10 Most Chilling Star Trek Moments
These are the moments that send a shiver down your spine in Star Trek, lingering long afterwards.
Star Trek is many things. It offers us hope, and courage. It depicts action and adventure. Sometimes it strays into the horror genre, with creepy crawlies to beat the best slashers. This list is a little different from all of the above, and contains a little bit of all of them.
The chilling moments of any story are the ones that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, tingling along your skin, ensuring that you'll remember them for years to come. They needn't be the most frightening moments, nor even the most depressing. They are simply - affecting.
In nearly sixty years, Star Trek has offered plenty of examples of an epidermal shudder, sometimes holding back just enough to slip by any censors, though there are the times when it inches closer and closer to the line, teasing the audience all the time. That, of course, only adds to the power of these moments. From The Original Series right up until the most recent offerings, there's something for everyone who seeks to remember those times when Star Trek said...you're going to remember this one for a long, long time.
10. Goodbye Ichar
Hard Time is a stand-out episode in the 'O'Brien Must Suffer' arc, one which runs from Emissary right through until What You Leave Behind. This episode took things a little further than usual, leaving everyone's favourite Chief with a crippling trauma - one that threatens to stay with him until the very end.
Throughout the episode, the audience sees him sink further and further into despair, unable to handle the memories that have been beamed into his head. While that's bad enough, it's the visions of his fabricated friend, Ichar, that truly haunt him.
The closing scene in the cargo bay was the closest that O'Brien ever truly came to death, and the fact that it was by his own hand was even more disturbing than anything else. At this moment, he was beaten, and broken. He was seconds away from pressing the trigger and ending everything.
Bashir's intervention, along with Ichar's own words of encouragement, brings him back from the edge. It's a close one - one that deserved further exploration as the show went on.