series episode Wolf in the Fold was written by Robert Block,
06:29who's most famous for writing Psycho. However, Block had a long-running obsession with Jack the Ripper
06:36and had previously written pieces featuring Jack in terms of confessions and what-ifs. This is no
06:44different. What's truly creepy about Red Jack in this episode is that, like several others, it's a
06:50possessing entity. But it is one of the darkest episodes that we had yet seen of Star Trek,
06:57considering the cold open finishes with Scotty standing there, knife in hand, with an exotic
07:03dancer dead at his feet. While the episode itself has issues, for example the suggestion that Scotty
07:09was in an accident caused by a woman and so McCoy recommended he go to a strip bar. Throughout the
07:14episode we get seances, we get non-corporeal talking, we get the reveal that the original
07:20Piglet was in fact this mass murdering hater of women. Not really, I dare you to go back and watch
07:26that episode and not hear Piglet every time he speaks. This entity, it moved from Earth,
07:31it moved to the Rigel colonies, it has been killing throughout time. And in fact, there's an even
07:37scarier moment right at the end when Red Jack takes control of the enterprise itself. And actually,
07:44for the 1960s, for a network television show, this was deeply unsettling. They don't dial it back for
07:53Star Trek. Now it is defeated, but Wolf in the Fold, and in fact Red Jack, that's a character that's
08:01going to stay with you long after the credits roll. Number five, flying parasites. I mean, the clue's in
08:07the description there really. I don't really want to meet these things. So when the episode Operation
08:13Annihilate comes up, I think I'm just going to take a hard pass, you enjoy it, and I'll see you again
08:18in the next season. How does that sound? I bet someone who really wished they could have said that
08:22was the ill-fated Sam Kirk. Before I go on, spoilers I guess, to anyone who hasn't seen
08:29Operation Annihilate and is really enjoying Sam Kirk in Strange New Worlds. Don't worry, it's about 10
08:35years in the future, okay? When Kirk and crew, the main Kirk I should say, and crew beam down to the planet,
08:40they find that Jim Kirk's brother is dead, his sister-in-law Aurelion is dying. Now thankfully
08:47his nephew is spared, but the rest of the colony are effectively dead by these parasites that attach
08:53to the back of the victim and just suck out all that they need and leave them to die in agony. We
09:00nearly lose Spock to these parasites as well because of the pain that they inflict on them. Now the funny
09:06thing about these things is that they look like that plastic vomit that you buy in the joke shop,
09:10which kind of stands to how creepy they are that you can take something that looks like a zit someone's
09:14just popped and it's still actually freaky. I'm going to do a hard pass on these, I'm going to skip this
09:21episode, I'm going to see you in the next season. Number four, unnamed parasitic beings. Now I should
09:27say before I go on that Star Trek Online, whether you want to accept it as canon or not, has called these
09:31creatures the bluegills. They infect the host by entering often through the mouth and they're only
09:38identified by increased physical strength of the victim and also a small spike that could be a
09:45breathing apparatus that sticks out the back of the victim's neck. This is another one of those
09:49creations where in the first season of The Next Generation we are given, despite the issues that
09:55season faced, a genuinely paranoid, unsettling episode. Conspiracy probably is the best episode
10:03of the first season of The Next Generation. You get other captains, which is something we actually
10:07hadn't really seen very much of in Star Trek The Next Generation up to that point. We see we get the
10:11visit to Ditalix B. From the opening moment you just get this sense of something's very wrong with
10:19Starfleet. It had been set up a couple of episodes earlier with the arrival of Admiral Quinn and Lieutenant
10:24Commander Remick in the episode Coming of Age. When Quinn arrives this time and you see him just brush
10:30off the suspicions that he had last time, straight away Picard tells Riker that's not Gregory Quinn.
10:37That final scene that sees Picard and Riker facing off against Remick is a heavily edited episode. I mean
10:44it actually took me until the 2000s to realise what happened at the end of that scene because it had been
10:50so censored on every version that I had seen up to that point. I didn't realise the fact that they
10:56got that lovely actor, they sat him in the chair and they blew up his head. These aliens are seriously
11:02creepy and although yes there was one of those kind of you kill the queen and the rest die moments,
11:08a signal was sent out from Starfleet. It was a homing signal. Now there has been suggestions that this
11:15was the setup for the Borg but as that went in a different direction the Bluegills very much could
11:22be coming back. Number three, the Vidians. I would argue that the Vidians are possibly one of the
11:29creepiest but most tragic villains in all of Star Trek because they are affected by the phage which is
11:37analogous to a leprosy type disease. Before the phage affected them, they were a society that was,
11:44they excelled in art, they excelled in the sciences, they were well regarded in the delta quadrant and
11:50once the phage hit them they became one of the greatest terrors in their region. You see what the
11:58phage does is it effectively dissolves the body from the inside out and the Vidians in their desperation
12:05have taken to harvesting the organs of other species to keep their own bodies alive, were introduced to
12:11them with the removal of Neelix's lungs which is a heck of a way to open an episode. However that's
12:18not the creepiest moment with the Vidians. A few episodes later on the episode faces is shown. Now
12:25it's mostly remembered for the fact that we split Bolana Torres between her human and Klingon sides
12:31and there's some good back and forth between the two versions but what's really memorable is that poor
12:38Durst. Oh poor Durst. He'd been introduced the episode before to set him up and then Durst,
12:45Paris and Bolana go on an away mission where they get captured by the Vidians. He is played by the
12:51same actor who plays the lead Vidian. The reason for that is that as the episode goes on the Vidian has
12:56fallen in love with Bolana's Klingon side and thinks as a way of wooing her she'd like him better if he had
13:02Durst's face grafted onto his own. It is, I remember this vividly from the mid-90s when it was far too
13:10young to be watching this Cronenberg body horror and he just smiling down at her and I was like
13:16I may not be an expert romance but I'm not doing that. Number two, The Borg. If you have come from
13:23Frank Chavez's original article of this you might be surprised to see The Borg at number two instead of
13:27number one but we felt a very important change needed to be made to this list. But before I
13:32explain what that change is let's think about The Borg. Now they have been overused in all of Star
13:37Trek at this point so they have lost a little bit of that terror that was inspired by them originally
13:44but I want you to hold on to the word originally. Let's go back and see what The Borg really are at
13:50their core. So I'm not talking about when they're facing off with Janeway although great scenes and I'm not
13:56talking about when Borgati owns a new transwarp corridor because why wouldn't you. I am talking
14:01about that very first episode Q Who. The Borg were used as an example by Q for just how unprepared
14:10Starfleet was for what was out there. Now we had seen, look at the other aliens on this list, we've
14:16seen some pretty creepy things throughout the original series so you might have been left wondering in 1987,
14:221988. Ah sure, what else could we be dealing with here? And then we found out that arrival of that
14:28first cube led to one of the most pulse pounding episodes that The Next Generation had done to that
14:35point. You see in a way they're cybernetic beings that have been a mix of organic and synthetic.
14:43Okay yeah we've seen versions of this before that's not that scary. Very bloody scary when they're coming
14:49after you though. We see one drone beams into engineering it does not give two figs about the
14:54fact that they don't want him in engineering especially when a very lucky security officer
15:01tries to stop him and gets thrown across a room and you might be like Sean how would you consider
15:05that lucky because he wasn't injected with the nano probes that would be added in the next few episodes
15:12that featured the Borg. They're not just scary robots that want your technology, they want your
15:18biological and technological distinctiveness to add to their own. They assimilated Picard. Now think about
15:25that you'd had three seasons where this Shakespearean actor was getting more and more grounded in the
15:30role. He was dignified, he was very measured in everything he did and he didn't stand a chance against the
15:42collective. He became Locutus and we get what is arguably the greatest cliffhanger ending in all
15:48of Star Trek when Riker orders Worf to fire. The Borg are at their core terrifying. If they were to launch
15:57a full-on assault there is very few that would ever have a chance of stopping them. Species 8472 did and then
16:05Voyager went and mucked that one up didn't they? The one last thing I will say about the Borg is that
16:10despite their being overused, despite being sometimes they took the veil off it, when you strip it back
16:16to its core like they did in the Enterprise episode Regeneration, these Swedish sounding cybernetic
16:22zombies are terrifying and if they're coming after you, you better pick out your alcove. Number one,
16:29the Gorn. Okay so this was the change to Frank's list that I made here so please make sure you go and
16:36check out Frank's article originally but I got to explain why I've put the Gorn at number one.
16:41Why do you think? But also, also bear with me, even a couple of years ago if I was to have the Gorn at
16:48number one you might have looked at this and said, really? The hissing rubber guy from Arena? Creepiest?
16:57Well he did get a bit creepier in that episode of Enterprise where they tried to do him in CGI and
17:01an attempt was made. They lost some of their creepiness when they rocked up in lower decks.
17:07I mean, I would both love to attend a Gorn wedding and also I would love to run as fast as I possibly
17:12could away from a Gorn wedding. You know, we'll see how the mood takes me. All of this, all of this,
17:17you're like, not getting creepy, I'm not getting creepy. Then Strange New Worlds came along and Memento Mori
17:24made me realise where if I hear the Gorn are coming, I am getting the absolute sh** out of there.
17:31The Gorn were being set up throughout the first season of Strange New Worlds as someone to genuinely
17:37be feared. You had Leanne Noonien Singh had a horrifically traumatic experience in her childhood
17:43where her family, and in fact the whole ship that they were on, were killed by the Gorn.
17:48But wouldn't it be lovely if they had only been killed?
17:52The Strange New Worlds Gorn owe an awful lot of inspiration to Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shussett
17:57Jr's Xenomorph that was of course introduced back in Alien, ironically the same year that Star
18:02Trek The Motion Picture came out. Space was a very mixed place that year. These are fast, these are
18:08frightening, these are also much more animal than say the previous Gorn that had appeared had been.
18:16I mean, you didn't look like you were about to have a conversation with these dudes. But of course,
18:20let's talk about the spit that gets you pregnant. That might sound very silly, doesn't it? Bet you
18:27Hemmer didn't find it so funny. This was it, this was the episode we lost Bruce Horax Hemmer because
18:32he got infected with Gorn babies, which again, if you've seen Alien, unwelcome dinner guest. That's
18:40what we're looking at here. The Gorn may have been one of the most beloved jokes in Star Trek history for a
18:44long time. But then, Strange New Worlds came along and says, nah, hold my rubber suit. We're gonna
18:51change this up. That's it for our list folks, thank you very much for watching. If you reckon I missed
18:56something that is so super creepy it must be included, let me know in the comments below. And
19:00again, as I say, don't forget to check out the original article by the wonderful Frank Chavez. Thank
19:05you very much for watching along, thank you very much to the wonderful Tom who's edited this video. Sorry if
19:09you've had to have a little bit of wind, but the person who was supposed to hold the wind,
19:13they called in sick today. Remember, you can catch us on socials at TrekCulture on Twitter and at
19:18TrekCultureYT over on Instagram. You can catch myself at Sean Ferrick on all the various socials.
19:23You can catch Tom at Tom C Finn. Everyone, make sure you look after yourselves until I see you again.
19:27Make sure that you live long and prosper. And if you're out the LA way,
19:31I'll buy for a visit. It is pretty cool. Thanks very much.
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