Dark Matter “Wish I Could Believe You” 

After watching Dark Matter “Wish I Could Believe You,” I was inspired to rewatch one of my favorite all-time episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

It was called “Frame of Mind” and featured Commander Riker thinking he was going insane. It started out with Number One rehearsing for a play where a man’s insanity was in question.

He ends up basically living out the plot of this play. The action jumps around and features Riker interacting with his friends like Beverly Crusher, Worf, Data and Deanna Troi. He makes his grand performance in the “Frame of Mind” play. He is trapped with others in a psychiatric facility. There are doctors who are helping him. They’re trying to convince him that his life on the ship is just a delusion. The whole time he keeps seeing the same man, who clearly seems like an outlier to everything that’s going on.

The point is, he doesn’t know what’s real and not real. Riker feels like he’s living this perilous situation when in reality his mind is being messed with in order to extract top secret information. Just when you think he’s back on the ship safely, we find out he’s still in the midst of this psychological torture. But his mind is unleashing little tricks that clue him into the fact that what he’s experiencing isn’t real.

In reality, he’s lying on a slab drugged to the gills. It’s a fascinating episode and Jonathan Frakes (Cmdr. Riker) did a fantastic job.

You have to see where I’m going here. This is the Dark Matter version of that episode. This is Six’s “Frame of Mind.” He thinks he’s losing his mind. He’s seeing things. He can’t read the ingredients of the pill bottles. He doesn’t know what’s happening. But his intelligence helps him figure things out eventually.

“You’re not real. (he slices his hand, which heals instantly) None of this is real.”

Six is being used to find out pertinent information about the location of the rebel headquarters. He has the transmission codes to a secret meeting where the leaders that have gathered are trying to figure out how to form a new government.

Ferrous scientists have been tasked to do whatever they can to extract said info from Six. Because this secret meeting is detrimental to everything Ferrous is about, which is corporate war and galaxy domination.

Six has been drugged. The scientists are able to manipulate the events of his mind. However, this neurotoxin he’s been given has some interesting side effects. Namely, it’s triggered his memory banks. Those memories were wiped out at the beginning of the series, but some of them are coming back to him.

In fact, Six remembers something pretty significant. He has a wife and son. He screwed up his relationship with them because he couldn’t get past what happened on Hyadum-12. He wanted to get revenge. And when his wife wanted him to let go of what happened and realized her husband couldn’t, she left. Loved getting this huge piece of Kal’s backstory. It made me feel bad for him. But there are consequences when you live a life of revenge. And he’s learned that lesson.

Every time I think he’s free from this drugged up delushional hell he’s in, something happens to let us know he’s nowhere near being off that table and back on the Raza. Whether he collapses or one of his friends acts in a way that doesn’t jive with what he knows about them, or the scientists slip and have one of his “friends” dole out some wrong information (like knowing his wife’s name), we realize he’s still trapped and strapped to that table.

I love the scene when Six realizes he should have known this all wasn’t real. After all, he was able to knockout Android way too easily. Five and everyone pushed way too hard to get the coordinates out of him. Of course, there was also the fact that Three was acting a bit too nice and caring.

“You trying to help people out of hte goodness of your own heart? That alone should have set off the alarm bells.”

Hilarious. But Six figured out how to turn the tables on his captors. Of course, it had to come with a moment where one of the idiot scientists shot him multiple times in the chest. Thankfully, it was another delusion and Six manipulated everything and freed himself. This show is so good at misdirection and keeping us guessing for the sake of the story and for the sake of ratcheting up the drama. So I can’t be (too) mad at seeing Six laying on the floor bleeding.

Six makes it back to the Raza where he’s reunited with his friends. And he now knows that the Raza is where he should be. He does take a trip with the help of Anders. He wants to see his wife and son. I think he has thoughts of resuming his life with them. But that’s not possible because he witnesses his wife with someone else. And his son calls this man, “dad.”

What a crushing moment for Six. But it does give him a reason to stay on the Raza. He’s with his friends plus there’s a little matter of having to save the galaxy from the likes of Ferrous Corp.

Kudos to Roger Cross. Since Six made the decision to stay back and help independent colonies, he hasn’t been around. This episode made up for his absence big time.

Welcome home, Six. Welcome Home.

Random Thoughts

-Brief badass moment: Android straddling Six ready to beat him on his chest to get his heart starting again

-Shallow TV Alert: Roger Cross in the gray tank top. And the man sleeps shirtless, y’all. Nice.

-Lt. Anders was a big part of this episode in Kal’s memories and in the present (yay!)

-Delusion!Three punching Six = super fun moment (call me sadistic)

-Who’s going to be the bigger bad? Nieman or Ryo?

-Will the Raza be able to push Mikkei (and Commander Truffault) to choose sides? They’ve been neutral too long.

-Melissa O’Neil and Anthony Lemke have so much chemistry. That conversation after Six returned where Three lamented there was no cream and Two envied Three’s ability to not care = so awesome.

-I thought this was interesting though. When Two asks Three about Sarah, he tells her that Sarah’s happy. Almost too happy. To have someone waiting for his presence at all times is a lot. He says “It’s not easy being someone’s entire world, you know? Is having Sarah around too much for Boone?

-Three mentions to Sarah how Four started avoiding him after he downloaded his memories. Like there’s something Four knew about him that he didn’t want to talk about. “Almost like he was trying to protect me,” says Three. Sarah seems like she knows. When is she going to talk? What did he do that was so terrible?

-Also, we finally got a scene between Two and Sarah.The gist of this meet-up: Sarah’s lonely. She longs for casual conversation and moments as well as a sense of community and the basic ability to connect. If she thinks about time, then she starts to feel every second which has to be maddening. I wonder if Sarah will end up doing something drastic to curb these lonely tendencies.

-And what was that ending? A charging Android leaves her pod to do what I guess is her form of sleepwalking. She snuck into Five’s chambers and stands over her. Then does the same with Six. And then in Three’s room she grabs his gun and points it at him while he’s sleeping. But nothing happens. She returns the gun to its resting place and then leaves and goes back into charge mode. Hmm…pretty scary. Why did Android point a gun at Three? Does it have something to do with what he said about something he did that was so terrible? Does it have something to do with the future glimpse we got a few episodes back? Inquiring minds want to know. And hopefully we’ll know soon.

Dark Matter airs Fridays at 9/8c on Syfy. And heads up: members of the Raza Crew will be at next week’s Comic-Con so there’s sure to be an abundance of news and photos coming out of San Diego then. The SDCC panel is Thursday, July 20 @ 8:15pm PT.