Canon, Horror, and Star Trek Adventures

Does the spirit of Halloween fit in Star Trek Adventures? Can a horror story be told in the Star Trek setting? Well, various Star Trek series have aired ghost stories, zombie stories, and a Halloween episode. So I'm going with yes to these questions. Here's a look at how some episodes have handled horror and how the resulting canon can be applied in a Star Trek game. As with the Year By Year posts, I start with a summary and put my comments in italics.

Ensign Shay finds herself with a zombie problem.

"Catspaw" - TOS

A literal Halloween tale by Robert Bloch. It has all the tropes - a spooky looking castle, a black cat, a witch, a dungeon with a chained up skeleton, and enough cobwebs to make this viewer want to reach for a duster. Of course, the magic using antagonists turn out to be aliens using advanced technology in the end. It's still Star Trek, after all.

This episode uses the visual language of Halloween IN SPACE! This is the shortest path to pulling off a Halloween adventure. Just take the kind of movie starring Vincent Price, set the story on a distant planet, and say "aliens did it" to explain the use of dark powers in a sci-fi setting. Maybe even decorate the game room with paper bats, cotton cobwebs, a plastic skull, and hand out candy. Just don't try using candy as tokens. They just get eaten.

The aliens in this episode answer to the "Old Ones" - a term also used in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" for a different alien race. It is likely deliberate on the part of Robert Bloch, who wrote both episodes. A gamemaster might be tempted to throw in a reference to the Cthulhu Mythos just to see the reactions of the players. Alternately, just put some tentacled horrors in the adventure like in "Et In Arcadia Ego, Part 2" - PIC.


"Wolf in the Fold" - TOS

Another episode penned by Robert Bloch. Scotty takes shore leave on a poorly lit planet with foggy weather and becomes the suspect in the murders of multiple women. It is eventually revealed that the murderer is actually Redjac - AKA Jack the Ripper. Redjac is a formless alien entity that feeds on fear and can possess humanoid bodies and USS Enterprise's computer.

Redjac ended up getting beamed into space with a transporter set for wide dispersal. The plan was for Redjac to starve from being unable to feed after getting strayed over thousands of kilometers of vacuum. However, there's nothing stopping a gamemaster from coming up with a way for Redjac to survive and menace the player characters. Imagine the fun if Redjac takes over a holodeck or EMH!

My favorite bit of this episode is hearing John Fiedler delivering lines written for a serial killer in the voice of Piglet.


"Beyond the Farthest Star" - TAS

USS Enterprise investigates mysterious radio emissions and encounters a 300 million year old alien derelict orbiting a dead star. Kirk and company discover that the crew destroyed their own vessel to prevent a threatening entity from using it to reach other worlds. Naturally, the entity ends up on USS Enterprise and makes trouble until the crew figures out how to get rid of it.

The basic outline of the story is a staple of sci-fi horror. Follow a vague signal. Find a weird looking derelict in a creepy location. Awaken something that should have been left alone. Everything else is details. How well equipped the characters are to deal with the outcome determines the level of horror.


"Schisms" - TNG

A literal alien abduction episode. Members of USS Enterprise-D's crew experience a lack of sleep and other psychological issues. Investigating turns up physical evidence, like Riker's arm having been removed and reattached. The culprits are solanogen-based lifeforms from a tertiary subspace manifold who favor hooded robes with a metallic sheen. The crew figure out a way to cut off contact, but not before a hapless crewmember dies.

The episode plays on the fear of something happening while a person is asleep, unaware, and helpless. The aliens live deep in subspace and cannot exist outside of it. However, they can create spatial ruptures to create a pocket of normal space in their reality. This is how they were able to experiment on members of USS Enterprise-D's crew. Although they were initially drawn to USS Enterprise-D due to modified sensor emissions, they could find other ways to access the normal universe.


"Sub Rosa" - TNG

The one where Doctor Crusher falls in love with a ghost residing in a family heirloom. Who also had a relationship with her grandmother. On a colony intended to recreate the Scottish Highlands, including foggy weather and stone buildings. The ghost turns out to be anaphasic lifeform who bonds with those of compatible biochemistry and can effect technology like weather control systems.

An anaphasic lifeform and host can be used for similar ghost stories or to explain hauntings in the Star Trek setting. Anaphasic lifeforms are vulnerable to phasers, so a direct confrontation should be avoided until the climax of the adventure.


"Empok Nor" - DS9

The one were Garak hunts and kills the rest of an Away Team aboard a station of the same design as Deep Space Nine, except that it's even more poorly lit. O'Brien, Nog, and four expendable crewmembers are sent off in a Runabout to salvage Cardassian spare parts. Garak is along since the Cardassians are poor sports and tend to leave booby traps behind when they abandon a facility. One of those booby traps takes the form of Cardassian soldiers in stasis chambers, who awaken and menace the Away Team. Even worse, the soldiers were given a psychotropic drug that amplified their xenophobic tendencies. Garak is exposed to the drug and kills everyone who isn't a recurring character.

This one turns a familiar character - who is already known to be dangerous - and turns him into a threat. This is just one of many Star Trek episodes that explore this territory. A gamemaster has a decision to make early on when using this idea. Use a NPC that the players value enough not to immediately rid themselves of when they present a threat. Or see if one of the players is game to become the antagonist for awhile. Just make sure that there are no hard feelings later if using the second option.


"Dead Stop" - ENT

A clean, well-lit automated repair station with user-friendly interfaces turns out to have a dark secret. Surprise! After running over a Romulan mine in the previous episode, Enterprise NX-01 has a gaping hole in the side that the crew can't fix with the resources at hand. They find out about a repair station, which automatically reconfigures for the ship and crew when they approach. Captain Archer agrees to trade supplies for the station's services. Things go well until Mayweather is found dead. The body turns out to be a copy and the crew finds the real Mayweather hooked up to the station's computer. The other people who are there are too far gone and can't be disconnected. They grab Mayweather and blast their way to the end of the episode.

Horror stories don't need to take place in gloomy locations that haven't kept up on maintenance or their lighting bills. Sometimes a mysterious lack of people is enough for a sense of unease even in the brightest places. As for this specific location - the episode never reveals who built the station or why. And the station was last seen repairing itself.


"Silent Enemy" - ENT

Enterprise NX-01 encounters a ship of aliens who act like jerks - opening fire, boarding the ship, shrugging off attempts to drive them off, and only communicating with demands for surrender. The crew gets them to leave only after hastily cobbling together space guns and figuring out how to overclock phase cannons.

This episode emphasizes that the Star Trek setting isn't a safe one outside of settled space. The aliens have their own agenda and are operating on their own schedule. They aren't interested in mutual benefit and have all the power early in the story. This creates a tension that is emphasized by the crew's efforts to craft an effective response to the threat. In later periods, this role can be filled by the Dominion or the Borg, but a mysterious adversary works better to play up the fear of the unknown.


"Impulse" - ENT

The one with the ship full of Vulcan zombies. It turns out to be the effects of Trellium-D. The substance insulates against the anomalies of the Delphic Expanse, but is also a neurotoxin to Vulcans. It initially removes emotional inhibitions and soon leads to insanity and violent rages. The neutral pathways of Vulcans exposed to it long enough eventually degrade to the point they become shambling wrecks.

Zombies are also featured in "Second Contact" – LD. Borg drones generally act like the "bionic zombies" that Lily Sloane calls them in Star Trek: First Contact. It's relatively easy to expose a crew to some substance or virus and kick off a zombie adventure. The questions that the gamemaster needs to address are how many hits with a phaser set to stun are needed to incapacitate one and how hard is it to come up with an airborne cure and spread it through the life support system?


Note that this is not intended to be a complete list, only some cherry picked examples. Any favorites or good examples I missed? Feel free to comment!