History Recap / StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E22ShadesOfGray

* ContinuityNod: Pulaski's [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E7UnnaturalSelection loathing for using the transporters]] is brought up again.

* {{Padding}}: Dr. Pulaski being called down to the jungle planet just so she can give the transporters a manual override to beam Riker and Geordi up safely, along with an extended scene of Data and Geordi beaming back down to the planet to find the organism that stabbed Riker, were clearly written in to pad the runtime. Did they not have enough clips?

* BottleEpisode: This was supposed to be a bottle episode, taking place mostly in Sick Bay, though the episode did call for a new set to be built, the jungle planet, so it's not even a real bottle episode.

It works! The infection fades away, and Riker wakes up feeling tired but fine. Picard insists that Riker stick around for some additional tests, joking that they need to establish that he still knows who he is. Riker counters that he knows exactly who he is: Captain Jean-Luc Picard. The captain plays along, announcing that he and Data are admirals, but Data doesn't get it and says that Picard has no authority to promote him. Oh, Data! Everyone laughs, and, for better or worse, that's the end of Season Two.

It works! The infection fades away, and Riker wakes up feeling tired but fine. Picard insists that Riker stick around for some additional tests, joking that they need to establish that he still knows who he is. Riker counters that he knows exactly who he is: Captain Jean-Luc Picard. The captain plays along, announcing that he and Data are admirals, but Data doesn't get it and announces that Picard has no authority to promote him. Oh, Data! Everyone laughs, and, for better or worse, that's the end of Season Two.

* TheMainCharactersDoEverything: Why are the first officer and chief engineer surveying the planet instead of a science team?

Riker relives a random assortment of memories until Pulaski decides to see if focusing on certain memories will have an effect one way or the other. Riker relives all of his erotic adventures through the last year or two, but the positive emotions just make the infection spread faster. Pulaski and Troi deduce that triggering negative emotions will have the opposite effect. They proceed to really bum Riker out with all of the violence and tragedy we've seen over the last two season.

Riker is infected with an alien disease while investigating an unexplored planet, and the only way to save him is to do a ClipShow.

No, really, that’s the plot of this episode.

OK, to put it the way the show puts it, Riker is rendered unconscious by the infection, so Pulaski and Counselor Troi put him into a machine that stimulates the memory centers of his brain, which seems to help. The problem is, not only does this mean this episode’s a clip show, it’s a clip show made up entirely of clips of Riker, and just from the first two seasons, mind you. So most of the episode is a lackluster selection of recycled footage intermixed with scenes of Pulaski and Troi staring at an unconscious Riker. Even by clip show standards, this one’s pretty weak.

In the end, Pulaski finds a group of memories that fight off the infection: the memories of the times he got his ass kicked or nearly blown up. Soon Riker is ship-shape again and so season two ends, on kind of a sour note for a season that was otherwise a pretty big improvement over season one.

This episode is often seen as an example of how today's audiences have greater expectations of series of this nature. Today, while it is not uncommon for arc-heavy shows to air standalone "recap specials", and clip episodes occasionally rear their heads as mid-season filler, it is ''unheard of'' today for a season finale of a show of the stature of TNG to be blown off as a clip show. It only exists because of the writer's strike that year, as the crew had already blown through all the previously existing scripts from the aborted "Phase II" series, and because of budget overruns on the episodes "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E3ElementaryDearData Elementary, Dear Data]]" and "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E16QWho Q Who]]", forcing the crew to save money at the end of the season.

[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant No relation]] to ''Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey.''

* BottleEpisode: This was ''intended'' to be a high-quality, low-budget episode, using only three sets and not even showing the bridge, but it mostly comes off as a cheap letdown of a season finale.

This episode is often seen as an example of how today's audiences have greater expectations of series of this nature. Today (2015), while it is not uncommon for arc-heavy shows to air standalone "recap specials", and clip episodes occasionally rear their heads as mid-season filler, it is ''unheard of'' today for a season finale of a show of the stature of TNG to be blown off as a clip show. It only exists because of the writer's strike that year, as the crew had already blown through all the previously existing scripts from the aborted "Phase II" series, and because of budget overruns on the episodes "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E3ElementaryDearData Elementary, Dear Data]]" and "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E16QWho Q Who]]", forcing the crew to save money at the end of the season.

[[IThoughtItMeant No relation]] to ''Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey.''

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tng_where_silence_has_lease_hd_385.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Riker is forced to [[ClipShow relive old episodes]] to kill a parasite. [[DamningByFaintPraise Some of them are even good ones!]]]]

[floatboxright:
Series: ''Series/{{Star Trek The Next Generation}}''\\
Episode: Season 2, Episode 22\\
Title: "Shades of Gray"\\
Previous: "Peak Performance"\\
Next: "Evolution"\\
Recapper: Vengeance Karl]

* ClipShow: That's more or less it. For all other tropes see the pages for the earlier episodes.

Series:Series/{{Star Trek The Next Generation}}\\

Title: Shades of Gray\\
Previous: Peak Performance\\
Next: Evolution\\

This episode is often seen as an example of how today's audiences have greater expectations of series of this nature. Today (2015), while it is not uncommon for arc-heavy shows to air standalone "recap specials", and clip episodes occasionally rear their heads as mid-season filler, it is ''unheard of'' today for a season finale of a show of the stature of TNG to be blown off as a clip show. It only exists because of the writer's strike that year, as the crew had already blown through all the previously existing scripts from the aborted "Phase II" series.

!Tropes:

* IdentityAmnesia: Played with - Pulaski notes there may be some memory loss, and asks Riker who he is as Picard and Data walk in. Riker smirks and says he knows perfectly well who he is - he's Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the ''U.S.S. Enterprise''.
* TheMainCharactersDoEverything: Why are the first officer and chief engineer surveying the planet instead of a science team?

* ClipShow: That's more or less it. For all other tropes see the pages for the earlier episodes.

[[IThoughtItMeant No relation]] to ''Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey.''

This episode is often seen as an example of how today's audiences have greater expectations of series of this nature. Today (2015), while it is not uncommon for arc-heavy shows to air standalone "recap specials", and clip episodes occasionally rear their heads as mid-season filler, it is ''unheard of'' today for a season finale of a show of the stature of TNG to be blown off as a clip show.

This episode is often seen as an example of how today's audiences have greater expectations of series of this nature. Today (2014), while it is not uncommon for arc-heavy shows to air standalone "recap specials", and clip episodes occasionally rear their heads as mid-season filler, it is ''unheard of'' today for a season finale of a show of the stature of TNG to be blown off as a clip show.