Wading in the shallow end of the brain pool.
In defence of Shades of Gray
- Thread starter AntonyF
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Plenty of shows had clip shows early on. "The Golden Girls" instantly springs to mind regarding both the fact their first was before its second season finale and the sheer frequency of them throughout its 7-year run.
I'm just glad that TNG had fewer backdoor pilots, though if there's a way to get fewer than zero, I'm all pointy ears.
At one point, the intention is to provoke feelings of arousal from him, & because of a lack of options, we only get a few clips of some babes he flirted with over 47 episodes, instead of the fact that we already know he'd had an incredibly passionate, years long relationship with Deanna, he'd be able to draw from for that
100% agreed. It's sad there weren't other forms of "happy thoughts", so they did "horny thoughts" instead. Either way, it's oddly amusing that inducing all the happyhorny thoughts resulted in the mystery critter accelerating its growth as a response. Maybe the critter was a metaphor of the audience?
But that makes sense, from a production point of view since this clip show was the only option available, since there were more stress-inducing moments, hence the seizure-inducing series of rapidfire clips.
Regardless, it's a shame that Dr Pulaski didn't figure out the solution despite the clipshow, instead of Will having a strong enough Willpower (groan) to save himself.
Also, "47 episodes" -->
True, the number was conjured up as an in-joke/nudgeywinky thing to "M*A*S*H" (dimunitive of "4
A lot of shows over the years have had annual clip shows built into their budgets and have at least one every season, including the first. It was quite common in Canadian-made syndicated or cable shows like Stargate SG-1 and the Outer Limits remake, as bizarre as it was to have clip shows in an anthology series. I mentioned before how modern Ultraman seasons from Japan run 25 episodes each and regularly do a clip show in episode 13.
Clip shows were far more common in TNG's day than they are now (at least in American TV). What made "Shades of Gray" exceptional was not that it was a clip show, but that it was the only clip show TNG did, when so many of its contemporaries did them routinely.
The Berman era of Trek didn't do backdoor pilots per se, but there was certainly a great deal of setup for DS9 and Voyager sprinkled throughout TNG (and later DS9).Plenty of shows had clip shows early on. "The Golden Girls" instantly springs to mind regarding both the fact their first was before its second season finale and the sheer frequency of them throughout its 7-year run.
I'm just glad that TNG had fewer backdoor pilots, though if there's a way to get fewer than zero, I'm all pointy ears.
Good point. And the setup to the TNG spinoffs felt more natural, unlike the usual "backdoor pilot" fare seen across the genres.
The only setup for DS9 was "Chain of Command." All the TNG elements that DS9 later built on -- Cardassia, Bajor, wormholes -- were introduced individually just as TNG episodes, and only later drawn on for DS9. So it wasn't meant as setup. (Any more than the writers of the episode "Lower Decks" knew that it would retroactively become a sort of backdoor pilot for the series Lower Decks.)
It was only Voyager that got seeded in advance in TNG & DS9 with the whole Maquis arc. (And it's ironic that the Maquis storyline was created to set up VGR but ended up having more relevance to TNG & DS9.)
Take out the clips and what's left isn't terrible. Indeed, exploring a new planet, with dangerous life being encountered, is the sort of thing TNG needed to do more often instead of the glorified taxi service the show delved into more often. There's a genuine sense of foreboding and danger in the presentation that really hits the spot in "Shades" that's genuinely undeserving of the hate.
I don't know about why other tv shows used clip shows, but in TNG's case, thanks to the writers' strike and other production difficulties, the clip show was all that they could do or they'd lose another slot. They had reuse a Phase II script in a hurry as well as using a 2-part special hosted by Patrick Stewart., or else the season would have been even shorter.
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We've been through this already. The strike was a year earlier. It affected the beginning of season 2 by delaying it a month, but it had no effect on the ending of the season. It didn't have one damn thing to do with "Shades of Gray." You'll never find any official, reputable source claiming it did. It's just a popular misconception that refuses to die. Because two unusual things happened in season 2, people blindly assume they had to be connected. But they weren't. Because, in fact, clip shows were not unusual back then. They were an utterly routine part of TV production, a commonplace way to save money. As I said before, what was unusual wasn't that TNG did a clip show, it was that it only did one. Most seven-season series would've averaged around seven clip shows.
If anything, the strike should've made a clip show less likely, because with four episodes fewer, they should've had 26 episodes' worth of money to spend on the remaining 22. So they must've gone really over budget and schedule on "Elementary, Dear Data" and "Q Who" to require a money- and time-saving clip show at the end. It happened despite the strike, not because of it.
Really. An 80's era sitcom called "Punky Brewster" was once scheduled to run after football games, if I remember right. Because they could run long, the writers created a handful of 15-minute episodes that they could run when there wasn't time to run the normal 30. If you just call SoG a 30-minute TNG episode, it's actually a pretty good story.
I guess back in the days of VHS, you could edit it so just the real time footage played. Kind of like how I edited episodes that were ruined by their endings.
Clip shows are not even pretending to be ambitious . Especially during this time in television. It deserves its reputation. But I will say this much as a small positive. There are a few good characters moments ( albeit briefly) between Riker and Troi and just Riker in general before and after the coma sequences. There have been other ( bad-ish) episodes where even that was missing. This had a little a bit of character work that makes Riker likable. That's where the praise ends though.
Regarding clip shows...
I will say most of SG-1's clip shows are pretty well done. (And it gave us Kinsey getting shot down by "Supreme Commander" Thor with a simple Asgard finger... that never fails to make me smile.) Speaking of Kinsey, it's interesting to note he was in quite a few of their clips shows... "POLITICS", "DISCLOSURE", "INAUGURATION".
I will say most of SG-1's clip shows are pretty well done. (And it gave us Kinsey getting shot down by "Supreme Commander" Thor with a simple Asgard finger... that never fails to make me smile.) Speaking of Kinsey, it's interesting to note he was in quite a few of their clips shows... "POLITICS", "DISCLOSURE", "INAUGURATION".
I think SG-1 (I can't speak for other shows) established that clip shows are much more tolerable if they're also episodes that serve greater purposes within the series. If "Shades of Gray" ever had any relevance to events that followed, it might be more fondly remembered.
Sometimes, but sometimes all it takes is to tell a good story in the frame. The Adventures of Superboy: "Who is Superboy?" was a terrific clip show because it used the clips to catalyze an intense heart-to-heart between Clark and Lana, instead of just using the frame story to introduce the clips. It had no followup in the rest of the season, but it was still the show's best episode about their relationship. And Andromeda's "The Unconquerable Man" was set in an alternate timeline and thus I don't think it had any lasting impact, but it very creatively incorporated the clips, not as flashbacks or reminiscences, but as part of the alternate version of events in that timeline, and seeing how they played out differently helped recontextualize what had come before. So I guess it had a lasting impact in that sense, but on our perspective on the preceding series rather than on what followed. (Though I may be forgetting some relevance it ended up having.)
I Love Lucy did a clip show interspersed with original segments for their Christmas episode, reminiscing about Little Ricky's birth. It was a beloved story arc already, and revolutionary for depicting pregnancy on TV. The episode also concluded with a new version of a Christmas-themed tag scene they'd used in previous years at the end of episodes airing just before the holiday but otherwise having nothing to do with it. (The scene took place in their first apartment, even after they changed apartments - we weren't supposed to believe it happened every year, just be amused by it.)
While I still wish they had a completely new Christmas episode in addition to the clip show, I still like it. (It's apparently the first clip show on TV - or at least the most well known by that point).
While I still wish they had a completely new Christmas episode in addition to the clip show, I still like it. (It's apparently the first clip show on TV - or at least the most well known by that point).
I really didn't like SG1 clips shows, and they were far too frequent. It's why I'm more tolerant of Shades of Gray in that they tried to tell a narrative with the clips and the different emotions. SG1 felt like filler.
I'm surprised you think that, since SG-1's clip shows often advanced the storyline in significant ways, like in "Disclosure." They weren't great episodes, since they were still clip shows, but at least there was an attempt to make their frame stories relevant.
As for the frequency, that was dictated by the network or the studio, probably. Both SG-1 and its Showtime sister production The Outer Limits had one clip show per season, even though TOL was an anthology series where clip shows made little sense. Clip shows are done for budgetary reasons, mandated by the studio/network bean-counters to save money, and thus many series have an obligatory clip show built into each season's budget from the start. (As I mentioned, this is still standard in Japanese TV even though it's no longer common in North America.) So it wasn't the SG-1 writers' choice to do so many clip shows; it was the price of getting the show made, and all they could do was try to make the best of it.
"Invasion Part 2" introduced Senator Kinsey, for example. And it explained, why SG-1 went rogue in the last episode of Season 1. I thought, that was a quite okay epsiode. And the last one of season 2 was okay, too. The only thing, that annoyed me was, that most of the time, they used the same clips. I mean, in especially concerning the overall Goa'Uld-Storyline, one could've taken other clips, right?
I haven't watched them in a number of years in fairness, so I may have forgotten some detail.
Well, some of SG-1's clip shows were better than others. I think I remember the season 1 and 2 clip shows being weak, and the later ones improving somewhat.
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