Shades Of Grey

[Tiberius]

I mean, it gets a lot of bad rap, and I understand why. Pretty lame clip show.

But is the actual story surrounding the clips really that bad? I just finished watching it, and I think that if the flashbacks were re-done to parts of Riker's life we hadn't seen, such as him losing his mother, the whole episode would have actually been pretty good.

Thoughts?

 

[MikeS]

That would make a good show because you would have twenty minutes of new footage that adds to Riker's character and the general Trek mythos.

As it stands, it rehashes clip's which aren't even "the best bits", adds nothing knew to what we know and that is why it's a bad episode.

 

[Finn]

^except the snake story

 

[DeepSpaceWine]

What shows should have done was film alternate scenes and then compile a clip show from those unseen alternate versions, like instead of Armus pulling Riker in, he slung a mudball at his face or the old admiral run Riker along the Ten Forward bar, knocking all the glasses off of it, or a horrifying rendition of 11001001 where Riker finds out the intriguing 'woman' he was talking to is Manuet, a transvestite hologram.

It's a bit strange people flip out so much over it. Yeah, clip shows suck, but clip shows were common back then as a cheap way to do a bottle show (at least shows found a way to make all original bottle shows). Though maybe the backlash was a good thing because Star Trek never did a clip show after then and made original bottle shows. Some syndicated shows still did clipshows even thru the '90s (Hercules in 1996, I think Xena might've too, The Outer Limits every year, sometimes forming a good overarcing story with it, usually not, Poltergeist: The Legacy did it too).

 

[SchwEnt]

Oh I agree. I never understand the hatred for this eps.
Lame, okay. Weak? Maybe. But the worst of the worst, as so many claim? No.

Clips aside... the framing story was fair. Nothing special, but it didn't suck. I liked the surface stuff and the stage set was a good planet, running water and everything.

Once Riker was at the door of death, I liked his sickbay scenes with Picard and Troi and all that.

For all the god-awful stuff in TNG, I never got that this eps was that rotten. Compared to "Genesis" or "Masks"??

I also think a big strike against it was doing a clip show so early in the series. Only two season's worth of material to draw on, and not all that much really.
A clip show like this would have been much better if they had done it in the 5th or 6th season, with more and better clips they could have used.

 

[Marc]

What shows should have done was film alternate scenes and then compile a clip show from those unseen alternate versions, like instead of Armus pulling Riker in, he slung a mudball at his face or the old admiral run Riker along the Ten Forward bar, knocking all the glasses off of it, or a horrifying rendition of 11001001 where Riker finds out the intriguing 'woman' he was talking to is Manuet, a transvestite hologram.

It's a bit strange people flip out so much over it. Yeah, clip shows suck, but clip shows were common back then as a cheap way to do a bottle show (at least shows found a way to make all original bottle shows). Though maybe the backlash was a good thing because Star Trek never did a clip show after then and made original bottle shows. Some syndicated shows still did clipshows even thru the '90s (Hercules in 1996, I think Xena might've too, The Outer Limits every year, sometimes forming a good overarcing story with it, usually not, Poltergeist: The Legacy did it too).

So it wasn't the result of a writers strike or anything like that?

on paytv in Australian when it comes up in the episode rotation it simply gets listed as "clipshow" without a title or description.

 

[od0_ital]

^

It was the result of the writers' strike. The second season has fewer episodes overall because of the strike.

 

[Cyke101]

I mentioned this in another thread, but if money and the writers' strike weren't issues, it would've been neat to see Shades of Gray as a "faux-clip show," where past episodes and adventures (seen and unseen!) would be referenced but with new footage.

Voyager and Community both averted the cliche of the clip show by doing just that, and they were both largely successful with that plot device.

 

[doubleohfive]

Yeah, the line between 'clip show' and 'flashback' has gotten blurred significantly since 1988.

 

[Cyke101]

Yeah, the line between 'clip show' and 'flashback' has gotten blurred significantly since 1988.

Even more so if the majority of the episode is comprised of either, which separates them from LOST, I think.

 

[doubleohfive]

Oh I'm sure LOST paved the way for this particular storytelling gimmick -- Community did it, and Damages has embraced it as a regular part of their seasonal arc.

It's great when done well (LOST, Community, Battlestar Galactica), but terrible when done poorly (Shades of Grey, These Are The Voyages...)

 

[Cyke101]

Oh I'm sure LOST paved the way for this particular storytelling gimmick -- Community did it, and Damages has embraced it as a regular part of their seasonal arc.

It's great when done well (LOST, Community, Battlestar Galactica), but terrible when done poorly (Shades of Grey, These Are The Voyages...)

I'm still amazed that Voyager did it in the 90s, by virtue of being a time-travel heavy show. But Shades of Gray was pretty much a clip show, without new footage about the past like LOST, Damages, or These Are The Voyages.

 

[doubleohfive]

I know "Shades of Grey" was a clip-show. I was simply commenting on the fact that the gimmick of clip-shows having branched off and evolved has come a long way since then.

Which episode of Voyager did this again? It sounds vaguely familiar...

As for "flashback shows that show us clips+flashbacks filmed after the fact," TATV is god awful. Including "Shades of Grey" next to it in my last post was merely meant to point out that the Trek writers of the day didn't really have much skill with clip shows/flashback shows, and certainly not to the degree shown on BSG, LOST, or Damages, where (IMHO) the writers really maximized the impact of the gimmick.

 

[od0_ital]

^

VOY 'Flashback', when they showed Tuvok as part of Sulu's crew on the Excelsior durin' the events of TUC.

 

[T'Girl]

I seem to remember SG-1 doing a clip show in the late nineties.

The interesting thing about this episode is that it would be easy to rework, if/when there is a TNG-R, they could keep just the envelope potion of the show and basically insert any scenes they wanted to.

a horrifying rendition of 11001001 where Riker finds out the intriguing 'woman' he was talking to is Manuet, a transvestite hologram.

Hey, hey, hey ...

 

[Orac]

I seem to remember SG-1 doing a clip show in the late nineties.

SG-1 was very good at doing clip shows IMO, I enjoyed the ones I saw. The one I remember best was the penultimate episode of the first season which brought the viewer up to date with the story before the finale. It also pointed out flaws in the stories themselves as Ronny Cox pointed out how stupid a lot of SG-1's victories against the Goa'ould (sic) were.

 

[MikeS]

Why are people comparing These Are The Voyages and Flashback to Shades Of Grey?

Shades Of Grey is the only clip show Trek ever did. It is totally different to a flashback episode with new footage.

 

[doubleohfive]

Well, we were discussing more than just the episodes. As I'm sure I stated above, I was commenting on the overall gimmick of "clip shows" and also of "flashback" shows and how they've evolved and how the line differentiating what each consists of has blurred and changed since 1988.

That's why.

 

[Tom]

Imo 26 episodes a year is a bit much, then you get forced to strech the budget and sometimes do clip or bottled shows.

 

[T'Girl]

Personally, I've never had a problem with "bottle shows," some have been quite good.

Changling comes to mind.