Warning: spoilers for Doctor Who series 14 episode 6 “Rogue” Doesn’t the TARDIS have a sniffer dog function? A pair of hi-tech space nostrils to which the Doctor can hold up a handkerchief or discarded glove and say ‘There, girl, get the scent!’? Somewhere on that flashy console must be the facility to scan a […]
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Even though it was a relatively low-budget TV show (by today’s standards, it was practically made for the cost of a home movie) and visual effects in the 1960s were limited (again, by today’s standards), Star Trek: The Original Series managed over the course of its three seasons to come up with some of the more decidedly weird alien races of the entire franchise.
While nowhere near as prolific in its production of monsters as its early ‘60s predecessor, The Outer Limits, which was mandated by its network to cough up a different boogeyman every week, Star Trek did turn out an interesting array of strange, creepy, or even psychedelic (this was the ‘60s, after all) deep space denizens – although in classic Trek fashion, many of them were not the threats that their hideous surfaces hinted at, and were often more advanced than us humans in our bags of bone, flesh, and blood.
What makes this even more surprising is that the rest of this now-vast franchise didn’t push the notion of aliens that didn’t look like us with more fervor as budgets and VFX opened up. While The Original Series had plenty of humanoid aliens wearing antennae, blue makeup, or furry facial appliances, shows like The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine often presented a generic array of humanoids often represented by nothing more than bumps, ridges, or armored plates on top of their heads or down the center of their noses.
Maybe the drugs in the ‘60s really did expand the minds of the writers, producers, and designers of The Original Series. Maybe it was the fact that the show hired legendary sci-fi writers like Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Bloch, and Harlan Ellison to pen multiple episodes. But as primitive as they may look now, TOS did give us some of the Trek universe’s most bizarre life forms, 10 of which we’ve featured below. And no, the Gorn is not on this list – we love him but he’s still just a guy in a lizard suit.
The Salt Vampire
Although we’re mostly avoiding humanoid aliens in this survey, our first two entries are decidedly humanoid in shape – if not relatable to humans by any other measure. The very first Original Series episode ever televised, “The Man Trap,” was centered around an ancient creature that feeds on salt – by fatally draining it out of its victims — and is the last of its kind. The salt vampire (the race is never named) is humanoid in shape, but features hooded, reptilian eyes, a snout-like spherical mouth with sharp teeth inside and long fingers covered in suckers that attach to its target’s face.
The creature is a shapeshifter, able to present itself as whatever its victim wants to see, which provided TOS with one of its earliest progressive moments: Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) encounters the creature in an Enterprise corridor, where it appears to her as a tall African man. The two speak Swahili, Uhura’s native tongue, in a moment that was pretty special (and rare) for early ‘60s national network TV. The story is also ultimately empathetic to the creature and its plight, setting the pace for future Treks to come.
Balok
In the classic episode “The Corbomite Maneuver” (the 10th episode aired, but the first filmed in regular production), the Enterprise encounters a titanic vessel in uncharted space that claims to be from the “First Federation.” Its commander, Balok, appears onscreen with a rather sinister-looking, almost demonic visage and proceeds to put the Enterprise through a series of threats and challenges; when Kirk finally outwits Balok, they end up meeting face to face. While Balok admits this was all just a test to gauge how civilized humans are, what’s most bizarre is that Balok’s initial appearance was a puppet: his real form, to us, resembles a little boy.
That little boy was played by Clint Howard (Ron Howard’s younger brother) and while Balok is certainly humanoid, the effect of this powerful alien being housed in the body of a child and voiced by an adult actor (Walker Edmiston) makes this one of the most surreal and unexpected early moments in TOS history. Although we never really heard much more about the First Federation on any of the Trek shows, fleeting references popped up now and again – including the fact that Balok’s favorite drink, tranya, was served at Quark’s bar on Deep Space Nine
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