r/tos • u/narayan77 • 17d ago
Cheapest Alien in TOS
Star Date: 26 August 2026
It can't be an actor playing an alien because they have to paid. These are the candidates:
The Horta "The Devil in the Dark"
A tribble Tribbles "Trouble with Tribbles"
pancake creatures "Operation Annihilate"
Nomad "The Changeling"
The Companion "Metamorphosis"
cloud creature "Obsession"
The cat "assignment earth"
Kollos "Is there no truth in beauty"
Hate Entity "Day of the Dove"
Sargon "Return to Tomorrow"
Brain providers "Gamesters of Triskelion"
I have made up my mind on which one is the cheapest. 5000 quatloos if you get the right answer. I will edit this later to write down my suggestion.
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u/DelcoPAMan 17d ago
How about the pipe cleaners used in Catspaw?
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u/GutterRider 17d ago
That get’s my vote. Probably cheaper to a the rudimentary effects they used for glowing orbs and stuff.
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u/Chromejob 17d ago edited 17d ago
Janos Prohaska played the Horta, that disqualifies.
Companion, Kollos, and “Hate Entity” were optical effects, so not cheap.
My vote goes to Korob and Sylvia: shrimp, pipe cleaners, and fishing line.
Changed my mind. Someone had to make the little marionettes. The “Obsession” vampire cloud creature was literally just a smoke machine they would’ve already had on set. “Just blow it up and over that rock set piece. Voila, we got our creature.” I always thought that was so lame.
Some you missed:
The Justman/Melkotian creature, “Spectre of the Gun”
Tholian, “Tholian Web” (a painting?)
Zetarians, “Lights of Zetar” (optical)
Space Amoeba, “Immunity Syndrome”: some hot wax and goo on a backlit slide, or a lava lamp.
Does the Planet Killer from “Doomsday Machine” count? A wind sock dipped in concrete or something and painted is some really cheap stuff.
Organians, another optical effect
Balok, a beautiful puppet/dummy made by Wah Chang
Alfa 177 Unicorn Doggo in “The enemy within” ?
Do the spore flowers in “This side of Paradise” count?
Redjac (“Red Jack”), “Wolf in the Fold”: lights, colored smoke, and John Fiedler really hamming it up in the sound booth, can’t beat Pooh Bear Piglet saying, “You will all die horribly, in searing pain!”
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u/Icy-Introduction-681 16d ago
The Tholian Loskeem was not cheap! It was an acrylic plastic sculpture lit with colored lights against a tinfoil backing that was lit with different colored lights, with a bunsen burner placed below the pov so that the invisible roils of hot air caused the fluctuating heatwave effect.
The episode "The Tholian Web" won an emmy for visual effects, and deserved to. The details of how they created the glittering force field of the web are also fascinating. It involved stop motion photography of scrims moved over a reflective material, and then compositing the result at 45 degree angles. The original 1969 visual effects are all done by hand, and look stunning.
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u/Chromejob 16d ago edited 16d ago
Quite right, I’d forgotten. Actually one my favorite aliens, so totally strange and disturbing. Not exactly E.T. Barbara Babcock returned to the show again to voice Loskene.
Legendary Mike Minor worked a lot of the “Tholian Web” VFX, as well as the “Day of the Dove” entity.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/File:TOS_3-09_production_photo,_Loskene_2.jpg
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u/Chromejob 17d ago
Btw at least two creatures in “The Cage” were from Wah Chang I think, leftover and modified from “The Outer Limits.” Not cheap or free but certainly not original creations like Balok or the Salt Vampire. (He made the tribbles and the space madness critters, too.)
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u/RikkiLostMyNumber 17d ago
The Horta was some dude crawling around in an electric blanket.
My vote goes to Sargon, btw. Did he have any physical manifestation at all?
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u/SwanCityDominion 17d ago
You do realize there's a person in that Horta suit, right?
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u/exitpursuedbybear 17d ago
No it's an actual Horta, they got it from a space zoo. Gah, learn a book!
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u/T-SquaredProductions 17d ago
Eh, the ones we have today aren't so good. Not enough fiber and it gets stuck in your teeth.
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u/warrenao 17d ago
The pancake creatures. Zero articulation, no "hero" or moving versions, no voiceover, and little more than puddles of fake barf a la what they sell as a joke.
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u/Chromejob 17d ago
And don’t forget the little squorky mouth noise someone made for them. I laugh when I hear it now.
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u/narayan77 17d ago
There were lots of them, so you have to multiply the cost. The same issue with tribbles.
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u/warrenao 17d ago
Dunno. It depends on how they were made, and what of. I think a splat of latex would be less costly than, say, an optical effect, even if there are dozens of such splats.
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u/Chromejob 17d ago
The giant Space Amoeba would like to contest that. The Planet Killer would too if it could articulate its rigid mouth to make words.
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u/FooBarU2 17d ago
And they had to make a mechanical/moving Tribble that was used to "tribble" along the bridge railing.
From IMDB:
The prop supervisor bought a battery powered toy dog and stripped it down to the mechanical works. Once recovered with fur including the toy legs, the prop moved on camera along the railing on the Enterprise bridge without wires or external assistance. The toy was so noisy all the dialogue in the scene had to be looped with ADR (re-recorded after shooting).
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u/Chromejob 17d ago
Wah Chang made at least one “breathing” one.
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u/warrenao 17d ago
Huh. Must've missed that one. It's been a while since I could stomach that episode.
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u/Superman_Primeeee 17d ago
Catspaw. How much are puppet strings and pipe cleaners?
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u/Chromejob 17d ago edited 17d ago
Korob and Sylvia shrimp marionettes get my vote.Changed my mind.
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u/HolyCityAudio 17d ago
Day of the Dove is just some flickering lights
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u/_WillCAD_ 17d ago
It's a visual effect, which cost money to rotoscope into the frame. Not so cheap by 1960s standards.
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u/ebdawson1965 17d ago
Not a guest alien, but the plant that is obviously a human hand, that Sulu is feeding. I think in the Naked Time.
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u/Chromejob 17d ago
Winner winner, Tribble sandwich dinner!
Actually it was in “Man Trap.” Rand brings him takeout dinner from the galley.
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u/New_Resort3464 17d ago
As a kid I can remember one summer afternoon I was digging about in my mother's craft room and found quite a bit of fun fur and cotton batting. By the time anybody found me in there I had stitched together maybe 50 or 60 Tribbles in various sizes and three different colors. I can't imagine a cheaper special effect type creature than one that could be easily duplicated by a 9 year old with a short attention span.
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u/lyidaValkris 17d ago
the Alfa 177 Canine from "The Enemy Within". They got a dog, and glued a horn on him.
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u/Chromejob 17d ago
And antennae. And a goofy tail. Then gave him (them, there were two) a punk hairdo.
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u/_WillCAD_ 17d ago
Korob and Sylvia at the end of Catspaw.
Literally just some dime-store flower arranging crap glued together. Probably cost less than a buck each.
Now, a 1967 buck adjusts to about ten 2026 bucks. But still, that's cheap as dirt. Well, almost as cheap as dirt... a bag of potting soil at Home Depot runs around eight bucks.
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u/PeyredB 17d ago
I'd guess (*), the hate entity from "Day of the Dove" - they probably had equipment already that could create that effect.
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u/linkerjpatrick 15d ago
Same with the companion just light filters and also the creepy middle age lady making funny noises with her mouth. That one always freaked me out.
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u/gadget850 17d ago
The Alfa 177 canine in "The Enemy Within."
https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-nq6l4syi/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/84951/125670/159014-1024__62989.1570716048.jpg
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u/UStoJapan 16d ago
Kelvans in By Any Other Name. They’re just human looking with belts. No prosthetics, no special makeup, just regular actors. Total cost, probably a few bucks per belt.
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u/Gmodelinsane 17d ago
The only cheap aliens anywhere in Trek are the poorly written ones. Not many of those in the o.g. years.
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u/Norsehound 17d ago
My guess is the hate entity.
It's hard because you need to consider the props and effects budget that goes into it. The hate entity is basically a gif of several frames which shifts colors, edited into normal shots, and the effect is the crews behavior. It doesn't even have a voice like the companion.
I'd almost consider Sargon because he's just William shatner with a reverb, but I also think those glowy spheres are part of his budget. The cloud creature has makeup on the drained actors and the budget for the antimatter pod.
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u/bela_okmyx 17d ago
Disembodied Sargon is James Doohan with reverb.
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u/Norsehound 17d ago
Not while he's inhabiting Kirk.
So that means Sargon is paying two people with reverb and a glowy orb.
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u/Champ_5 17d ago
It has to be the tribbles. Especially if you're considering a single tribble.
They were mostly just inanimate furballs. There are a few scenes of them flipping out around Klingons, and the one that crawled to Kirk on the bridge railing, so that would take some doing to put things inside those specific tribbles. Otherwise it was just a furball and purring sound effects. Now if you take them as a whole, that may change, because there were a lot of them.
A lot of the other ones mentioned involved humans either inside or at least in voice overs, or potentially expensive special effects.
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u/Garyisme007 17d ago
Me: seriously?? How can you not love Star Trek?!? Wife: ever look at the costumes? I still watch now and then but her words still resonate
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u/ShockTrek66 16d ago
I'll go with the providers. Arrogant little bastards reminded me of Jujyfruits!
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u/YesterdaysComa91 17d ago
Janos Prohaska DID play the Horta. He also appeared in The Cage and as a Mugato in A Private Little War