Thursday, October 6, 2016

Resistance is Futile

by Melissa Uhrin
I'm having a horrible time getting my 2016 movie quota in. At last count, I think I was in the ballpark of about 200, which is running about two hundred off the pace I was at last year.

You know what's to blame? A billion frickin' Star Trek episodes. Literally a billion of the damn, life taking, time sucking, all consuming universe, where I want to live forever and ever and never leave and I'll even promise to insert my emotion chip so I can fit in and play at being human.

Please?

Seeing as it's #ScaryMovieMonth (that's right, # IT ...when I was a kid, # meant "pound" and it's much more satisfying to say “pound it” then “hashtag it”), let's delve into one of my favourite aspects of this universe: all the horrifying moments that immediately brought to mind a specific horror film.

Now, I'm not sure if it is just that this was one of the first ever to scare the shit out of me, or just that it was my go-to film for when I wanted to feel terrified, but I have found over time that many aspects from Event Horizon (1997) have a tendency to creep into what I watch. In The Next Generation, (Season 4 Episode 17 - “Night Terrors”) the Enterprise tracks down a missing ship, the USS Britain and, yep you guessed it, everyone aboard, aside from a lone Betazed, have been murdered. While attempting to unravel the mystery, the Enterprise crew begin suffering from fearful nightmares. Mmm-hmm. Soon it'll be all slashy-slashy, burny-burny to death and it's just Crusher. Left alone in the morgue... With a bunch of corpses... Uh-huh. In addition to that episode, I found that in Deep Space Nine (Season 1 Episode 15 - “If Wishes Were Horses”), the imaginations of the station crew begin coming to life and it only takes a slight spin of my imagination to start thinking about Event Horizon again. Especially when you start to think about space exploration, what lurks in the next galaxy or beyond the black hole. A ship disappears, a ship returns, everyone is dead save for the evil entity that is sure to bring DOOOOOOMMM.
Another episode I had fun with and drove me to revisit a great horror due to the similarities I noted was again in Deep Space Nine (Season 1 Episode 9 - “Move Along Home”). Four senior members of the station crew awaken trapped in rooms and must solve their way out or face certain death. Remember Vincenzo Natali's Cube (1997)? Yeah, me too. In the film, six strangers awaken trapped in a series of cubes and must solve for X to escape into the maze of death. In Cube, you are trying to figure out who will survive. In the Star Trek episode, you are wondering if someone might actually be killed off. Always toying with our emotion chips.

What do Predator, Earth vs. Spider, The Fly and The Creature from the Black Lagoon all have in common? Oh, just a Next Generation episode (Season 7 Episode 19 - “Genesis”) where everyone on the Enterprise de-evolved back to one form of their genetic ancestry or another. And their de-evolved selves are all ridiculously scary creatures. (Except for Picard, who briefly begins to become a frightened lemur. Heh.) Worf became the fucking Predator, sans techy skills. And poor Barclay turned into a very horrifying (and very non-comic-book-y) Spider-Man, which reminded me entirely of Earth vs. Spider (2001) and even 1986 version of The Fly. His partly transformed hideousness stuck with me and it took awhile to realize why I felt so uncomfortable with the moment we come face to face with the Barclay creature. Because it was all Jeff Goldblum disgusting mewling fly creature and, for some reason, I have always felt physically ill at the thought of it. So now I need to re-watch it so I can torture myself. Who am I forgetting? Oh yeah, Troi becoming the frickin' Creature from the Black Lagoon. Hell yeah. I started laughing when she appeared, but that too quickly turned to disgust. This episode definitely wins in my books for creepy creature factor, and a double win for the most movies it has me re-watching.
While the previous episode was creepy creatures, this next one takes a completely different route and for me is the scariest one in the whole series. Again to The Next Generation series (Season 6, Episode 5 - “Schisms”), where we find that Commander Riker has been losing sleep, and upon investigating this they discover that crew members are being abducted while they are asleep and being probed by aliens. What the actual shit? Transported while they are sleeping, drugged and probed and returned. When more crew members discover that they too are losing sleep, they come together in the holodeck to recreate the brief glimpses into their memories. And what they recreate is truly horrifying and that scene reminded me of the part in The Fourth Kind (2009) when one of the victims (played by Enzo Cilenti) of the alien abductions was hypnotized and begins recounting to the therapist his memories of his sleep abductions as well. The images we are presented with, the screams and breathing from the victim are truly terrifying.

There are many more moments in episodes that I feel tie in with horror films, hauntings in particular, and some that I discovered when doing a bit of investigating for this piece to see if my memory served correctly. One that stood out the most would have to be in the series Enterprise, which I have not yet watched, but plan on continuing once I am finished powering through DS9, and after discussing with a friend, I will be watching Voyager now as well. In Enterprise (Season 3 Episode 5 - “Impulse”) they discover a ship containing fricken Zombie Vulcans. Great, so not only are they going to be trying to escape zombies, but they're Vulcans, so chances are they will still be able to outthink the human/humanoids. I can only assume that this episode will lead me to want to re-watch any and all zombie movies I can get my hands on. Because zombies are the best.
Maybe I'm way out to left field with these tie ins. Or not. Maybe I just love horror and see it everywhere. Or perhaps I was just looking for an excuse to revisit all these awesome movies. Not that I necessarily need an excuse. It is Scary Movie Month after all.

You must have noticed that, for the most part, The Borg are not mentioned. This is because primarily their race is but an all-encompassing horror for me. We will sedate you, rape and destroy your body with The Borg technology and remove any semblance of the individual you claim you once were.

You will be assimilated.
Resistance is futile.
It's the end of the universe as we know it and I feel...
We feel...
Borg.

# It.

7 comments:

  1. #It needs to become the newest F This Movie meme.

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  2. Just wait 'til you get to Voyager's scary clown episode.

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    1. I am ridiculously excited to continue on with my Star Trekking! I had a great conversation with someone the other day about how I was planning on stopping after DS9, but he said I would be dumb to do so. Especially with my love of the Borg, Voyager is the season!

      I do have a love/hate thing with clowns though haha

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  3. Cube is great. Canadian too. One of the rare movies I saw in theaters. I distinctly remember the people I saw it with didn't like it at all. It was pretty impressive that they did so much with basically only one room as a set piece.

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    1. I loved Cube! Watched it for the first time a few years ago and still cannot get that intro out of my mind... UGH

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  4. getting into a tv series will set you back in your film viewing schedule, that's for sure.

    i had that earlier this year with the recent release of that 70s show and xfiles on blu-ray. my weeks were filed with these 2 shows, but new movies kept geting released.

    and now i want to get into star trek. thanks a lot

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    1. HAHA! Series are the life taker.

      NEW PLAN FOR 2017! Find a job that pays me to stay home and watch all the movies and all the series.

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