‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ Retro Recap – ‘Frame of Mind’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Over the course of the past couple of years, we’ve talked at length about how cross-genre fusion between the Star Trek Universe and whatever genre tickled a particular writer’s fancy… often ends in disaster. Because some genre elements, such as horror and psychological thrillers, tend to not jibe with what Trek has to offer. After all, this vision of a positive future for humanity has no room for twisted moments and things that go bump in the night. But while those experiments failed more often than not, resulting in some weird episodes for certain, once in a while… the STU was able to figure out how to properly combine a future grounded in peace with the core elements of a different genre.
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In fact, the next episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, is one of those perfect fusion episodes. For ‘Frame of Mind’ is a story that merges the 24th Century with the uncomfortable nature of the psychological thriller, and satisfies in the process, and it accomplishes that feat, by giving us a story where Commander William T. Riker questions his sanity through and through. Because while he is preparing to act in a play that Beverly wrote, about a man that is wrongly imprisoned within an asylum for a crime he didn’t commit, he finds himself shifting between worlds. One where he wakes up in that very asylum and finds himself subjected to all kinds of horrible mind games and psychological torture from the staff. But the fact that he keeps waking up aboard the Enterprise, leads him to believe that this is nothing more than a bad dream brought on by method acting.

But eventually, he spends more and more time within the uncomfortable part of that dream world and comes to believe… that this his reality and that he may have committed a horrible crime and that his time on the Enterprise was nothing more than a fantastical, coping lie. Which of course, isn’t the truth in the slightest. Since it turns out that Riker was kidnapped during a botched away mission and subjected to all kinds of mental abuse and gaslighting in a desperate attempt, by an enemy of the Federation, to obtain military knowledge. And that epiphany, one that Riker eventually reaches on his own, allows for him to escape the madness of his mind and return home with no lasting damage done and well… this actually made for quite the quality tale when all is said and done, one that genuinely made the thriller element here palatable and compelling.

Because watching Riker ‘lose his mind’ and struggle with reality and fantasy, brought forth some powerful moments. The kind that allowed for Jonathan Frakes to shine as an actor and creep out the audience in the process. For the visuals are jarring here and really do feel as though they’d fit at home within a 90s psychological thriller and what makes it work here so well… is that it is a genuine external force that brings forth trouble for the commander, and that their reasons for doing this are grounded in something quite real and quite plausible. That adds gravity to this whole scenario and also allowed for it to feel organic instead of forced or awkward and had other episodes in this vein bothered to do that, more of them might have been a rousing success. But what also makes this episode of note, is its progressive nature.

Since it was mentioned a moment ago that gaslighting and mental manipulation was part of the plan to get Riker to talk and to get him to commit to the device that the aliens were using to access his mind, and let’s be honest… there was no word for Gaslighting back in 1993, nor was this kind of behavior really explored in that era either. So, this episode was genuinely ahead of its time in looking at problems that we now recognize to exist, and how such matters work, and it is quite incredible that the series found a way to inject that analysis here, but also not surprising. For TNG was always ahead of its time and in the end, this is a solid standalone episode. One that grabs hold of you and never lets go, courtesy of a grand mystery and some thrills and hopefully if future writers in the STU feel a desire to fuse a pair of genres together once again, they’ll look to this episode as a blueprint as to how to do it right. Until next time.

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