YMMV / Star Trek: The Next Generation S2E22 "Shades of Gray"

• Hilarious in Hindsight: Yes, something funny happens in this episode! Riker gets in this clever line: "My great-grandfather was once bitten by a rattlesnake. After three days of intense pain, the snake died." A decade and a half later, that became a Chuck Norris Fact. And then it comes to light that Riker is descended from a line of war heroes.
• Padding: Chief O'Brien trying and failing to beam Geordi and Riker up because the transporters are flagging the bacterium in Riker's body, resulting in Dr. Pulaski being called down to the jungle planet just so she can give the transporters a manual override to beam them up up safely, has no real bearing on the rest of the plot and was clearly written in to pad the runtime. Did they not have enough clips?
• So Bad, It's Good: Again, another episode that tried to do too much with too little to work with, like "The Naked Now". No Budget, Riker-centric flashbacks only two seasons into the show and a paper-thin excuse for a plot that eventually devolves into a torture porn for Riker results in a lot of Narm Charm.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The script tried to at least provide something resembling an action scene, by specifying that when Data and Geordi remove a thorn from one of the vines, it causes the whole forest to come to life and attack them. Unfortunately, the budget restrictions meant they couldn't even do that, and so they settled for having Brent Spiner just shake the vine around as he's holding it, resulting in an effect that makes the octopus attacks from Bride of the Monster seem like the height of realism.
  • During the same forest scene Geordi runs a scan which determines that there is "no animal life within 50 kilometers." Too bad the audience can clearly hear insect noises thanks to the jungle-themed Stock Sound Effects playing over the scene...
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Poor Marina Sirtis is fighting a losing battle trying to put some emotional resonance into this.

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