10 Creepiest Star Trek Aliens
These creepy Star Trek aliens are guaranteed to make your skin crawl.
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00:00 Hello my friends, how are you? Sean Ferrick here for Trek Culture and as you might have noticed,
00:06 things are a little different today. I'm wearing sunglasses. I just thought that the day that was
00:12 in it I might just celebrate the fact that I can barely see. We've got lovely weather, oh yeah,
00:16 and that thing. We are here at the Vasquez Rocks. I have come on a wee away mission because we are
00:23 going to talk about some of the creepiest aliens and I think you know which one of them is going
00:29 to be on this list. But before I get into that, I'm Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture and here are the 10
00:34 creepiest aliens in Star Trek. Number 10, Armas. Six foot tall, big thing of goo. Creepy to begin
00:43 with, but then you find out what Armas does in the course of the episode. The Next Generation's
00:49 first season was not without its bumps, but the episode Skin of Evil delivered one of the most
00:55 shocking moments in Star Trek history as we saw Lieutenant Tasha Yar get thrown across,
01:01 let's be honest, planet hell. Planet hell was of course Vagra 2 in this episode. This time,
01:07 the inhabitants of that planet had decided that they were going to leave all of their negative
01:10 energy before and in doing so they created Armas. Armas was a creature made of all of the ill will
01:19 and evil, but unfortunately they never stopped to think, "Wait, is this a bad idea?" Well,
01:25 Counselor Troi found out it was a pretty bad idea when her shuttle was brought down by Armas. A
01:31 landing party was sent after to save her and Tasha Yar unfortunately decided to poke the bear at just
01:38 the wrong moment. Not simply content with killing Tasha Yar, Riker was dragged across the sand into
01:44 the body of Armas in one of the creepiest and often parodied scenes in that first season of
01:52 Star Trek. Armas may be many things in an episode that may be many things, but he is still deeply,
01:58 deeply unsettling. Number nine, Salt Vampires, the M-113 creature. The very first episode of Star
02:06 Trek that was shown on television was not actually the pilot, it was the man trap. The episode
02:12 focusing on Dr. McCoy and his lost love Nancy Crater. Throughout the course of the episode,
02:18 we see a lot of Nancy, but the real Nancy remains lost because what we find is one of the most
02:25 iconic baddies of the original series. The Salt Vampire, you have probably seen this, even if
02:32 you've never seen an episode of Star Trek. You've got those kind of dreads that are hanging there,
02:36 matted, you've got those long fingers with those suckers on the underside, you've got that open
02:42 gaping mouth, but that's only when the creature's been revealed. One of the even creepier elements
02:47 to this is the fact that it can assume the form of others. The impersonation is so perfect that
02:53 Dr. McCoy struggles to believe that this isn't the real Nancy Crater, and it takes Spock attacking
02:59 "Nancy" for him to actually realise the real Nancy probably couldn't take a punch the way that this
03:06 creature did. While this vampire has turned up in many parodies, as much of the original series
03:11 aliens have, that doesn't change the fact that the fact that it could be anyone has such an emotional
03:18 beat to it and such a creepy beat to it as well. I suppose, depending on how you look at it, the
03:23 fact that they kill the very last one is either absolutely brilliant or a big misdirect, because
03:29 one turns up in Lower Decks as well. Number eight, Gorgon. The third season of the original series of
03:35 Star Trek is... mixed, at best. Bearing in mind it opens with Spock's brain and closes with the line
03:42 "She could have had a great life if only she hadn't been a woman." Listen, mistakes were made.
03:47 One of the episodes this season, "And the Children Shall Lead", often ranks among the lowest in the
03:54 ratings when it comes to Star Trek, and there is a degree of fairness to that. There's a degree where
03:59 that's maybe a bit harsh. The Gorgon in this was played by guest performer and lawyer Melvin Belli,
04:07 who in a bit of stunt casting rocked up as this wonderful green friendly angel of the children,
04:13 those same kids who have just killed all their parents. The episode effectively shows a bit of a
04:19 village of the damned, children of the corn vibe, when it takes the kids eventually realizing what
04:26 has happened and breaking down in tears to remove the power of the Gorgon. That's where Gorgon is
04:33 creepy. Not in its admittedly very rushed makeup appearance, more so that it will con you into
04:42 smiling your way through the slaughter of the ones that mean the most. And if that's not creepy,
04:47 then I don't think I want to be your friend. Number seven, the Beta-12a entity. Now you
04:53 might already have realized that we've got a few original series aliens on this list,
04:57 because quite frankly, what was wrong with the writers back in the 60s? There was some serious
05:02 horror going on, and this isn't the last one either, I can tell you. In the episode "The Day
05:07 of the Dove", we are introduced to a few things that will become iconic in Star Trek history.
05:12 For example, Michael and Sarah appears for the first time as Kang. We also get the first appearance
05:17 of the Klingon D7 battlecruiser. We also get Mara, Kang's mate/wife/it's not really clear in
05:26 the episode, but what we also get is everyone going flipping nuts. The point of this entity
05:32 is that it is a non-corporeal being that, like many others in the Star Trek universe, feeds off
05:37 those negative energies that the people put out. Not only that, but it amplifies them as well. So
05:44 you see everyone running around with swords because tearing each other apart is effectively
05:49 brunch to this thing. By the time we meet it, it had already caused the destruction of the Klingon
05:54 ship. So thanks very much to the remastered version so we can see a nicer version of it,
05:59 but those Klingons suddenly arrive on the Enterprise, they're beamed over, they're saved.
06:03 Yeah, no. So hijinks ensue, lots of sword fighting. It's only stopped at the end by the
06:10 combined laughter of Kirk and Kang in one of the first, and honestly most fun, joining together of
06:20 Starfleet and the Klingons that we get in Star Trek. Number six, Redjack. The original series
06:26 episode "Wolf in the Fold" was written by Robert Block, who's most famous for writing "Psycho".
06:31 However, Block had a long-running obsession with Jack the Ripper and had previously written pieces
06:39 featuring Jack in terms of confessions and what-ifs. This is no different. What's truly
06:45 creepy about Redjack in this episode is that, like several others, it's a possessing entity,
06:52 but it is one of the darkest episodes that we had yet seen of Star Trek, considering the cold
06:58 open finishes with Scotty standing there, knife in hand, with an exotic dancer dead at his feet.
07:05 While the episode itself has issues, for example the suggestion that Scotty was in an accident
07:09 caused by a woman, and so McCoy recommended he go to a strip bar. Throughout the episode,
07:14 we get seances, we get non-corporeal talking, we get the reveal that the original Piglet was in
07:21 fact this mass-murdering hater of women. Not really, I dare you to go back and watch that
07:26 episode and not hear Piglet every time he speaks. This entity, it moved from Earth,
07:31 it moved to the Rigel colonies, it has been killing throughout time. And in fact, there's an
07:36 even scarier moment right at the end when Redjack takes control of the Enterprise itself. And
07:43 actually, for the 1960s, for a network television show, this was deeply unsettling. They don't dial
07:52 it back for Star Trek. Now, it is defeated, but Wolf in the Fold, and in fact Redjack,
08:00 that's a character that's going to stay with you long after the credits roll.
08:03 Number five, flying parasites. I mean, the clue's in the description there, really. I don't really
08:09 want to meet these things, so when the episode Operation Annihilate comes up, I think I'm just
08:15 going to take a hard pass, you enjoy it, and I'll see you again in the next season. How does that
08:19 sound? I bet someone who really wished they could have said that was the ill-fated Sam Kirk.
08:25 Before I go on, spoilers I guess to anyone who hasn't seen Operation Annihilate and is really
08:31 enjoying Sam Kirk in Strange New Worlds. Don't worry, it's about 10 years in the future, okay?
08:37 When Kirk and crew, the main Kirk I should say, and crew beam down to the planet, they find that
08:41 Jim Kirk's brother is dead, his sister-in-law Aurelian is dying. Now, thankfully, his nephew
08:48 is spared, but the rest of the colony are effectively dead by these parasites that
08:52 attach to the back of the victim and just suck out all that they need and leave them to die in
08:59 agony. We nearly lose Spock to these parasites as well because of the pain that they inflict on them.
09:05 Now, the funny thing about these things is that they look like that plastic vomit that you buy
09:09 in the joke shop, which kind of stands to how creepy they are that you can take something that
09:13 looks like a zit someone's just popped and it's still actually freaky. I'm going to do a hard pass
09:20 on these. I'm going to skip this episode and I'll see you in the next season. Number four, unnamed
09:25 parasitic beings. Now, I should say before I go on that, Star Trek Online, whether you want to
09:30 accept it as canon or not, has called these creatures the Bluegills. They infect the host
09:35 by entering often through the mouth and they're only identified by increased physical strength of
09:41 the victim and also a small spike that could be a breathing apparatus that sticks out the back of
09:47 the victim's neck. This is another one of those creations where in the first season of the next
09:51 generation we are given, despite the issues that season faced, a genuinely paranoid unsettling
09:59 episode. Conspiracy probably is the best episode of the first season of the next generation. You
10:05 get other captains, which is something we actually hadn't really seen very much of in Star Trek the
10:09 Next Generation up to that point. We see we get the visit to Ditalix B from the opening moment.
10:15 You just get this sense of something's very wrong with Starfleet. It had been set up a couple of
10:21 episodes earlier with the arrival of Admiral Quinn and Lieutenant Commander Remic in the episode
10:26 Coming of Age. When Quinn arrives this time and you see him just brush off the suspicions that
10:31 he had last time, straight away Picard tells Riker that's not Gregory Quinn. That final scene
10:37 that sees Picard and Riker facing off against Remic is a heavily edited episode. I mean,
10:44 it actually took me until the 2000s to realise what happened at the end of that scene because
10:50 it had been so censored on every version that I had seen up to that point. I didn't realise the
10:55 fact that they got that lovely actor, they sat him in the chair and they blew up his head. These
11:00 aliens are seriously creepy and although yes there was one of those kind of you kill the queen and
11:06 the rest die moments, a signal was sent out from Starfleet. It was a homing signal. Now there has
11:14 been suggestions that this was the setup for the Borg but as that went in a different direction,
11:19 the Bluegills very much could be coming back. Number three, the Vidians. I would argue that
11:27 the Vidians are possibly one of the creepiest but most tragic villains in all of Star Trek because
11:35 they are affected by the phage which is analogous to a leprosy type disease. Before the phage
11:40 affected them, they were a society that excelled in art, they excelled in the sciences, they were
11:47 well regarded in the Delta Quadrant and once the phage hit them they became one of the greatest
11:55 terrors in their region. You see, what the phage does is it effectively dissolves the body from
12:01 the inside out and the Vidians in their desperation have taken to harvesting the organs of other
12:08 species to keep their own bodies alive. We're introduced to them with the removal of Neelix's
12:13 lungs which is a heck of a way to open an episode. However, that's not the creepiest moment with the
12:20 Vidians. A few episodes later on, the episode "Faces" is shown. Now it's mostly remembered for
12:26 the fact that we split B'Elanna Torres between her human and Klingon sides and there's some good
12:32 back and forth between the two versions. But what's really memorable is that poor Durst,
12:39 oh poor Durst, he'd been introduced the episode before to set him up and then Durst, Harris and
12:46 B'Elanna go on an away mission where they get captured by the Vidians. He is played by the same
12:51 actor who plays the lead Vidian. The reason for that is that as the episode goes on, the Vidian
12:56 has fallen in love with B'Elanna's Klingon side and thinks as a way of wooing her she'd like him
13:02 better if he had Durst's face grafted onto his own. It is horri- I remember this vividly from
13:09 the mid 90s when I was far too young to be watching this Cronenberg body horror and he just smiling
13:14 down at her and I was like I may not be an expert at romance but I'm not doing that. Number two,
13:20 the Borg. If you have come from Frank Chavez's original article of this you might be surprised
13:25 to see the Borg at number two instead of number one but we felt a very important change needed
13:30 to be made to this list. But before I explain what that change is let's think about the Borg.
13:35 Now they have been overused in all of Star Trek at this point so they have lost a little bit of
13:41 that terror that was inspired by them originally but I want you to hold on to the word originally.
13:46 Let's go back and see what the Borg really are at their core. So I'm not talking about when they're
13:52 facing off with Janeway although great scenes and I'm not talking about when Borgatti owns a new
13:58 transwarp corridor because why wouldn't you? I am talking about that very first episode Q-Who. The
14:04 Borg were used as an example by Q for just how unprepared Starfleet was for what was out there.
14:13 Now we had seen, look at the other aliens on this list, we've seen some pretty creepy things
14:18 throughout the original series so you might have been left wondering in 1987, 1988, ah sure what
14:24 else could we be dealing with here? And then we found out that arrival of that first cube led to
14:29 one of the most pulse-pounding episodes that the next generation had done to that point. You see
14:36 in a way they're cybernetic beings that have been a mix of organic and synthetic. Okay yeah we've
14:45 seen versions of this before that's not that scary. Very bloody scary when they're coming
14:49 after you though. We see one drone beams into engineering. It does not give two figs about the
14:54 fact that they don't want him in engineering, especially when a very lucky security officer
15:01 tries to stop him and he gets thrown across a room and you might be like "Sean how would you
15:05 consider that lucky?" Because he wasn't injected with the nanoprobes that would be added in the
15:11 next few episodes that featured the Borg. They're not just scary robots that want your technology,
15:17 they want your biological and technological distinctiveness to add to their own.
15:21 They assimilated Picard. Now think about that you'd have three seasons where this Shakespearean actor
15:28 was getting more and more grounded in the role. He was dignified, he was very measured in everything
15:37 he did and he didn't stand a chance against the collective. He became locutus and we get what is
15:45 arguably the greatest cliffhanger ending in all of Star Trek when Riker orders Worf to fire. The
15:52 Borg are at their core terrifying. If they were to launch a full-on assault there is very few that
16:01 would ever have a chance of stopping them. Species 8472 did and then Voyager went and mucked that
16:06 one up didn't they? The one last thing I will say about the Borg is that despite their being
16:11 overused, despite being sometimes they took the veil off, when you strip it back to its core like
16:17 they did in the Enterprise episode "regeneration" these Swedish sounding cybernetic zombies are
16:23 terrifying and if they're coming after you you'd better pick out your alcove. Number one the Gorn.
16:30 Okay so this was the change to Frank's list that I made here so please make sure you go and check
16:36 out Frank's article originally but I got to explain why I put the Gorn at number one.
16:41 Why do you think? But also, also, bear with me, even a couple of years ago if I was to have the
16:47 Gorn at number one you might have looked at this and said "really? The hissing rubber guy from
16:53 Arena? Creepiest?" Well he did get a bit creepier in that episode of Enterprise where they tried to
17:00 do him in CGI and an attempt was made. They lost some of their creepiness when they rocked up in
17:06 lower decks. I mean I would both love to attend a Gorn wedding and also I would love to run as
17:11 fast as I possibly could away from a Gorn wedding. You know we'll see how the mood takes me. All this,
17:17 all this, you're like not getting creepy, I'm not getting creepy. Then Strange New Worlds came along
17:23 and Memento Mori made me realize where if I hear the Gorn are coming I am getting the absolute
17:29 out of there. The Gorn were being set up throughout the first season of Strange New Worlds as
17:34 someone to genuinely be feared. You had Leanne Nooney in Sing had a horrifically traumatic
17:41 experience in her childhood where her family and in fact the whole ship that they were on
17:46 were killed by the Gorn. But wouldn't it be lovely if they had only been killed? The Strange New
17:52 Worlds Gorn owe an awful lot of inspiration to Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusset Jr's Xenomorph that
17:58 was of course introduced back in Alien, ironically the same year that Star Trek the Motion Picture
18:03 came out. Space was a very mixed place that year. These are fast, these are frightening, these are
18:10 also much more animal than say the previous Gorn that had appeared had been. I mean you didn't look
18:17 like you were about to have a conversation with these dudes. But of course let's talk about the
18:22 spit that gets you pregnant. That might sound very silly doesn't it? Bet you Hemmer didn't find it so
18:28 funny. This was it, this was the episode we lost Bruce Horak's Hemmer because he got infected with
18:33 Gorn babies which again if you've seen Alien, unwelcome dinner guest, that's what we're looking
18:40 at here. The Gorn may have been one of the most beloved jokes in Star Trek history for a long
18:45 time but then Strange New Worlds came along and says "nah hold my rubber suit we're gonna change
18:52 this up". That's it for our list folks thank you very much for watching if you reckon I missed
18:56 something that is so super creepy it must be included let me know in the comments below and
19:00 again as I say don't forget to check out the original article by the wonderful Frank Chavez.
19:05 Thank you very much for watching along, thank you very much to the wonderful Tom who's edited this
19:08 video. Sorry if you've had to have a little bit of wind but uh the person who was supposed to hold
19:13 the wind they called in sick today. Remember you can catch us on socials @TrekCulture on Twitter
19:18 and @TrekCultureYT over on Instagram. You catch myself @SeanFerric on all the various socials,
19:23 you can catch Tom @TomCFinn. Everyone make sure you look after yourselves until I see you again,
19:27 make sure that you live long and prosper and if you're out the LA way,
19:31 pop by for a visit it is pretty cool. Thanks very much.