Episode of the Week: 2x22 "Shades of Gray"
- Thread starter Jeyl
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The Menagerie was a reuse of old footage, but it wasn't really a clip show. Nobody had seen The Cage when it came out.
If the Cage was originally released to the public as the pilot and THEN they did The Menagerie, it would be a clip show.
If the Cage was originally released to the public as the pilot and THEN they did The Menagerie, it would be a clip show.
This episode doesn't deserve all the hate. It's no way the worst episode of TNG (have you guys not seen "Code Of Honour" or "Justice"!?!). American TV series always seem to do clip shows e.g. A-Team, Frasier, Friends, Simpsons - seems like an accepted part of the medium over there.
As clip shows goes, at least this doesn't go the predictable, boring route of "oh, character X might be leaving, remember all the good times we had together...". There's a sci-fi-ish nature to the reasoning behind it.
We get some nice Riker/Troi bits and Pulaski is always good mileage.
Nobody is going to argue that SoG deserves a spot in anyone's top 10 or anything, but it's nowhere near a "travesty" as many would have us believe...
As clip shows goes, at least this doesn't go the predictable, boring route of "oh, character X might be leaving, remember all the good times we had together...". There's a sci-fi-ish nature to the reasoning behind it.
We get some nice Riker/Troi bits and Pulaski is always good mileage.
Nobody is going to argue that SoG deserves a spot in anyone's top 10 or anything, but it's nowhere near a "travesty" as many would have us believe...
I've always thought the big lazy here was not looking for any interesting deleted scenes or bits with Riker from previous episodes so the flashbacks wouldn't necessarily have been all footage we'd seen before.
I suspect the real reason for shooting a clip show wasn't to to save costs in the manner of a bottle show, but to make a show that could be filmed in only a few days: it wasn't just about cast and costumes and sets, but days of costs associated with running the full crew.
I suspect the real reason for shooting a clip show wasn't to to save costs in the manner of a bottle show, but to make a show that could be filmed in only a few days: it wasn't just about cast and costumes and sets, but days of costs associated with running the full crew.
Okay, I'll give you Code of Honour, but yes, Shades of Grey is even worse than Justice.
No show is better than TNG at doing money saving bottle episodes. Disaster is one of the series best. Because in most of TNG's bottle episodes they put create effort into the story. Shades of Grey was a total lack of effort.
No show is better than TNG at doing money saving bottle episodes. Disaster is one of the series best. Because in most of TNG's bottle episodes they put create effort into the story. Shades of Grey was a total lack of effort.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Bottle_show
If you go by those lists, TNG and DS9 had the best bottle episodes.
VOY and ENT had the worst.
Rob Bowman says as much in the book Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages.
He was reminiscing about something that just happened, as if trying to turn the thread itself into a clip show. Kind of clever, but maybe a little too subtle. It might have worked better if he'd used a selection of quotes from previous EOTW threads.
I must be "white on the right". 
That would have worked better but I think it would have still gone right over my head.
That would have worked better but I think it would have still gone right over my head.
Even so, when you have three days to make an episode isn't the right approach to just roll out and examine some character's personal quirk by having that quirk somehow be necessary to collapse some spatial anomaly? Or have some possessing spirit floating around the ship? Or have a disease spreading around the ship that changes their behavior in some interesting, personally revealing way? Just take some common space opera standard and let the characters speak for themselves.
Shades of Grey is something the writers of Full House would think of.
Shades of Grey is something the writers of Full House would think of.
Also, you can really see how much Voyager's pilot must've gone over, the majority of their bottle shows are in season 1!
I agree with you, but I'm glad that they were able to bring back Dr. Crusher for season three.
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