10 Times Star Trek Should Have Known Better
8. Shades Of Gray
Full disclosure, the Writers’ Guild Of America Strike in 1988 was the direct reason for this episode’s inception, so there were other factors at play. However, was there no other thing that they could have done?
Television was no stranger to the clip show in the 80s, and even the 90s continued the trend with shows like The Simpsons and Stargate SG-1. However, this clip was a rushed affair, with a wraparound story so dull that it’s hard to sit through. It is also the last appearance, to date, of Dr Katherine Pulaski. She deserved far better a send off than to be relegated to a few lines in a clip show.
Riker is stung by a plant. Good feelings make it grow faster, bad feelings make it fade. This equates to memories, and so the clip show begins. To be fair, as we have said, clip shows themselves were nothing new at the time, and reusing footage was hardly new in Star Trek at all. So one can understand the simple drive to do a clip show, pad out the season, and hope that the writers’ strike would end before the third season began.
Unfortunately, the lack of true engagement with any kind of plot line in this episode makes it a slog to get through. It really is a reminder that, rather than an enjoyable forty five minutes of television with Riker lying on a bed, one should simply seek out the episodes that it draws its footage from - quickly, so that everyone has a chance to do better the following season.
Thankfully, the third season of The Next Generation largely ironed out the issues that plagued its first and second, proving that Trek could learn from past mistakes. Though we are only on the third entry of this list.