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Star Trek: The Next Generation – Shades of Grey (Review)

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Darren

This January and February, we’ll be finishing up our look at the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and moving on to the third year of the show, both recently and lovingly remastered for high definition. Check back daily for the latest review.

Well. That’s over now. Star Trek: The Next Generation limps across the finish line of its second season with a compilation clip show designed to save money and keep the season’s episode count up. Shades of Grey is frequently cited as the worst episode not just of the second season of The Next Generation, but of the show as a whole. While it’s hard to entirely agree with this assessment – Shades of Grey is cynical and lazy, but it’s neither as sexist as Angel One or The Child nor as racist as Code of Honour or Up the Long Ladder – it is possible to see where that argument comes from.

Like the first season before it, there’s a sense that the second season of The Next Generation might have been better had it ended an episode earlier. Indeed, the second season could have ended with Q Who? and the only episode anybody would really miss would be The Emissary. Unfortunately, one imagines the syndication agreements and network policy made this impossible. While one suspects many of those involved would be happy if Shades of Grey simply faded from existence, it remains part of the show’s syndication package.

This is a little like what this episode feels like…

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Hulk: Grey (Review)

Posted on July 21, 2010 by Darren

So far the final book in Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s superhero “colour” series (although there was a planned Captain America: White and a rumoured Iron Man: Gold which never got off the ground), Hulk: Grey is perhaps the most fascinating of the three novels. Loeb would go on to writing the on-going Hulk series (to near universal damnation, it should be conceded), suggesting perhaps a closer tie between the author and the character here than in Daredevil: Yellow or Spider-Man: Blue. As opposed to those two novels which covered a relatively large portion of the central character’s life, the flashbacks which provide the core of this particular tale cover a single night – the first night. Perhaps befitting the nature of the Hulk, the narration isn’t provided in monologue here, as it was in the other two titles, instead offering a dialogue between Bruce Banner and Doctor Leonard Sampson, his psycho-therapist. It’s a lovely little story that perhaps isn’t as strong as Daredevil: Yellow, but is still a fascinating read.