10 Most Important Mental Health Awareness Episodes In Star Trek

We all know the trope by now. "We just like to hammer him because he's such a great character. And he's so accessible," said Ira Steven Behr in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion. Hard Time was far more than just another 'O'Brien must suffer' episode. It was a carefully crafted story about trauma and mental health.

In the episode, O'Brien returns to Deep Space 9 having experienced 20 years of incarceration in a matter of hours. The Argrathi's literal prison sentence in the mind via artificial reality is the allegorical prison of the mind. O'Brien is trapped inside a cycle of his own thoughts and feelings, his guilt over the death of his cellmate. He becomes angry, withdrawn, experiences flashbacks and hallucinations to the point of contemplating suicide.

By replacing the physical prison with an artificial one, Hard Time also plays on and dismantles a common myth in the stigma surrounding mental illness — 'it's all in your head, so snap out of it'. This is further emphasised by the overtly euphemistic second meaning of the title itself — 'oh, he's just having a hard time'.  In fact, the episode insists from the outset that O'Brien's experience is as valid as any other, for one reason, and one reason alone:

"It's real to me, Major. It's real to me."