10 Best Foreshadowing Moments In Star Trek

6. The Bottle Is The Ship

Perhaps we're all living in a simulation, and the Enterprise-D is the table. Unless Reg Barclay suddenly knocks us to the floor, it's unlikely we'll ever find out. Beginning with Ship in a Bottle, however, there are ways to tell in advance when Star Trek is being unreal. 

Scenes of a Star Trek episode are, or were, typically punctuated by exterior shots. Their absence throughout the majority of Ship in a Bottle was an indication that events were all taking place in Professor Moriarty's 24th century mind palace. 

The technique caught on and was later used in episodes such as Distant Voices, Projections, and unironically, These Are the Voyages. Doctor Bashir's inquisition in Inquisition also lacked as much in externals of Deep Space 9 as it did in jam scones. As producer Steve Oster noted in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion:

We had to stay true to being in a holosuite [sic], so we could never step outside. Even when Bashir was on the Dominion ship, which was being blasted by the Defiant, we resisted cutting to an exterior shot. Instead, we showed it on a monitor in the room Bashir's being held in.

One stylus under the sofa is worth two in the ambush!