10 Most Controversial Star Trek Episodes
7. Hide And Seek
The term 'fridging' was coined after the release of Green Lantern, Vol. 3, #54. In that issue, new Lantern Kyle Raynor returns home to find his girlfriend killed, and her body has been stuffed into the fridge. 'Fridging' would become the phrase used to describe the death of a female character so that a male character's arc would move forward.
Enter Hide And Seek.
Yvette Picard's struggles with her mental health were explored in Star Trek: Picard's second season, with both this episode and Monsters revealing that Jean-Luc's memories of his mother weren't entirely accurate. The younger Jean-Luc allowed his mother to leave a locked room, after which she proceeded to the solarium and hanged herself.
This knowledge retroactively affects how audiences view Captain, later Admiral, Picard. Every appearance of the character from Encounter At Farpoint through to The Last Generation now exists in this context. Early episodes of The Next Generation depicted Yvette as an old lady, inviting her son to tea, which we now know to be a fantasy.
The controversy arises in how Yvette's mental state is both shown and used to frame Jean-Luc's. She is less a character than a trope, with the shocking revelation of her suicide falling firmly into the 'fridging' camp. Though the idea that Picard lost a parent to suicide is stark, it feels lacking in its execution.