Frame of Mind (⭑⭑⭑⭑)

Poor Commander Riker! Two and a half seasons after “Future Imperfect,” he once again finds himself trapped in an illusory scenario that has him running around in reaction-mode for most of the hour, trying to figure out what is or isn’t real. “Frame of Mind” vastly improves on the previous episode, though, by zeroing in on how it would actually feel for reality to be constantly shifting and unraveling around you until you can’t help but to question your own sanity—and of course, by setting this all in the context of a scenario (a mental institution) tailor-made to reinforce such doubts. The result is a story that is simultaneously fun and disturbing.

I actually want to “frame” much of this review as a comparison between the present episode and “Future Imperfect”—not only to elucidate what makes this one work where that one kind of doesn’t, but also because it strikes me that, in some respects, “Future Imperfect” really ought to have been the better of the two. “Frame of Mind,” after all, bears all the hallmarks of the Brannon Braga story that it is: great mind/reality-bending high-concept stuff, but not much in the way of character insight. Riker is put through a harrowing experience, and the episode does a good job of making us experience it along with him and feel some of what he feels…but the whole scenario has very little to do with who Riker is as a character. “Future Imperfect,” on the other hand, presents him with a glimpse into a possible future, which comes with implications about life choices that he has made, hopes and dreams and fears that have or have not been realized, etc.; in short, the illusory scenario in which he awakens connect to who he is, and thus creates opportunities (which, alas, the episode pretty much squanders) for reflection and character growth. “Frame of Mind” has much less potential for depth of this particular sort from the get-go…which, ironically, means that it also runs much less risk of disappointing in the end. What it does manage, though, is to present a vastly more compelling variant on the idea of a character (the same character!) finding himself in a situation in which he is not sure what’s real.

In “Future Imperfect,” as a viewer, you kind of spend the whole episode waiting for the other shoe to drop: yes, okay, this is a fun imagined future, but sooner or later he’s gonna figure out that it’s not real, and then the episode will have to justify itself somehow…and, of course, the whole thing kind of falls flat once we get there. In “Frame of Mind,” though… I mean, granted, it’s not as though one ever thinks it will turn out that Riker really is a mental patient and not a Starfleet officer, but the psychological focus, the mind games, and the snapping back and forth between multiple-yet-overlapping realities lock you in Riker’s head space, and keep you guessing as to just how much of what’s going on might actually, in some sense, be real. For instance, it seemed (on first viewing) entirely within the realm of possibility that he might have been involved in some kind of violent encounter in which someone had died, and that some alien society might really have him locked up and be trying to gaslight him into believing that he was crazy, all while (presumably) using him as leverage in some kind of negotiation with Starfleet. Such a scenario would have echoed elements of various actual past episodes (“First Contact,” in particular, comes to mind). And while TNG would never have gone as far as to present Riker as having “murdered” someone, we could imagine it offering up a scenario that would at least be ambiguous enough to leave him struggling with feelings of guilt (now I’m kind of thinking of “A Matter of Perspective”). And then, of course, having him flash between playing a mental patient in a play on the Enterprise, and apparently being that patient in the other scenario, was a stroke of genius. Do his (presumed) alien abductors know about his recent acting stint, and are they using it to fuck with him? Or…was he never even in a play, and is his mind just manufacturing that backdrop as a way of holding onto the reality of his life aboard the ship, and trying to reconcile this with his present predicament? As it turns out, of course, the answer isn’t quite as simple as either of these; the latter is closer to the truth, but the play really did happen. That, though, relates to the other thing that makes this episode really work for me: sure, he has (duh) been abducted by hostile aliens…but they’re not manufacturing some implausibly detailed and immersive simulation to deceive him; his own mind is doing all of that, in response to his abductors’ much simpler and more straightforward assault on it.

The rest of what I have to say about “Frame of Mind” consists mainly of miscellaneous comments. First, I absolutely have to call out Frakes’s fantastic performance throughout this episode! I’ve said before that I mostly don’t regard myself as a particularly discerning acting critic, but sometime a performance is just too good not to admire. Besides, another thing that I’ve said before is that Frakes consistently sells the hell out of any scenario that calls for him to play a tired, disheveled, frayed-nerves version of Riker, and the teetering-on-the brink, questioning-his-own-sanity take on the character that he brings to life here is a prime example of this. Really great stuff! Second, I love how, toward the end of the episode, the writers trick us into thinking that they’re revealing their hand, when a party of the other characters shows up to rescue him. Riker, at this point in the story, has convinced himself that his memories of being a Starfleet officer are delusions, so he resists the rescue, much to our chagrin—but of course, the whole thing turns out to be just another part of the hallucination. Clever. Third, when he does finally get to the moment of epiphany in which he stops buying into the reality of any of what’s been going on, the episode dramatizes it much more compellingly than “Future Imperfect” did with its parallel scene. I’ve always chuckled at the Iatter (and similar scenes elsewhere), with the character “forcing the hand” of whoever is deceiving them simply by announcing that they’re “done playing this silly game,” or whatever. But “Frame of Mind” has Riker, instead, taking the insanely gutsy step (are you sure you’re not crazy?) of shooting himself with a phaser to break out of the illusion…then follows that up with the illusory “reality” literally shattering around him. Really cool!

If the plot wrap-up that follows feels bit rushed and easy (he pretty much just wakes up, grabs a weapon and a communicator, and calls for a beam-up, and voila!), I’m fairly willing to forgive it on the grounds that the story is really about his experience, not the plot mechanics of the conflict with the aliens and whatnot. Besides, the episode’s final scene, with him seeking catharsis and closure in the act of tearing down the sets from the play, makes for the perfect ending to the story. (Little does he know, though, that just a few episodes hence, the writers have yet another existential / identity crisis in store for him, albeit of a very different sort than the one that he has just put behind him. I’ll say it again: Poor Commander Riker!)