O.K., growing up as a kid in the early ‘70s the local T.V. stations in Jersey showed reruns of the original STAR TREK. Like many other elementary-school-aged kids at that time, I became hooked. I even got that cool toy bridge set with the action figures-including Uhura, but in time I broke the spinning transporter that made the figure placed inside "vanish." So I wound up getting rid of the whole set and then, decades later, I was told that it was worth a lot of money. That's an adult trauma! However, seeing this show did give some childhood scares. There was that "Empath" episode where Kirk, Bones & Spock were taken by aliens and left in a room with a mute female who was an empath. She could absorb the injuries of those she touched healing the victim while temporally getting the ailment till she healed herself. When Bones is tortured and brought back, she absorbs his injuries and winds up getting his facial wounds. She gets a pained expression on her face which was a bit hard to look at:
Then there was "The Lights of Zetar" where Scotty's new love interest Mira, becomes possessed by the life forms of an alien race that look like flashing lights. The flashing lights were not the scare, it was when they entered a person. The crew found what was left of a planetary settlement and a near death woman who had the Zetars in her. Her possession was shown by having her face "solarized" and when the aliens first try to speak through the person, it's all slow and garbled.
The same would happen to Mira plus when she was taken over she was slumped against a wall. She had her head bent at a funny angle while the Zetars spoke through her.
Pretty scary for an under ten year old! Get this: Kirk decided to put the possessed Mira in a pressurized "hyperbolic chamber" to kill the Zetars. Decades later Michael Jackson and the 1993-94 Vancouver Canucks would make headlines with such a device! Oh, the authors for this episode: JEREMY TARCHER and his wife SHARI LEWIS.
Yep, THAT SHARI LEWIS!!
I agree that there were some kindertraumatic things on Star Trek. I am not a huge fan of the show (although I do think it's good, I just haven't seen a lot of it) so I don't think I am familar with these episodes. I do remember one where someone crystalized two crew members (I think one was male and the other female) and Kirk (again, I only think it was Kirk) had to choose one of the crystalized squares and when he did, the "bad' buy crushed the other one. I think it was the woman who was killed.
Anyway, I'm probably vague on that memory for a reason. YIKES!
The Lights of Zetar scared the crap out of me! Just seeing those two stills gave me the heebie jeebies.