Shades of Gray

While we all know now that the reason for "Shades of Grey" being a "clip episode" was due to the 1988 writers strike and the production running out of money at the end of the 2nd season, I still can't excuse it on that basis.

There should have been ways to tell this same story without delving into the scene vault every 2 minutes. The entire amount of time devoted to new scenes (largely, those with Diana Muldaur, Marina Sirtis and Jonathan Frakes on the sickbay set) is about 15 minutes. The rest is all clips from previous episodes. Surely the director could have found a away to squeeze out of the budget a few extra "new scenes" that would have been "Riker specific" flashbacks. Perhaps they could have used alternate takes or different camera angles of those same previous scenes (I'm sure at least some existed), or possibly even re-filmed some of the same scenes with the actors.

Frankly, I just see this episode (when it was first broadcast and still today) as a complete mess, a real cop-out, and a very depressing way to have ended the 2nd season..

From Wikipedia:

At the end of its second season, Star Trek: The Next Generation had one more episode to shoot. However, Paramount cut that show's budget to make up for an episode earlier in the season that had gone over budget-and, similarly, over schedule, leaving only three days for principal photography. Because the season had gotten off to a slow start due to a writers' strike, the producers had no scripts set aside for future use as they normally would have. The result was "Shades of Gray", in which the "clips" were the induced dreams of a comatose William T. Riker.

Watching this 30-40 years later - well bad idea probably. We're used to watch series in a binge sort of way or on demand. There was a time when there was only one episode per week and a season would take up to 24 weeks to be complete - sad if you'd missed an episode. I guess that's why someone thought flashback episodes was a good idea. But Rikas flashback was a pain to watch. The story around it was so poor and cringeworthy. Had to skip large amounts of clips in this episodes!

I've been rewatching the series after not having seen this show in over 20 some years - and missing most of these episodes before. I can see now why this episode has been called the worst of the series. There's really no plot, the actors don't really seem to be into it and the clips serve no purpose.

I'd forgotten about the writer's strike of 1988. After watching those season ending episodes of "The Outer Limits" which shamelessly includes random insertions from previous episodes, I thought other series were above that. I guess, at least for one episode, STNG needed to save a few buck and bank on an insipid plot. Riker picks up a kind of raging virus as he and Geordi explore a planet previously unexplored. It is beyond the expertise of Dr. Pulaski, who can't stop it. Scans reveal that it has attacked the nervous system and will eventually head for the brain and kill Riker. What Pulaski and Troi find is that the entity is reactive to human emotions. Troi is there to read Riker's thoughts as he dreams. She senses different kinds of dreams from adventure to erotic to pain to terror. All these are represented by short clips from the first two seasons. There is no order to them, but Pulaski is able to use drugs to enhance the experiences. Troi, whom we all know is in love with Will, coaches the doctor as they search. It was fun to guess what scenes might fit in, but it detracted from the actually presentation. It's sad sometimes to know that factors other than a lack of creativity force the hands to the producers of shows such as these. It's so piecemeal and the whole treatment is so hard to swallow that it's a bit of an embarrassment.