THE EPISODE THAT SCARED ME: 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' Season 7; Episode 19 "Genesis""
Aliens and all kinds of weird are the norm for a Star Trek episode but this episode from season 7 of the now classic 90’s spinoff of Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, scared the bejesus out of us.
The episode in question is from a latter season of TNG(The Next Generation) premiering in March of 1994 and titled “Genesis” which was directed by series regular, Gates McFadden (Dr. Crusher) and subsequently was the first ever Star Trek episode directed by a female.
Written by Brannon Braga the episode is a trip and ranked as one of TNG’s Creepiest.
Brief Synopsis: Enterprise crew members de-evolve into prehistoric creatures after a medical treatment by Dr. Crusher goes wrong.
Yeah, that synopsis doesn’t do the episode justice. As a kid of only 11yrs old and viewing it alone in your room, it was down right fear inducing.
We really think the folks behind the Resident Evil series took this episode and ran with it because of one key factor, T-Cells.
If you remember in Resident Evil (The video game franchise mainly) the virus that caused a zombie apocalypse was the T-Virus or T-Cell virus. In this specific episode of TNG, Dr. Crusher activates the T-CELLS in a crew member and all hell breaks loose!
Most of the crew is on board the Enterprise while Data and Captain Picard leave for 3 Days to stop a bomb that Worf launched into space accidently after an armamment’s display for the captain. With both Data and Picard gone for 3 days time, they return to the Enterprise and find many red shirts(yeah, they die a lot) as well as other crew members eaten, torn to shreds or worse…de-evolved into animals!
Below you’ll see the one crew member that, in his de-evolved state…scared the living HELL out of us. Ya have to remember, I was 11yrs old when I saw this and was ALONE due to my mother working 2 full time jobs. Check out what I mean below.
The makeup effects on this show were INSANE to a kid and still are really well done as I re-watched this episode.
If that’s not enough, you have a savage Worf running around literally tearing foo’s apart and spitting ACID! Yeah, they got that from ALIEN but still, shit was intense!
Was it the scariest Star Trek: TNG episode out there? Not in the slightest but it did a damn good number on me. I am still afraid of spiders to this day.
