Star Trek’s Star Trek episode almost got the funniest name

By Chris Snellgrove
| Announce 13 seconds ago

Star Trek: Next Generation Generally remembered as peak TV by sci-fi fans, and that is largely because its third season has transformed the show completely for the better. Prior to that, the first two seasons were extremely rough, with a season 2 finishing on a clip show worthy of groaning. The title of that episode was “Shades of Gray,” but he almost got a much more funny name because Star Trek’s production assistant offers his title “Riker’s Brain” because of the lazy plot of the story including Commander Riker.

Riker’s brain

“Shades of Gray” is Star Trek’s Star Trek episode, and the loose plot contains Riker infected with a virus that will soon destroy his brain. In an effort to save the noggin of the Commander, Dr. Pulaski seizes it to a machine that will stimulate its neurons, and the result of this is that Riker continues to get back -to -events from the previous two seasons. The idea of ​​the entire clip show was to help the show save money after the second season went over the budget, and production assistant Eric A. Stillwell thought that “Riker’s Brain” would be the perfect name for the episode before inventing its final title.

If you know a lot about how TV shows are done, you may be wondering why “Shades of Gray” was named by a Trek Star Production Assistant rather than author or producer. The short answer is that Stillwell has the unused work from finding all the different clips that the producers could possibly use. He said he spent a staggering 80 hours in one week finding all these clips, so it only makes sense that it would have a special influence over the name of the last chapter.

A suitable homage

Although the “Shades of Gray” production assistant did not elaborate on this, his “Riker’s Brain” suggestion may be a homage to a famous episode of Star Trek: The original series. “Spock’s Brain” was the premiere episode of the original show’s third season, and includes a crazy plot (even by 60s journey standards) where the entire spock brain is removed. “Brain Spock” ​​is considered the worst Original Series episode, and considering “Shades of Gray” is one of the worst Tng Episodes, only to have a name like it would have been suitable.

Although the producers did not go with Stillwell’s original idea, “Shades of Gray” still has its final name for the Star Trek production assistant. The title has often appeared nonsensical to fans, but Stillwell liked it “because I decided it was a very strange episode that was neither black nor white; It was only shades of gray. ”And for going beyond that when researching clips and naming the episode, the Production Assistant received a” researcher “credit for this chapter.

As fans, it is wild to know that “Shades of Gray” almost has the funniest possible name, but the episode itself is still one of the worst Star Trek stories ever broadcast. It was written by the former evil -the -famous Maurice Hurley, and even later stated that it was only a “piece of S ***”. Fortunately for us all, the franchise learned from this mistake, and we never had to endure the episode of yet another whole clip show.