10 Strangest Worlds In Star Trek

What defines a strange world? In a universe as vast as the one Star Trek inhabits, anything out of the ordinary could bear that label. Is it strange just because it looks a bit different? Yes! There it is, the end of the list. Thank you, and good night. 

Or.

Perhaps strange is simply a roadmap to new? After all, the clue is in the original promise of Star Trek. Strange New Worlds, isn't that right? They even named one of the spin-offs after it, so new will be one of our leads. What does new mean? Is new just another word for unknown? Well, yes, in short. Unknown, different, unexplored. And maybe a little weird, when we get right down to it.

Star Trek has taken us to hundreds of new worlds. Some of them looked like someone's basement with a tarp thrown over the wall, while others were wondrous and thrilling to behold. Many of them sit somewhere in the middle, redressed for a new episode, waiting to cover our comrades in smoke and metamusil. The earliest new worlds in The Original Series were excuses to show off that fancy new technicolour technology, matte paintings or no. 

Grab an environmental suit, a phaser rifle, and hop in the transporter. Just do yourself a favour and don't wear red. 

This charmingly named world (thank you, Jankum Pog) is one of the strangest on this list. While it's not the only dangerous planet that has been depicted in Star Trek, it is one of the few that is actively trying to kill anyone unlucky enough to set foot on its surface. 

When the Protostar lands on its surface, the young crew quickly discover that it is a place where dreams come true. Those dreams might be nightmares, but they are dreams nonetheless. The entire planet is linked under its surface, allowing coordinated attacks on unsuspecting prey, while also manifesting these poor creatures' desires to entice them into traps.

The planet's own properties may have inspired a native species to take to the stars, but still retain some of the lessons that their homestead bestowed upon them. Murder Planet was located, according to Hologram Janeway, in the Hirogen System. 

Almost all Hirogen representatives encountered by Starfleet before this stardate had been nomadic by nature, with no mention of a homeworld. It is unclear when Starfleet was able to discover and categorise this system as the Hirogen system. Hologram Janeway names it with some authority, suggesting absolute confirmation of the fact.

The Hirogen encountered by Starfleet began to make a little more sense after the visit to this world. If a species had been trained from birth to kill everything around them, lest they be killed by everything from the water to the plants, would that not encourage decent hunting skills?