50 Shades Of Gray Book Review

[Oliver Parkes]

Hmmminteresting review, it does sound a lot like Salt to the Sea, but maybe not as well executed. Side note: the name of this book confused me at first when I heard of it, I thought it might have been a spin-off of 50 shades of grey, but of course that is not the case ?

Worst. Finale. Ever. I might as well get it out of the way and call it the most pointless episode of TNG ever made. Honestly, was this episode even meant to be taken seriously, or were the creators as hopelessly desperate to fill the hour as it looks? Part of me thinks it's unfair to even assign a star rating to a clip show, but I'm going to do it anyway and assign it, let's see, no stars. (I suppose every Trek series has to have one.)

Not only are the choices of clips mostly bad (not that they had much to choose from at this point), the framing device is terrible: Riker is infected with parasites on an away mission, and the only way to keep them from destroying his brain are to combat them with endorphins by triggering his memory. His memories, of course, are all clips from previous first- and second-season episodes of the show. How convenient. Or, for us, inconvenient.

One nice aspect of this episode is that it took me about 25 minutes to watch on DVD because of the fast-forward button and the fact that I've seen all these other episodes in the last few months and don't feel obligated to watch excerpts again. (I can't imagine watching this episode again without a fast-forward button.) But, for the record, the clips are from the following episodes, in this order: "The Last Outpost," "Encounter at Farpoint," "The Dauphin," "The Icarus Factor," "Justice," "11001001," "Angel One," "Up the Long Ladder," "Skin of Evil," "The Child," "A Matter of Honor," "Conspiracy," "Symbiosis," "The Last Outpost" again, "Skin of Evil" again, "11001001" again, and "Heart of Glory." And, of course, a montage where lots of stuff blows up (including Remmick's head from "Conspiracy," which is almost worth a free half-star by itself, but I'll resist).

While there are clips from a few good shows, many of the clips are from some of the series' worst episodes, and there's no reason to be repeating them. The episode's "original material" depicts how happy memories strengthen the parasites while painful ones ward them off. The scenes in sickbay with Troi and Pulaski employ much unendurable medical babble that seems to be repeating on an endless loop. I seem to remember there was a writers' strike either before or during this season of TNG. Based on this episode, they should've taken more time off.

Before I watched the episode "Shades of Gray" I read the part of your review that stated 'Worst. Finale. Ever.' I thought that you were probably being unfair. But dear god, what a cinematic travesty that episode was.

Despite the fact that enduring all those meaningless flashbacks was a waste of time at best, I really thought that the worst part was the "story" that happened in between memories. Half of the things said were by the doctor, and no justification is required to explain why that is a horrendous choice.

Maybe something that was positive about "Shades of Gray" was that it actually got a laugh out loud from me. At the end, when Riker wakes up he says "you won't believe the dreams I was having", and Troy responds, laughing, "Oh yes we would!" If this was a cartoon made in the 70's for toddlers that would be appropriate.

I guess I feel more sorry for this episode than I am mad at it.

My understanding has always been that the wretched finale (and the shorter season) was caused by the writers strike; they ran out of episodes and cobbled together a quick clip show finale shortly before all the writers left.

Whenever I wrote about the recent writers strike, I thought of Shades of Gray, and feared that a current favorite show's finale would suffer a similar fate...

This episode was written to save time and money as a result of the writers' strike of 1988. It was shot in only three days, while most take at least a week. Director Rob Bowman commented, "It was Paramount saying, 'We gave you more money for "Elementary Dear Data" and the Borg show. Now do us a favor and give us a three-day show.' So that's what you do. It's an accepted part of the medium."

This episode is thought to be one of the weakest ever made. Maurice Hurley, who co-wrote the episode, commented, "Piece of shit. It was supposed to be a bottle show. Terrible, just terrible, and a way to save some money. I was on the way out the door."

The only thing that makes this episode that makes it better than Voyager's "Threshold" is the fact that they were forced to produce it. "Threshold", on the other hand, was entirely the writers' fault.

This episode is weak, but by no means the worst episode of the series. That ignominious title should go to season 7's "Genesis". "Genesis" is absolute moronic garbage that I can't believe got past a writer's retreat spit-balling session. The premise is idiotic, and the plot stemming from it is pedantic. It's Star Trek Voyager-level bad.

"Shades of Grey" come about because of the '88 writer's strike. But compared to "Genesis", it's a cake-walk to sit through ("Data, something's got meeeeeee!")

This is the 1st TNG episode I used the fast-forward button, and when I read this review I laughed out loud finding out that the reviewer did the same thing. Horrible episode, a bad zip of older scenes and the moments between Troi and Pulaski seemed like taking centuries. A waste of time...

On to the 3rd season! :) I love Star Trek!

The sole reason I don't put this in the same category as most of Trek's other bad episodes is because the writers' strike messed up a few things (the strike was happening right as this episode was written, IIRC). And honestly, the parts prior to the clip show portion (which only took up half the episode at most) wasn't so bad. It's been a while since I've watched this episode, however.

Certainly, there was always going to be a ceiling of quality this wasn't going to break. About the only show which consistently made watchable to good clip shows is The Simpsons, and that mostly worked because The Simpsons' internal rules were always pliable to begin with, as a comedy. ST:TNG is a drama in which, at least in principle, there are high stakes. The episode here has an especially funny break between what is happening in the primary frame of the episode -- that Riker's life is on the line -- and the purpose of the episode, which is to repackage old clips of the show, which is about as low-impact and low-importance as the show can get. That said, the basic idea of having Pulaski stimulate parts of Riker's brain to (re)produce memories is actually kind of clever, and I like the basic idea that Riker's emotional state eventually affects the organism. The only problem is that it's hard enough to find a good set of clips, all from Riker's POV, this early in the series; adding the additional constraint that they be grouped together by emotion pretty much breaks the show. "Riker sexytimes" doesn't sound like it'd be impossible to do, but apparently there was only one sexy Riker scene that wasn't terrible -- that's Riker/Minuet -- and the only other options are the Edo fleshfest, Beata of Angel One and Headstrong Irish Daughter from "Up the Long Ladder".

There are still some good clips in the episode -- the Riker/Guinan flirting, the (not great, but decent) Riker/Troi farewell in "The Icarus Factor," the fight with the second officer on the Pagh (though I would have preferred a number of other scenes from "A Matter of Honour"), the dance with Minuet, and the introduction to Data -- the last of which is not really a great scene, but is one that makes sense to be important to Riker and is decent. In addition to these, I like Riker's stoic reaction to his life being on the line and his scene with Troi talking about this. There are some good things here.

Unfortunately, the clips actually get worse as the episode gets on, and the meshing between the clips and the Enterprise material gets worse and worse. I like how this episode follows Riker/Troi tearful goodbye scene, ending with words like "Are you sad?" "Yes." "So am I!" with Troi saying something to the effect of, "He's relaxed...he has feelings of warmth and friendship." OK, that is not the emotion communicated in that scene, is it?

I do like how this episode demonstrates how huge the quality differential between s1 and s2 is. It follows up the Riker/Guinan flirting in "The Dauphin" (a great comic scene) and then the Riker/Troi tearful goodbye in "The Icarus Factor" (not great, but serviceable) with the Edo fleshfest from "Justice" -- as quick a demonstration of how far the show came in one year as is possible. The Riker/Min scene -- which is quite good -- is sandwiched between the Edo scene and the "Angel One" and the "Up the Long Ladder" sex scenes, which also demonstrates how variable the series is in terms of its eroticism. (To be fair, while the "Up the Long Ladder" scene is not good, it is nowhere near as bad as the "Angel One" scene, which in turn is IMHO nowhere near as goofy as the Edo skinfest.)

Somewhere in the 1/2 to 1 star range from me.

And now, for fun, I will compare my ratings of s2 (which I just finished rewatching) with Jammer's -- I will list only my ratings where they differ. In parentheses is the difference between mine and Jammer's.

Elementary, Dear Data 3.5 (+0.5)

Loud as a Whisper 3 (+1)

Unnatural Selection 2.5 (+0.5)

The Dauphin 1.5 (-1)

The Icarus Factor 2 (-1)

The Emissary 3.5 (+1)

Shades of Grey 0.5 (+0.5)

Well, that sure was insightful.

On the season as a whole, I think that it's underrated. The season still has some bad shows, but they are mostly of the forgettable variety -- nothing in "Manhunt" strikes me as bad, it's just totally devoid of interest, for example. I don't really count "Shades of Grey" against the season, given the writers' strike and the necessity of working around it. And there were strong shows for most characters -- Picard with "The Measure of a Man," "Contagion," "Time Squared," the subplot in "Samaritan Snare," and a general strong commanding presence, Riker with "A Matter of Honour" and "Peak Performance," with strong supporting work in "The Measure of a Man," Data with "E,DD," "The Measure of a Man," "Pen Pals," and the subplots of "The Outrageous Okona" and "Peak Performance," Worf in "The Emissary," Troi in "Loud as a Whisper" (to me anyway), and Wesley in the B-plot in "Samaritan Snare" with Picard. Pulaski's only headline show was "Unnatural Selection," which I think is not as bad as people usually credit it with, but isn't a great starring vehicle; still, she's a good presence throughout the season. I think Geordi was fairly ill-served here -- as he frankly is every year -- but the promotion to chief engineer gives the character a better niche within the show, and he gets some good material throughout and especially in "Elementary, Dear Data." The season introduces Guinan, gives the first use of the Romulans as an effective Cold War-style foe in "Contagion," introduces the Borg, deepens Klingon culture in "A Matter of Honour," moves the Ferengi into largely comic threat territory which can *still* be mined for dramatic tension in "Peak Performance," moves Wesley away from wunderkid and into a role more believable (if not entirely well realized), and Riker grows a beard and a sense of humour. This is where TNG starts really *being* TNG.

While it's hardly that strong a recommendation, I do think it's notable that most of the bad episodes are *really* bad and disconnected from everything, and thus highly skippable. If I wanted to rewatch s2 tomorrow, I would essentially skip all of "Okona" except the Data subplot, "The Royale," "Up the Long Ladder," "Manhunt" and "Shades of Grey" and I would not feel I've lost anything at all. The worst episodes remaining -- say, "The Child," "The Dauphin," "The Icarus Factor" -- are important enough for character to be worth watching, but aren't really all that bottom-of-the-barrel; the material which *works* in this season is not particularly infected by the rot that remains in the weak episodes. It's easy enough for me to dismiss these 'skippable' eps as hiccups of a show finding its footing, which don't really have any impact beyond the episodes themselves, with the possible exception of "Manhunt" which does affect later Lwaxana episodes, albeit slightly.

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