Star Trek: 10 Greatest Genre Episodes Ever
3. Horror: Wolf In The Fold
Horror film, motion picture calculated to cause intense repugnance, fear, or dread.
For The Original Series' dip into horror, author Robert Bloch (of Psycho fame) created a story that has both aged well, in that it still manages to elicit scares today, and badly, in that some of the logic is as far from logical as it's possible to be.
A spectral version of Jack the Ripper is a truly terrifying idea, one that has been revisited in the years since. Haunting, possession, murder - Wolf In The Fold plays with each of these tropes, helping to build the oppressive atmosphere that Scotty finds himself in almost at once.
Bloch, writing in Psycho, touched on revulsion and confusion, particularly in how Norman Bates deals with women. Unfortunately, shortcuts were taken in the script for Wolf In The Fold, which don't gel with the rest of Star Trek. McCoy's worry - that Scotty was in an accident caused by a woman, so may grow to hate all women - is nonsense, and only serves to place the finger of suspicion on the engineer.
However, the true dread of the episode works in the spooky, misty streets, the things that go bump in the night, and the endlessly terrifying voice of John Fielder, swapping his joyous Piglet-era tone for an evil Ripper one. The story may be a reuse of one of Bloch's earlier ideas, but in large part it works - not least because of the enduring image of James Doohan standing over a corpse, bloody knife in hand.