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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
01:25Troy 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 of Star Trek.
01:52Armas may be many things, in an episode that may be many things, but he is still deeply, deeply unsettling.
02:00Number nine, Salt Vampires, the M113 creature. The very first episode of Star Trek that was shown on
02:07television was not actually the pilot, it was the Man Trap, the episode focusing on Dr. McCoy and his
02:14lost love Nancy Crater. Throughout the course of the episode, we see a lot of Nancy, but the real
02:20Nancy remains lost, because what we find is one of the most iconic baddies of the original series.
02:28The Salt Vampire, you have probably seen this, even if you've never seen an episode of Star Trek,
02:34you've got those kind of dreads that are hanging there matted, you've got those long fingers with
02:39those suckers on the underside, you've got that open gaping mouth, but that's only when the creature's been
02:44revealed. One of the even creepier elements to this is the fact that it can assume the form of others.
02:51The impersonation is so perfect that Dr. McCoy struggles to believe that this isn't the real
02:56Nancy Crater, and it takes Spock attacking quote unquote Nancy for him to actually realise the real
03:04Nancy probably couldn't take a punch the way that this creature did. While this vampire has turned up
03:09in many parodies, as much of the original series Aliens have, that doesn't change the fact that the
03:15fact that it could be anyone has such an emotional beat to it and such a creepy beat to it
03:21as well.
03:21I suppose, depending on how you look at it, the fact that they killed the very last one is either
03:25absolutely brilliant or a big misdirect because one turns up in Lower Decks as well. Number eight, Gorgon.
03:32The third season of the original series of Star Trek is mixed at best, bearing in mind it opens with
03:40Spock's brain and closes with the line, she could have had a great life if only she hadn't been a
03:45woman. Listen, mistakes were made. One of the episodes this season, and the children shall lead,
03:50often ranks among the lowest in the ratings when it comes to Star Trek and there is a degree of
03:58fairness
03:58to that. There's a degree where that's maybe a bit harsh. The Gorgon in this was played by guest
04:03performer and lawyer Melvin Belly, who in a bit of stunt casting rocked up as this wonderful green
04:11friendly angel of the children, those same kids who had just killed all their parents. The episode
04:17effectively shows a bit of a village of the damned children of the corn vibe when it takes the kids
04:25eventually realizing what has happened and breaking down in tears to remove the power of the Gorgon.
04:32That's where Gorgon is creepy, not in its admittedly very rushed makeup appearance, more so that it will
04:40con you into smiling your way through the slaughter of the ones that mean the most. And if that's not
04:46creepy, then I don't think I want to be your friend. Number seven, the Beta-12a entity. Now you might
04:53already have realized that we've got a few original series aliens on this list because quite frankly
04:58what was wrong with the writers back in the 60s? There was some serious horror going on and this
05:04isn't the last one either I can tell you. In the episode The Day of the Dove we are introduced
05:09to a
05:09few things that will become iconic in Star Trek history. For example Michael Ansara appears for the
05:14first time as Kang. We also get the first appearance of the Klingon D7 battlecruiser, we also get Mara,
05:22Kang's mate slash wife slash it's not really clear in the episode, but what we also get is everyone going
05:30flipping nuts. The point of this entity is that it is a non-corporeal being that like many others in
05:35the
05:35Star Trek universe feeds off those negative energies that the people put out. Not only that,
05:41but it amplifies them as well. So you see everyone running around with swords because tearing each
05:47other apart is effectively brunch to this thing. By the time we meet it, it had already caused the
05:53destruction of the Klingon ship. So thanks very much to the remastered version so we can see a nicer
05:58version of it. But those Klingons suddenly arrive on the Enterprise, they're beamed over, they're saved.
06:03Yeah, no. So hijinks ensue, lots of sword fighting. It's only stopped at the end by the combined laughter of
06:12Kirk and Kang in one of the first and honestly most fun joining together of Starfleet and the Klingons
06:21that we get in Star Trek. Number six, Redjack. The original series episode Wolf in the Fold was written by
06:28Robert
06:28Block who's most famous for writing Psycho. However, Block had a long running obsession with Jack the
06:35Ripper and had previously written pieces featuring Jack in terms of confessions and what ifs. This is
06:44no different. What's truly creepy about Redjack 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. Considering
06:58the cold open finishes with Scotty standing there knife in hand with an exotic dancer dead at his
07:04feet. While the episode itself has issues for example the suggestion that Scotty was in an accident
07:09caused by a woman and so McCoy recommended he go to a strip bar. Throughout the episode we get seances,
07:16we get non-corporeal talking, we get the reveal that the original Piglet was in fact this mass murdering
07:23hater of women. No really, I dare you to go back and watch that episode and not hear Piglet every
07:28time he speaks. This entity, it moved from Earth, it moved to the Rigel colonies, it has been killing
07:34throughout time and in fact there's an even scarier moment right at the end when Redjack takes control
07:41of the Enterprise itself and actually for the 1960s for a network television show this was deeply
07:50unsettling. They don't dial it back for Star Trek. Now it is defeated but Wolf in the Fold and in
07:59fact
07:59Redjack, that's a character that's going to stay with you long after the credits roll. Number five,
08:04flying parasites. I mean the clue's in the description there really. I don't really want to meet these
08:10things so when the episode Operation Annihilate comes up I think I'm just going to take a hard
08:16pass, you enjoy it and I'll see you again in the next season. How does that sound? I bet someone
08:20who
08:20really wished they could have said that was the ill-fated Sam Kirk. Before I go on, spoilers I
08:27guess to anyone who hasn't seen Operation Annihilate and is really enjoying Sam Kirk in Strange New Worlds.
08:34Don't worry, it's about 10 years in the future okay? When Kirk and crew, the main Kirk I should say,
08:39and crew beam down to the planet they find that Jim Kirk's brother is dead, his sister-in-law Aurelian
08:45is dying. Now thankfully his nephew is spared but the rest of the colony are effectively dead by these
08:51parasites that attach to the back of the victim and just suck out all that they need and leave them
08:58to
08:58die in agony. We nearly lose Spock to these parasites as well because of the pain that they inflict on
09:05them.
09:05Now the funny thing about these things is that they look like that plastic vomit that you buy in the
09:10joke shop which kind of stands to how creepy they are that you can take something that looks like a
09:14zit someone's just popped and it's still actually freaky. I'm going to do a hard pass on these,
09:20I'm going to skip this episode, I'm going to see you in the next season. Number four, unnamed parasitic
09:25beings. Now I should say before I go on that Star Trek Online whether you want to accept it as
09:30canon or not,
09:31has called these creatures the bluegills. They infect the host by entering often through the mouth
09:37and they're only identified by increased physical strength of the victim and also a small spike that
09:44could be a breathing apparatus that sticks out the back of the victim's neck. This is another one of
09:48those creations 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 of the
10:03first season of the next generation. You get other captains which is something we actually hadn't really
10:07seen very much of in Star Trek The Next Generation up to that point. We see we get the visit
10:12to
10:12Ditalix B from the opening moment. You just get this sense of something's very wrong with Starfleet.
10:20It 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
10:29brush off the suspicions that he had last time, straight away Picard tells Riker that's not Gregory
10:36Quinn. That final scene that sees Picard and Riker facing off against Remick is a heavily edited episode.
10:44I mean it actually took me until the 2000s to realize what happened at the end of that scene
10:49because it had been so censored on every version that I had seen up to that point. I didn't realize
10:55the fact that they got that lovely actor, they sat him in the chair and they blew up his head.
11:00These aliens are seriously creepy and although yes there was one of those kind of you kill the queen and
11:06the rest die moments, a signal was sent out from Starfleet. It was a homing signal. Now there has
11:14been suggestions that this was the setup for the Borg but as that went in a different direction,
11:20the Bluegills very much could be coming back. Number three, the Vidians. I would argue that the
11:27Vidians are possibly one of the creepiest but most tragic villains in all of Star Trek because they are
11:35affected by the phage which is analogous to a leprosy type disease. Before the phage affected
11:41them they were a society that was they excelled in art, they excelled in the sciences, they were well
11:47regarded in the delta quadrant and once the phage hit them they became one of the greatest terrors in
11:56their region. You see what the phage does is it effectively dissolves the body from the inside out
12:02and the Vidians in their desperation have taken to harvesting the organs of other species to keep
12:09their own bodies alive. We're introduced to them with the removal of Neelix's lungs which is a heck
12:15of a way to open an episode. However that's not the creepiest moment with the Vidians. A few episodes
12:22later on the episode faces is shown. Now it's mostly remembered for the fact that we split Bolana Torres
12:28between her human and Klingon sides and there's some good back and forth between the two versions.
12:34But what's really memorable is that poor Durst, oh poor Durst, he'd been introduced the episode before
12:43to set him up and then Durst, Paris and Bolana go on an away mission where they get captured by
12:48the
12:49Vidians. He is played by the same actor who plays the lead Vidian. The reason for that is that as
12:55the
12:55episode goes on, the Vidian has fallen in love with Bolana's Klingon side and thinks as a way of
13:00wooing her, she'd like him better if he had Durst's face grafted onto his own. It is horrible. I remember
13:07this vividly from the mid 90s when it was far too young to be watching this Cronenberg body horror
13:13and he just smiling down at her and I was like I may not be an expert romance but I'm
13:18not doing that.
13:19Number two, the Borg. If you have come from Frank Chavez's original article of this you might be
13:25surprised to see the Borg at number two instead of number one but we felt a very important change
13:30needed to be made to this list. But before I explain what that change is let's think about the Borg.
13:35Now they have been overused in all of Star Trek at this point so they have lost a little bit
13:40of that
13:41terror that was inspired by them originally but I want you to hold on to the word originally. Let's go
13:47back
13:47and see what the Borg really are at their core. So I'm not talking about when they're facing off
13:53with Janeway, although great scenes, and I'm not talking about when Borgati owns a new transwarp
13:59corridor because why wouldn't you? I am talking about that very first episode Q Who. The Borg were used
14:06as an example by Q for just how unprepared Starfleet was for what was out there. Now we had seen,
14:14oh look at the other aliens on this list, we've seen some pretty creepy things throughout the
14:18original series so you might have been left wondering in 1987, 1988, ah sure what else could
14:24we be dealing with here? And then we found out that arrival of that first cube led to one of
14:29the most
14:31pulse pounding episodes that the next generation had done to that point. You see in a way they're
14:38cybernetic beings that have been a mix of organic and synthetic, okay yeah we've seen versions of
14:46this before, that's not that scary. Very bloody scary when they're coming after you though. We see
14:50one drone beams into engineering, it does not give two figs about the fact that they don't want him in
14:56engineering, especially when a very lucky security officer tries to stop him and he gets thrown across
15:03a room and you might be like Sean, how would you consider that lucky? Because he wasn't injected
15:08with the nanoprobes that would be added in the next few episodes that featured the Borg. They're not
15:14just scary robots that want your technology, they want your biological and technological distinctiveness
15:20to add to their own. They assimilated Picard. Now think about that, you'd had three seasons where
15:27this Shakespearean actor was getting more and more grounded in the role. He was dignified, he was
15:35very measured in everything he did and he didn't stand a chance against the collective. He became
15:43Locutus and we get what is arguably the greatest cliffhanger ending in all of Star Trek when Riker
15:50orders Worf to fire. The Borg are at their core terrifying. If they were to launch a full-on assault
15:58there is very few that would ever have a chance of stopping them. Species 8472 did and then Voyager
16:06went and mucked that one up didn't they? The one last thing I will say about the Borg is that
16:10despite
16:11their being overused, despite being sometimes they took the veil off it, when you strip it back to its core
16:16like they did in the Enterprise episode Regeneration, these Swedish sounding cybernetic zombies are
16:23terrifying and if they're coming after you you better pick out your alcove. Number one, the Gorn.
16:30Okay so this was the change to Frank's list that I made here so please make sure you go and
16:36check out
16:36Frank's article originally but I got to explain why I've put the Gorn at number one. Why do you think?
16:42But also, also, bear with me, even a couple of years ago, if I was to have the Gorn at
16:48number one,
16:48you 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
17:01and
17:03an 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
17:11as I possibly
17:12could away from a Gorn wedding. We'll see how the mood takes me. All of this, all of this, you're
17:17like,
17:18not 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
17:32being set up throughout the first season of Strange New Worlds as someone to genuinely be feared. You
17:38had Leanne Noonien Singh had a horrifically traumatic experience in her childhood where her family and
17:44in fact the whole ship that they were on were killed by the Gorn. But wouldn't it be lovely if
17:50they had only been killed? The Strange New Worlds Gorn owe an awful lot of inspiration to Dan O'Bannon
17:56and
17:56Ronald Shussett Jr's Xenomorph that was of course introduced back in Alien. Ironically the same
18:02year that Star Trek The Motion Picture came out. Space was a very mixed place that year. These are
18:06fast. These are frightening. These are also much more animal than say the previous Gorn that had
18:14appeared had been. I mean, you didn't look like you were about to have a conversation with these dudes.
18:19But of course, let's talk about the spit that gets you pregnant. That might sound very silly,
18:25doesn't it? Betcha Hemmer didn't find it so funny. This was it. This was the episode we lost Bruce Horax
18:31Hemmer because he got infected with Gorn babies, which again, if you've seen Alien, unwelcome dinner
18:39guest. That's what we're looking at here. The Gorn may have been one of the most beloved jokes in
18:43Star Trek history for a long time. But then, Strange New Worlds came along and says, nah,
18:50hold my rubber suit. We're gonna change this up. That's it for our list, folks. Thank you very much
18:54for watching. If you reckon I missed something that is so super creepy, it must be included.
18:58Let me know in the comments below. And again, as I say, don't forget to check out the original article
19:03by the wonderful Frank Chavez. Thank you very much for watching along. Thank you very much to the
19:07wonderful Tom who's edited this video. Sorry if you've had to have a little bit of wind, but
19:11the person who was supposed to hold the wind, they called in sick today. Remember, you can catch us
19:16on socials at TrekCulture on Twitter and at TrekCultureYT over on Instagram. You can catch
19:20myself at SeanFerrick on all the various socials. You can catch Tom at TomCFinn. Everyone, make sure
19:26you look after yourselves until I see you again. Make sure that you live long and prosper.
19:30And if you're out the LA way, well, bye for a visit. It is pretty cool. Thanks very much.
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