"Frame of Mind"... 22 Years Later

Wrap your mind around this, fellow Trek fans. The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Frame of Mind" aired on May 3, 1993... or 22 years ago today. The season-six hour remains a fan favorite, in large part thanks to the powerful performance by Jonathan Frakes, who plays Riker as a man losing his mind in the complex, layered, even trippy dramatic episode. Let's consider same facts and anecdotes about "Frame of Mind":

Brannon Braga penned the teleplay, while James L. Conway directed it.

Braga has said the episode was in part inspired by the Roman Polanski film, Repulsion. Conway directed the TNG season-one finale, "The Neutral Zone," but then did not return to TNG until "Frame of Mind" becuase he was busy as a writer, producer and director on the series Paradise, which starred Lee Horsley and ran for three seasons. He called TNG producer Rick Berman after Paradise ended to say he was available again, and Berman handed him "Frame of Mind" to direct. "So I came back and did 'Frame of Mind,'" Conway told StarTrek.com in 2012. "It was a great script because most of it, as we learned at the end, was in Jonathan Frakes’ imagination. He had this wonderful scene at the beginning where he went on for about a page and a half. It was just one shot, where we started tight on him and then pulled back to reveal that he was sitting in this room surrounded by all these people staring at him. It was fun to come back to the show after so many years. By then it was an absolute great-running machine." Stunt coordinator Dennis Maddalone appears as an extra in this episode. That's him serving as Mavek's assistant guard.

Three of the four main guest stars in this episode appeared as other characters on either TNG or the other Trek shows: Susanna Thompson, who played Jaya in "Frame of Mind," also was Varel in the TNG episode "The Next Phase," Lenara Kahn in the Deep Space Nine hour "Rejoined" and the Borg Queen in several episodes of Voyager. David Selburg, who played Doctor Syrus in "Frame of Mind," portrayed Whalen in the TNG episode "The Big Goodbye," Toscat in the Voyager installment "Caretaker" and a Vulcan captain in the Enterprise episode "Carbon Creek."


Andrew Prine, who played Suna in "Frame of Mind," returned to the Trek fold for "Life Support," a Deep Space Nine hour in which he guest starred as Legate Turrel.

What are your most vivid memories of "Frame of Mind"?