History NightmareFuel / StarTrek

** A bit of a fridge example: Since the 1960s, the phaser has represented a sort of holy grail in less-than-lethal weapon engineering; with their ability to subdue an individual ''or'' a crowd instantly with no noticeable lasting health effects. This film, however, makes a plot point of the fact that even phasers on stun are potentially deadly.

[[quoteright:287:[[Series/StarTrekVoyager http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/SulanDurstsFace_8843.jpg]]]]

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**** FridgeLogic: The Enterprise has just fired on a ship carrying a diplomat on a mission of peace. There was no warning or provocation. Furthermore, agents from the Enterprise have deliberately murdered most of the crew on that ship, as well as the diplomat in question. It is an act of war, and worse, it is straight up treachery. The Klingons, worshiping honor, would perceive this as a Pearl Harbor-style event, and their revenge would only be satisfied by the complete destruction of the Federation. It would be a galactic war in which trillions might die and the entirety of known space would be dramatically destabilized even in the best-case scenario. The only evidence Enterprise would have to prove their non-complicity would be the ship's records and the crew's testimony, proof that the Klingons would never trust even if it hadn't been tampered with, because James Kirk is vocal about his hate of Klingons. And of course, let's not forget that this *is* being orchestrated by some top brass in Starfleet.

Kirk hates the Klingons for personal and professional reasons, but he also understands them. He knows that any hope of proving the innocence of his ship, and of the Federation, would be forfeit in the event that the Enterprise attempts to defend itself or to escape. He is willing to sacrifice his life, his ship and its crew, because that is the only action he can take, under the present circumstances, which might possibly prevent this apocalyptic war. He will permit the Klingons to retaliate uncontested because to do so would subvert the narrative that Kirk ordered the attack out of personal animosity, and the Klingons respected Kirk as a warrior too much to believe he would order such an attack and react that way. Indeed, Kirk is more than happy to surrender himself to the Klingons once presented with the opportunity for the same exact reason he refused to raise shields.

Rather than having a HeroicBSOD, Kirk is demonstrating *the* most legitimate act of heroism of the entire franchise.

Let's take it by series:
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[[folder:Enterprise]]
* The Xindi [[BugWar Insectoids]] are enormous [[SerkisFolk computer-animated]] ants. Industrial Light and Magic gives us all the detail on them you'll ever want and then some.
* There was also the automated repair station that turned out to kidnap crew members and fake their deaths so it could [[PoweredByAForsakenChild use their brains in its computers.]] Archer blows it up in the end... but the final scene is it beginning to put itself back together.
* Worst of all, though, is the ''much'' more graphic portrayal of what happens to victims of ExplosiveInstrumentation. When the ship gets attacked, other Treks have the StarTrekShake and the occasional sooty HesDeadJim person. ''Enterprise'' has things like people on fire and screaming, or crewmen blown out into space when the hull is breached, twitching for a bit, and then stopping.
* Most of the episode "Strange New World" was creepy, but the worst was when they beamed up the crewman during a storm [[spoiler: and he materialized with sticks and debris embedded in his face and body.]]
* ''Singularity'' seems like a "Naked Time"-ish episode, where everyone is obsessed with tiny tasks and becomes extremely agitated. T'Pol is unaffected, so she goes to check if Doctor Phlox is also all right. He isn't. [[spoiler: He has become so obsessed with Mayweather's headache that he's going to vivisect his brain, seeming ''identical'' to the MirrorUniverse Phlox, and threatens to kill T'Pol for getting in the way of his experiments.]]
* In Doctor's Orders Phlox experiences hallucinations whilst he and T'Pol are the only member of the crew awake for a trip through radiation that is dangerous to humans. At the end, [[spoiler: it's revealed that Phlox was hallucinating T'Pol as well. She was really sleeping along with the rest of the crew.]]
* The above two examples, his decision to support genocide in "Dear Doctor" and his Mirror Universe counterpart being one of the ''least'' radically different in terms of personality, has lead more than one viewer [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation to suggest]] that Phlox is actually a [[MadScientist dangerous nut]], seconds away from [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope cracking]] and going on a killing spree!
* ''In a Mirror, Darkly'' takes the agony booth and shows what prolonged exposure can do to a person. Mirror Archer is apparently insane after ten hours in Phlox's invention; it's just that the culture's so toxic nobody can tell, and even if anyone can tell, they dare not say so aloud; [[spoiler:with Forrest dead, ''he's'' now captain]].
* "The Exile." Think serial-killer drama combined with "Beauty and the Beast." First, Tarquin tries to entice Hoshi with a form he thinks will be attractive to her... while whispering in her skull, making her hallucinate him on all the viewscreens in the lab, and generally causing her to think that she's losing her mind. (Again.) When he does make contact, he makes her stay in his house in exchange for his help and demonstrates that he's been rifling through her memories to the smallest detail--never once asking her permission to do this, even her more painful memories--and tries using them to convince her to stay. When that fails and she finds the graves of his previous "companions," he creates an illusion of Archer essentially ordering her to stay and then attacks ''Enterprise'' itself. She has to threaten to break his telepathy amplifier to make him let her go. FreudianExcuse or not, that is some major league creepiness.
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* ''[[Film/StarTrek Star Trek (2009)]]''. This movie is surprisingly tame compared to most Star Trek movies, but there are still a few moments:
** The indistinct voices heard inside the ''Narada'' at one point.
** The ''Narada'' is about twenty miles long, hideously overweaponed, and covered in blades and tentacles caused by uncontrollable Borg ''growths''. There is nothing Accidental about the ''Narada'''s NightmareFuel.
** Being beamed inside a cooling system.
** That EldritchAbomination monster on the ice planet.
** Then there's the early scene where [[ThrownOutTheAirlock a crewmember gets sucked out of a hull breach, their screaming silenced when they end up in the vacuum...]]
*** Flailing crewmembers being sucked into space seems to be the new continuity's equivalent of the [[ScreenShake Star Trek Shake]].
** Everything about the Battle of Vulcan: [[spoiler: several starships carrying ''graduating cadets'' obliterated and '''a whole planet with six billion Vulcans sucked into a black hole''' in less than an hour.]]
** When Spock is [[spoiler:choking Kirk to death for insulting his mother, there's a moment, just a moment, when there's a hint of a bloodlust smile on his face. It is ''creepy''.]]

[[folder:Voyager]]
* ShowWithinAShow version: There's a sequence in a child's holodeck program in which a massive fire monster hops out of nowhere and burns the main character to [[NotQuiteDead what looks like death if the kid's not bright enough to figure out how to help him.]] Worse happens in some children's stories, but the Holodeck is '''virtual reality''' -- 3D, immersive, in your face, and by the 24th century, as realistic-looking as reality. The idea of any programmer making such entertainment for a child seriously stretches WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief.
** Unintentionally terrifying things in media made for children have been a staple [[TruthInTelevision since fiction began.]]
* What about the macroviruses? Giant germs that popped out of victims' necks, buzzed around like insects, and eventually grew from bug size to bird size to monstrous.
** Now imagine how much worse it must have been for Naomi Wildman. Bugs as big as her, and Mommy is sick.
* [[LotusEaterMachine Telepathic pitcher plant.]]
* And then there's Species 8472, for the BodyHorror they can inflict simply by ''touching'' you. They scare the Borg as much as Locutus and the Borg Queen scared some of us.
** It's not what they can do to you -- it's that ''they can defeat the Borg''. And not just defeat the Borg but do it ''[[CurbStompBattle easily]]''. To put this into perspective, whenever a Borg cube appears in Federation space there's usually a dozen or more ships mobilized to fight it and even then there's heavy casualties. At one point an 8472 ship was drifting, unharmed, among a bunch of Borg cubes, lazily taking pot shots at them and blowing each one away with one or two hits.
*** Just remember their introduction. Two Borg cubes float towards the camera and the 'We are the Borg...' speech is heard. BEFORE THEY FINISH, 8472 weapons fire and both cubes go BOOM without a chance to fire a single shot. It's that infamous speech trailing off as the cubes turn into nothing but debris that catapults it into High Octane.
** Species 8472 were introduced in an episode featuring a ''small mountain of mutilated Borg corpses''. '''Gah.'''
** And later on, they [[EarthShatteringKaboom blow up a Borg planet]]. If the [[StarWars Alderaan]] scene is scary, imagine this being done by a couple of Voyager-sized ships, with the beams first converging on a central one before hitting a planet - and instead of clear "Hit and Boom" one sees as the planet disintegrates piece by piece!
* The creatures the ''Equinox'' crew [[HumanResources harvested for their advanced warp drive]] were creepy, and they popped out of portals and as such could attack from ''anywhere'' without warning. Complete with [[ShakyPOVCam monster's-eye view]] of screaming crewmen as the creatures pounce on their faces. And what they do to you if they get you is at least as bad as Species 8472.
* It doesn't get worse than the Vidiians, though. Afflicted with a disease that wastes their bodies to the point where most of them make your average zombie look like a GQ model by comparison, they attack ships to harvest crews' organs. Instead of the usual [[EnergyWeapons ray guns]], their weapons ''teleport organs right out of victims' bodies.'' Skin is in demand as well, and many a {{Redshirt}} has been taken away only for a Vidiian to return still looking pretty rotted... except for the face, which now has human skin that doesn't fit very well. And ''only'' the face, not the rest of the head, furthering the glued-on-skin look.
** [[http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Image:SulanDurstsFace.jpg A particular(ly gruesome) example.]]
*** It doesn't help that the Vidiian "phage" has been inspired by [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrotizing_fasciitis a real disease]], commonly known as [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin flesh-eating disease]].
* "The Thaw" in which members of the crew are trapped in a dream-like computer program where they are held captive by, ridiculed and almost killed by, not a MonsterClown but a whole bloody [[CircusofFear ''monster circus'']]. The clown was the ringleader, played by Micheal [=McKean=] as a LargeHam. The part that I remember the most is when the whole circus sings out "A VI-RUS! A VI-RUS! HE THINKS WE ARE A VI-RUS!" in a chillingly demented way.
* "Scientific Method" in which the crew are being experimented upon by invisible (phased) aliens. When Seven of Nine alters her optical whatevers, we see the crew walking around with 'things' sticking out of them while being followed by alien scientists like labrats.
** And for extra pants-soiling fun, the scene where one of the aliens ''walks up to Seven and starts adjusting one of the unholy devices attached to her face.'' And we [[NothingIsScarier never get to see what it looks like]]. ''And'' Seven absolutely cannot react to whatever horrors she sees or else she would give the game away to the aliens and they would exterminate ''Voyager'''s crew as "failed test subjects".
* After enough "special moments" like this, the network all but started advertising it as a horror show. "Such-and-such happens on ''Series/TheSentinel'', and then ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' unleashes another hour of terror." They're right!
* Kes screaming in "Persistence of Vision" and "Cold Fire." Major spoilers for the former - one of the best episodes ever - follow.
** "Persistence of Vision" gets special points for some of the hallucinations - the BodyHorror ones were awful, but perhaps even more so were the more LotusEaterMachine ones. Just think... a loved one appears to you and if you listen to and engage the figment at all, even to tell them you ''know'' they aren't real, you wind up trapped, staring into space with God-only-knows what going on inside your head (the episode had some LessIsMore going; we don't know what happens to you when you succumb and become basically catatonic and that made it ''worse'' somehow.) And then the way it ended...
** "Cold Fire" also deserves a special mention for that nice scene in which Kes inadvertently [[spoiler:causes Tuvok's blood to boil in a nice display of her ever-growing psychic powers.]]
* Those hallucinations and creepy whispers in "One", and the pure terror in Seven's voice when the Doctor goes permanently offline.
* Dejaren in "Revulsion". He's basically Norman Bates as a hologram with a pronounced case of FantasticRacism for organic lifeforms.
* Annorax in "Year of Hell" is basically what happens when you give Hitler a TimeMachine.
* [[http://i.imgur.com/ltaa2sn.png This]] alien from the season 4 episode "Retrospect" has a [[RubberForeheadAlien rubber forehead]] guaranteed to freak-out any sufferers of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trypophobia Trypophobia]]
* "Timeless" was ''full'' of these moments, such as seeing a ''Voyager'' full of dead and frozen people, and the ''lovely'' scenes of the Doctor holding half of Seven's ''skull'' and poking around in it. Sure, ResetButton, but ''ew''.
* ''The Raven:'' Seven is tormented of flashbacks of herself as a ''four-year old child'' running in terror from the pursuing Borg, who have already assimilated her parents and are coming for her.
[[/folder]]

* "The Raven:" Seven is tormented of flashbacks of herself as a ''four-year old child'' running in terror from the pursuing Borg, who have already assimilated her parents and are coming for her.

'''Note:''' please avoid [[ConversationOnTheMainPage personal examples, anecdotes and natter]]. Feel free to tell us about how scary the Borg are, but we don't need to know how they made you hide under the bed.

[[index]]
* ''NightmareFuel/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' The whole damn, [[LeaveTheCameraRunning interminable]] thing! THAT is terrifying!
** Actually, specific events in this movie are a great example. In this movie more than any other Trek production, every aspect of space travel in the 23rd Century IS TRYING TO KILL YOU! The transporter disintegrates the ship's science officer. Crewmembers make extensive use of space suits for EVA. Going to warp accidentally throws you inside an uncontrollable wormhole. And remember those 300-year old space probes? One of them is coming back, and it's dragging a giant machine thousands of miles long that is more than capable of rendering the planet Earth completely lifeless. What's more, it's been sent by a race of machines that don't even perceive carbon-based organisms as living beings. V'ger is looking for God, and if it doesn't find it, it will nuke your planet.
** Oh, dear god, that transporter room scene. When the crewmen start re-materializing there's an odd, electronic buzz that slowly resolves (almost before you realize what you're hearing) into the sound of the victims screaming in agony. While you're realizing what that sound is, you start to notice the the two humanoids forming on the pad don't look quite...[[BodyHorror humanoid]].
-->'''Starfleet Transporter Tech.''': ''Enterprise'', what we got back didn't live long...fortunately.
* ''NightmareFuel/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'' gets away with a ''lot'' because the PG-13 rating didn't exist back then, so the movie went as far into PG as it could without getting an R rating:
** The thought that whatever happened on Ceti Alpha V since Kirk marooned the ''Botany Bay'' survivors there was sufficient enough to drive ''Khan'' of all people to the point of utter madness is pretty nightmare-inducing. In ''Space Seed'', Khan was himself a case of NightmareFuel; in the movie, he's gone completely psychotic.
** A {{Puppeteer Parasite}} is deposited into a helmet, which is then placed onto a restrained crewman's spacesuit. The crewman, and not any RedShirt, but ''Pavel Chekov'', is helpless to do anything but scream helplessly as the thing crawls into his ear.
** We see one of the scientists from Regula One get vaporized by a phaser. It's not ''quite'' an InstantDeathBullet, as we can hear the man's quickly fading scream of agony as he is vaporized.
** Some of the injuries suffered during the battles between ''Enterprise'' and ''Reliant''. Scotty's nephew, who we find horribly burned, and another crewman in the torpedo bay who gets engulfed in flames during the final fight.
* ''NightmareFuel/StarTrekIIITheSearchForSpock''
** The most graphic depiction of disruptor disintegration Franchise/StarTrek has ever shown. The victim grabs his head in agony as he falls back against his control console and is consumed by energy ''from the inside, out''.
[[/index]]

** A bit of a fridge example: Since the 1960s, the phaser has represented a sort of holy grail in less-than-leathal weapon engineering; with their ability to subdue an individual ''or'' a crowd instantly with no noticeable lasting health effects. This film, however, makes a plot point of the fact that even phasers on stun are potentially deadly.
* ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact''. Dear god, ''First Contact.'' The Borg were bad enough in the TV series, but anytime they showed up in this one the movie actually turned from a sci-fi film into a damn horror flick. One of the scariest scenes is where a handful of crewmen flee inside a darkened room on the ship... and then ''several'' Borg lights [[OhCrap start flickering on within the room]]. It gets so bad that anytime we transition to Riker's party talking with Cochrane down on Earth it actually comes off as a welcome breather.
** The warp coolant that dissolves (and seems to vaporize) tissue on contact. It's inexplicably kept in gaseous form in an easily-breakable vessel in main engineering.
*** To be fair, it's easily-breakable by Data, who has been shown to have SuperStrength.

* ''[[Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness Star Trek Into Darkness]]'' has a few "fun" parts sure to keep you disturbed.
** [[spoiler:Khan crushing Admiral Marcus' head with his ''bare hands''. His seething rage makes it even worse]].
--> [[spoiler: Khan]]: '''YOU. YOU SHOULD HAVE LET ME SLEEP.'''
** It's bad enough being sucked out into space when the hull's breached: Now imagine the casualties of when [[spoiler: the ''Vengeance'' breaches the ''Enterprise'' hull '''while they're at warp''']].
** [[spoiler:Spock going berserk and almost beating Harrison to death]].
** Whoever does the sound of bones breaking does a ''really'' good job of making that cringe-inducing crunch.
** Alice Eve sure can scream. [[FridgeBrilliance Now they don't need Chekov to do it!]]

* Dejaren in ''Revulsion''. He's basically Norman Bates as a hologram with a pronounced case of FantasticRacism for organic lifeforms.

** ''Persistence of Vision'' gets special points for some of the hallucinations - the BodyHorror ones were awful, but perhaps even more so were the more LotusEaterMachine ones. Just think... a loved one appears to you and even knowing what's going on doesn't keep you safe - ''all you have to do is '''listen for about twenty seconds''''' and you wind up trapped, staring into space with God-only-knows what going on inside your head (the episode had some LessIsMore going; we don't know what happens to you when you succumb and become basically catatonic and that made it ''worse'' somehow.) And then the way it ended...
** ''Cold Fire'' also deserves a special mention for that nice scene in which Kes inadvertently [[causes Tuvok's blood to boil in a nice display of her ever-growing psychic powers.]]

** [[spoiler:Khan crushing Admiral Marcus' head with his ''bare hands'']].