Shades of Gray

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.

As a long-time fan of all the Star Trek series,I found this a disappointing episode, and I wonder if the liberal use of "flashbacks" featuring Will Riker's exploits, both positive (and largely romantic) and negative (lots of pain, and a crewmate's death)was a money-saving device, as were many of their "bottle shows" (episodes in which all scenes take place on the Enterprise). Diana Muldaur(who also appeared at least twice on the original series) deserved a better final appearance than this for her character, Dr. Kate Pulaski. Loyal viewers (in the Star Trek world, is there any other kind?) also were shortchanged. This was the last episode of second season; thus, the season ended "not with a bang" but with "a whimper."

Because of the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike they had to shoot this episode in 3 days. It's pretty much crap, consisting of repeat cut + pasted clips from Season 2 and was described by its writer, Maurice Hurley as "terrible, just terrible."

Why the producers couldn't just wait to shoot something decent who knows. I'm guessing because of the strike the production ran out of money and could only release a flashback episode or maybe Roddenberry was too sick at the time to be able to veto this half-assery. This episode also marks the final appearance of Diana Muldaur (Dr. Katherine Pulaski) on the series.

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!

"Shades of Gray" is a pathetic excuse for an episode for "Star Trek: The Next Generation"--one that insults the audience's intelligence and just looks like a lazy attempt to fill the time slot. It is so bad and so irrelevant that I recommend you skip it completely--you really don't need to bother with this one.

When the episode begins, Riker's leg is injured while on an away team mission. However, this is no mere scratch--the thing festers and cannot be eliminated using the transporter's bio-filters. Soon, Riker is dying and Dr. Pulaski is fighting to save his life.

This doesn't sound that bad, does it? Well, no...the concept isn't bad. However, this only takes up a tiny fraction of the show. Most of it consists of clips of Riker from other episodes--and they appear to be completely random in how they are used. Relevant or not--they are tossed into "Shades of Gray" and the sum effect is a show that obviously no one gave a crap about when they made it. A complete waste of time and the worst simply because there have been episodes with dumber premises (such as the baseball game episode from "Deep Space 9"), but at least they TRIED something different with these shows. Here, it's just an attempt to re-use old footage and otherwise take the week off from production! Awful.

UPDATE: By the way, it isn't just me who hated this episode. At the 50th anniversary Star Trek convention in Las Vegas, this was voted as one of the 10 worst of all episodes from every Trek franchise! That is some ignoble designation!