10 Most Horrifying Star Trek Moments
7. Riker's Reality
Frame of Mind is an unsettling episode of Star Trek, playing on the truth of what reality actually is. In some ways, it plays like Ship in a Bottle, though instead of the holodeck, the reality in question is Riker's mind, buried in layers and layers of false truths - making even the viewer question what is real and what isn't.
The episode seems to place Riker in a gradual loosening of reality. The play in which he is starring, Frame of Mind, begins to mix with what the audience knows to be real. While trapped in this purgatory, everything is off. A cut continues to appear on his head. Faces in the crowd stand out for him and unnerve him.
He finds himself trapped in the very prison that the play is representing. There is little chance of being able to grasp onto something to cut through the din. Some of the greatest horror that an audience can undergo is the questioning of what is real around them. Some of the best episodes of television play on this very fear. While the episode ends in a relatively happy manner, it leaves that after taste that maybe, just maybe, Riker never escaped the prison after all.