The “monster of the week” episode is an endangered
beast. Once upon a time, television was full of single-episode stories, in which
the heroes faced an unstoppable threat and won, all in about 43 minutes. Here
are 10 “monster of the week” episodes that pack more storytelling
power than a season-long arc of most TV shows.
Note: To help narrow things down, let’s set a few
conditions. We’ll only include standalone “monster of the week”
episodes where the monster in question appeared only once, and was never heard
from again. So for example, Doctor Who’s
“Blink” is disqualified since it was arguably the first episode in a
long-running arc involving the Weeping Angels. With that out of the way, here
we go…
10 Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, “Self-Made
Man”
When the Terminator TV show started, the creators said they
wouldn’t be doing “Terminator of the week” episodes — but then they
did just one, featuring a random Terminator who goes back in time to kill a
politician and overshoots, becoming Myron Stark, a big wheel in the 1920s
gangster scene. Cameron, the friendly Terminator, figures out that Myron Stark
is coming back, and manages to be there to greet him. It’s a lovely, creative
take on Terminator lore that uses time travel in a uniquely clever way.
9 Red Dwarf, “Polymorph”
It’s sort of a weird version of Alien set on the Red Dwarf, in which the crew is hunted by a
shape-shifting creature that steals their negative emotions to sustain itself.
And it’s often mentioned as one of the best Red
Dwarf episodes, because the monster radically changes all of the characters
and their dynamic winds up becoming very different before they deal with the
monster. Often, the best monster-of-the-week episodes are the ones that change
the regular characters in some way, or help us see them in a new light.
8 Cowboy Bebop, “Pierrot Le Fou”
This is the one where Spike gets his ass kicked, by a killer
who targets him after Spike sees Pierrot commit a murder. Spike and his crew
have to figure out who Pierrot is and what his weakness is, before he finishes
the job. We discover that Pierrot is the result of strange experiments, which
turned him into this abomination. This episode gets a lot of praise for its
amazing visuals and intense atmosphere — but also for putting Spike in a
position where he’s already lost a fight at the beginning of the story, for
once.
7 Xena, “A Day in the Life”
The monster this time around is the world’s biggest giant,
who’s going to crush a village, and meanwhile some bandits are going to raid
another village. But really, it’s about exploring the Xena-Gabrielle
relationship, while also introducing us to Minya, a young woman who feels
threatened by Xena’s awesomeness. In the course of the story, Xena has to
outwit the bandits and giant while also empowering Minya — and the giant, whom
we only meet this one time, is a particularly great foil in an episode about
outsized personalities.
6 Supernatural, “What Is and What Never Should Be”
This is the one where a Djinn traps Dean in a dream world
wherehe has everything he ever wanted,
including his mother back from the dead. Like a lot of the episodes on this
list, it’s about illuminating the characters, as a way of presenting them with
an even bigger no-win situation.
5 Star Trek, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”
The “monster” in this episode is Captain Kirk’s
friend Gary Mitchell, who gets godlike powers after being bombarded with a
strange energy — and Kirk has to sacrifice his friend to save the ship. The
real focus is the interplay between Kirk and Spock as Spock tries to convince
Kirk that sometimes you have to make the impossible choice for the good of
everyone else. Never does Spock seem more chillingly emotionless.
4 Angel, “Smile Time”
We praise this episode a lot — but it really deserves all
the praise. Ben Edlund’s hilarious story of Angel being turned into a puppet actually
features a great monster, in the evil puppets that try to suck the life essence
out of children through their television screens. It’s one of the show’s most fun episodes, but presents
Angel with a unique adversary during his “tool of the man” phase:
cute puppets that use mass media to get their own way.
3 Doctor Who, “Midnight”
The fact that we’ve never met the creature from this episode
again, or learned more of its secrets, is part of why it still has so much
power. The Doctor is on a tourbus in the middle of nowhere, when one of the
passengers becomes sort of possessed by a mysterious presence — and then it
targets the Doctor. Like most of the episodes on this list, this shows the
Doctor in an extreme situation that paints him in a new light, but it’s also an
intense tale in which there’s no easy win.
2 The X-Files, “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space”
We almost put “Tooms” here, because of intense
horrible creepiness — but Tooms actually appears in two episodes. And Jose
Chung does feature a monster of the week, the alien that’s abducting fake
aliens. The whole thing is the setup for a strange metafictional tale, in which
Jose Chung gives us a very different look at Mulder and Scully, and their
entire world. Check out Crave Online’s great
exegesis of why this might be the best X-Files episode.
1 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Hush”
We had to put this up top, because the Gentlemen are another
great example of a monster that never reappears and starts getting overexposed
or overexplained. They show up, steal the voices of everyone in Sunnydale, and
nearly complete a terrible ritual — until Buffy and Riley figure out a way to
stop them. In a show that’s all about characters who have the gift of gab,
using their voices to figure out everything together, the nearly silent episode
is the creepiest thing ever.
So what did we miss?
Thanks to Genevieve
Valentine for the input!
