Title | Disc Number |
Airdate | Stardate | Season | Year | Rating | |
The Child | 2.1 | 26 | 21 Nov 1988 | 42073.1 | 2 | 2365 | ![]() |
The Royale | 2.3 | 37 | 27 Mar 1989 | 42625.4 | 2 | 2365 | ![]() |
Shades of Gray | 2.5 | 47 | 17 Jul 1989 | 42976.1 | 2 | 2365 | ![]() |
Force of Nature | 7.3 | 160 | 15 Nov 1993 | 47310.2 | 7 | 2370 | ![]() |
Masks | 7.5 | 168 | 21 Feb 1994 | 47615.2 | 7 | 2370 | ![]() |
Title : | Shades of Gray |
Director : |
Robert Bowman |
Writer(s) : | Maurice Hurley |
Eventually Pulaski realizes that the infection may be slowed down or even reversed by certain types of neural activity in Rikers brain - activity which is linked to dreaming. She heightens his neural activity, provoking a series of dreams about some of the nice things Riker has done over the last couple of years. Unfortunately, this speeds the spread of the infection up rather than slowing it down.
Pulaski finally realizes that negative emotions must be provoked, and proceeds to do so. Riker experiences various nightmares, which destroy the infection. The ship continues on its way.
All well and good, but they had to have something for the end of season two, and there was little money left in the kitty. So they resorted to that most hated of all episode formats - the clip show. You'll notice that the plot description above is much briefer than the other best and worst eps I've discussed. This is because the entire plot of "Shades of Grey" is designed to use the minimum possible number of sets, special effects, extras, etc. And of course, most importantly there is a heavy reliance on using clips from earlier episodes. All this makes for a very dull and predictable show.
The clips chosen also show poor thought - interestingly enough, Riker 'remembers' scenes that happened when he was not present! You could say that his imagination was filling in some blanks, but strangely enough what he imagines matches exactly to what actually happened - and what are the odds of that?
Really, I'm not going to say anything more on this one. Some episodes are just so bad that analysing them is like kicking a puppy - you quickly start to feel sorry for the poor thing.
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