In defence of Shades of Gray

[AntonyF]

This is the sort of gin-based topic I would love to discuss and probably wouldn't have put it past myself to discuss before. But... controversial thought: Shades of Gray isn't that bad.

Now, clip shows are reviled. So in terms of Trek's history it won't be remembered.

But in the context of a CLIP SHOW, I think it's rather decent. (I'm just watching Golden Girls who have hit clip show territory, which has sent me down this thought path...)

Many shows have done them. But most of them feel contrived. To me Shades of Gray at least tried to make sense in terms of a story.

I remember even back in the day I really liked the themes they pulled together for the clips. Here's the love, here's the anger etc. And for me for a really young show and quite frankly a really dodgy couple of years it showed great range. It said wow yes TNG can play to different strengths.

And it gave flashbacks to the likes of Yar, and her death. At the time with no on demand etc. it was good to see her again and some of the other scenes. The flashbacks felt special. It almost by complete chance acted as a nice denouement to the patchy but formative two seasons before it really took off in season three.

And finally as someone who likes Pulaski it was a good send off for her. It was a strong doctor's episode where she got to her doctoring.

So I'm going to say I still have a soft spot for Shades of Gray.

(P.S. it's taken so much control not to say Grey)

 

[flandry84]

I suppose it could have been worse.Like those “bottle” episodes of Farscape where the cast gather round to represent different aspects of the comatose characters subconscious...pff!

 

[Orphalesion]

Nah, the premise of Shades of Gray was pretty contrived.

And even if it was better than the "average clip show"...that's still saying a root canal was less painful than the average root canal (I never had a root canal, but I've heard they are very painful)

I suppose it could have been worse.Like those “bottle” episodes of Farscape where the cast gather round to represent different aspects of the comatose characters subconscious...pff!

Hey, a similar principle worked well on DS9 with Facets...

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

It's a 1-dimensional clip episode that gives the impression that Riker's life didn't begin until "Encounter at Farpoint."

Oddly enough, I just watched an episode of Stargate SG-1 that had some parallels to this TNG episode. Teal'c was on the brink of death and was having flashbacks while hanging onto life by a thread, except that 90% of the "flashbacks" were about his life prior to joining SG-1, and how he became the Jaffa he was. Not recycled footage. It was really interesting and gave more depth to his overall storyline.

Riker, on the other hand, just has earlier TNG episodes put into a blender and replayed in a pretty pointless way that feels all the sillier with it being only the 2nd season of the show. It felt lazy that they couldn't come up with a single thing prior to "Encounter at Farpoint," although I'm not sure how heavily this episode was affected by the writers' strike that happened around that time. That could earn the episode a little more sympathy, but it couldn't be called a good episode by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[DonIago]

SG-1 also had "Politics", a clip show that was even more 'audaciously' set during season one of the series. But I think the premise of that episode, trying to convince Senator Kinsey (played by Ronny Cox (who TNG fans would know better as Captain Jellico)) not to dismantle the Stargate program, is probably more compelling than 'someone's sick, so let's revisit their recent memories in order to cure them', especially considering that the urgency of the program had just been peaked by the episode prior and would lead into what I believe to be one of the best cliffhangers of the series.

 

[Mojochi]

But in the context of a CLIP SHOW, I think it's rather decent.

Nope. Still disagree. It's mostly a hatched job even for a clip show. If you want an idea for a clip show that brilliantly works around the contrivance, check out the M*A*S*H episodes The Interview & Our Finest Hour, with real war correspondent Clete Roberts interviewing the characters. It may be the best idea for a clip show ever put to tv.

But to be fair, TNG had a much tougher task put to them, with this... left last minute, no other choice but deliver an episode on nearly no money, in short order, due to budget overreach on episodes like Q-Who. The clip show format existed exactly for such eventualities, & they got stuck leaning on it. TBH, the trade-off in getting to have an episode like Q-Who might've been worth it maybe, even if I can't stand Shades of Gray, & think it was terrible they got stuck doing a clip show so soon into the show's production, when there's so very little to draw from.

I also don't agree it was a good send off for Pulaski. Her sickbay basically became the default crutch to prop up this travesty. Her & Troi have some of the hackiest dialog in the show's long history, & neither actress could do anything to save it. It might've been the straw that broke the camel's back for Muldaur, for all we know, who wasn't working out anyhow. So I mean, could it have been worse? Sure, what couldn't? but it was still an ugly spot... especially to finish the season (Man, do I wish they could've moved it up somewhere else)

It's a 1-dimensional clip episode that gives the impression that Riker's life didn't begin until "Encounter at Farpoint."

Ding ding ding. We have a winner.

This among many other reasons is why I think they went an entirely wrong direction with this thing. I've since Monday morning quarterbacked what I think might have worked better for them writing this episode. Instead of Riker, you make it Wesley. Most of his growing up HAS been done since Farpoint. Plus, the biggest wealth of growth & development for any character in the short time TNG had run, for better or worse, WAS Wesley's. His journey was the most prominent one, up to that point. So, he had the biggest cache of personal footage from which to build this story about drawing from memories.

Plus, you also get a solid subplot about the boy wonder's life in jeopardy, having been left in the guardianship of the captain who'd also been responsible for the death of the boy's father. Somewhere out there the kid's mother might have to be told he let her son die too, & who better to feature in such a story than the show's best actor, fretting & stressing about this event?

A way better piece of drama, for sure.

 

[Pikirk_Janesisko]

The only positive thing I can say about Shades of Grey is that it's not even on my list of the worst episodes, precisely because I never remember that exists .

I think it's a harmless episode. It's not offensively bad, it's not so-bad-it's-good, it just exists. We know the reason why it was made, so there's no surprises. It just so happens to be a clip-show. And a very bad one.

 

[Christopher]

although I'm not sure how heavily this episode was affected by the writers' strike that happened around that time.

Not even slightly, because the writers' strike was the previous year. It affected the end of season 1 (in that the climax of "We'll Always Have Paris" had to be improvised and "The Neutral Zone" had to be shot from an unpolished first draft) and delayed the beginning of season 2, causing it to be shortened by four episodes. "Shades" was at the end of season 2.

I don't know how this myth persists, because not only is the timing wrong, but clip shows have nothing to do with writers' strikes. Clip shows still need writers to come up with the frame scenes. And writers' strikes are rare, while clip shows have been a constant presence in television for decades. Clip shows are purely about saving time and money, compensating for other episodes going over budget. The makers of TNG needed to spend more money on "Elementary, Dear Data" and "Q Who," and the studio agreed as long as they balanced it out by doing a clip show that could be shot in three days on a reduced budget.


Was "Shades of Gray" not bad compared to other clip shows at the time? Maybe not, but that's exactly the problem, since TNG as a whole was smarter and classier than most contemporary SFTV. People today have a low opinion of TNG seasons 1 & 2, but by the schlocky standards of 1980s SFTV, they were exceptional, well above the norm. So settling for a strictly mediocre, run-of-the-mill, uninspired clip show with nothing fresh or innovative about it was a real letdown. I mean, heck, even in more ordinary series, clip shows were generally pretty dull and unappealing, something we were used to settling for but rarely actually liked.

I think "Shades of Gray" is notable mainly for being so lame that it compelled Trek's producers to ensure they never had to do another clip show, leading instead to compelling bottle episodes driven by characters and ideas, like "The Drumhead" and "Duet." I feel its infamy was also a wake-up call for later producers to strive to do smarter, more interesting clip shows, so that we often got more creative and engaging clip episodes like The Adventures of Superboy's "Who is Superboy?", Stargate's various plot-relevant clip episodes like "Politics" and "Disclosure," and Andromeda's "The Unconquerable Man," which cleverly integrates its clips into an alternate-timeline narrative that compellingly recontextualizes the series to date.

In short, "Shades of Gray" made later TV better by providing an example of what to avoid.

 

[Orphalesion]

I don't know how this myth persists, because not only is the timing wrong, but clip shows have nothing to do with writers' strikes. Clip shows still need writers to come up with the frame scenes. And writers' strikes are rare, while clip shows have been a constant presence in television for decades. Clip shows are purely about saving time and money, compensating for other episodes going over budget. The makers of TNG needed to spend more money on "Elementary, Dear Data" and "Q Who," and the studio agreed as long as they balanced it out by doing a clip show that could be shot in three days on a reduced budget.

Probably two reasons:
1) It was the only clipshow in Star Trek history, so it probably seems like it should be blamed on a special event, no matter how common clip shows are on other shows.
2) While yes, they need writers, they need considerable less effort and time.

 

[Mojochi]

While it's bad, that kind of brings about good things too. From then on, we got well put together, 2 part cliffhangers to end their seasons. Lesson learned

 

[Christopher]

2) While yes, they need writers, they need considerable less effort and time.

Which doesn't make any sense. It doesn't matter if it takes less writing, because union writers can't do any writing during a strike, not even minor rewrites (hence the need to improvise the climax of "We'll Always Have Paris"). So clip shows cannot be written during a strike any more than any other kind of show.

Indeed, if anything, I'd think a clip show might be a more time-consuming exercise for a writer, because they have to sift through all the previous episodes and pick out which clips to build the plot around. (I wondered if they just wrote a generic "Riker has memories of X emotion" in the script, but no, all the stock sequences are fully incorporated into the teleplay.) It's easier for the director, actors, and production crew, but it would be a lot of work for the writer and editor in particular.

 

[DS9forever]

Community had the best "clip show".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigms_of_Human_Memory

 

[Summer Solstice]

This is the sort of gin-based topic I would love to discuss and probably wouldn't have put it past myself to discuss before. But... controversial thought: Shades of Gray isn't that bad.

Now, clip shows are reviled. So in terms of Trek's history it won't be remembered.

But in the context of a CLIP SHOW, I think it's rather decent. (I'm just watching Golden Girls who have hit clip show territory, which has sent me down this thought path...)

It's not that bad, it's just a bit boring. I don't skip it on rewatching but it's not memorable. In most of the objectively bad episodes, the actors/actresses are really giving it everything despite the plot being terrible so they just work. Eg Sub Rosa is terrible, but it's fun, very watchable and memorable.

Others have already mentioned Stargate SG1 clip shows. Stargate did them incredibly well and I think the best one was Citizen Joe. It introduced the communication stones which were really important in later SG1 stories and Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe.

It's impressive that there's only one Star Trek clip show when they were making so many episodes per season.

 

[Mojochi]

It's impressive that there's only one Star Trek clip show when they were making so many episodes per season.

That's why it's such a disappointment imho. There was a real feeling back in that day, that Star trek had evolved to be some of the most respected television going, especially for sci-fi. I think not only did the viewers believe it had transcended old gimmicks like that, but the creators had as well, & that they got stuck in a corner & had to fall back on it, even just that once, was something of a letdown. I know that's exactly how I felt on the 1st viewing. I was like "Aww man. Not that old schtick... not from the new amazing Star Trek. Damn yous all" lol

 

[Christopher]

That's why it's such a disappointment imho. There was a real feeling back in that day, that Star trek had evolved to be some of the most respected television going, especially for sci-fi. I think not only did the viewers believe it had transcended old gimmicks like that, but the creators had as well, & that they got stuck in a corner & had to fall back on it, even just that once, was something of a letdown. I know that's exactly how I felt on the 1st viewing. I was like "Aww man. Not that old schtick... not from the new amazing Star Trek. Damn yous all" lol

Yeah, that's about right. We expected better from TNG. Even with the uneven writing, it had top-notch production values and casting and was considered a prestige show.

 

[somebuddyX]

Clerks had a fun clip show for it's second episode!
SG-1 was the boss at clip shows. I haven't gone back to watch early season 1 much but I've sometimes watched the three-part starting with "Politics" (or really 4 part with "There but for the Grace of God") and it's great to refresh where everyone is at and how there are real stakes and real consequences in the episode. But I think they got so much more ambitious as they went on where with "Disclosure" and "Inauguration" I don't think any regulars appeared except in flashbacks and you have these side stories with Kinsey that also really enhance the show and also have consequences going forward. Also "Citizen Joe" was pretty great.
I think TNG's framing device for the clip show is just kinda lousy and not compelling but if they'd done more they might have got better.

 

[Christopher]

I think TNG's framing device for the clip show is just kinda lousy and not compelling but if they'd done more they might have got better.

Yeah, but back then, nobody really tried to make clip shows creative. It was just an accepted norm that they would be mediocre, that the frame story would just be an excuse to set up the clips and nothing more. It wasn't until after "Shades of Gray" that TV writers got tired of settling for that and started trying to make clip shows more imaginative.

Though not long after, really. One of my favorite clip shows is The Adventures of Superboy's "Who is Superboy?" from 1992. Instead of using the frame story as just an excuse to show a bunch of clips, it uses the clips as the catalyst for a compelling character story, as Lana uses a computer to reconstruct Superboy sightings to extrapolate his secret identity, and Clark tries to head her off and then deal with her conclusion that he's Superboy. So it's a tense and dramatic two-hander that's pretty much the most meaningful episode of the series in terms of Clark and Lana's relationship, even though it didn't get followed up in later episodes.

Although the weird thing is that it was followed the very next week by another clip show, "Cat and Mouse," which was an okay but routine clip show in which Clark had to see a psychiatrist (Erin Gray) and spent the episode dodging her questions. And out of the four clip episodes the series did, "Who is Superboy?" was the only one that rose above mediocrity.

 

[Tango]

Probably two reasons:
1) It was the only clipshow in Star Trek history, so it probably seems like it should be blamed on a special event, no matter how common clip shows are on other shows

The Menagerie (parts 1 and 2) are arguably clip shows. Well, sort of I guess.

 

[Christopher]

The Menagerie (parts 1 and 2) are arguably clip shows. Well, sort of I guess.

Oh, absolutely. "The Menagerie" was made for the same reason as a clip show, to make up for a budget/schedule overrun by producing two episodes' worth of material within a single episode's slot. And the main plot was very much constructed as an excuse to show the clips, as with most clip shows. They were just fortunate that they had a whole unaired episode to excerpt.

Gilligan's Island did much the same thing. Its first-season Christmas episode was a flashback to the castaways' first day on the island, letting them recycle a lot of footage from the original unaired pilot. (Although they didn't have the option to explain away cast changes like Trek did, so they had to leave out footage of the three pilot cast members who were replaced for the series.)

 

[Oddish]

I agree with the OP. "Shades of Gray" was, given the available budgetary and time parameters, about as good an effort as it could have been. And there are a fair number of TNG episodes that it infinitely outclasses, "Code of Honor", "Birthright part II", "Half a Life", "Sub Rosa", and "New Ground" to name five.