The Stupidest Star Trek Episode Almost Had The Funniest Name
Star Trek: The Next Generation is generally remembered as peak television by sci-fi fans, and that’s largely because its third season completely transformed the show for the better. Before that, the first two seasons were exceedingly rough, with season 2 ending on a groan-worthy clip show. That episode was titled “Shades of Gray,” but it nearly had a much funnier name because a Star Trek production assistant proposed titling it “Riker’s Brain” due to the story’s exceedingly lazy plot involving Commander Riker.
Riker’s Brain
“Shades of Gray” is Star Trek’s one and only clip show episode, and the loose plot involves Riker getting infected with a virus that will soon destroy his brain. In an effort to save the commander’s noggin, Dr. Pulaski hooks him to a machine that will stimulate his neurons, and the result of this is that Riker keeps having flashbacks to events of the previous two seasons. The whole clip show idea was to help the show save money after the second season went over budget, and production assistant Eric A. Stillwell thought “Riker’s Brain” would be the perfect name for the episode before devising its final title.
If you know much about how TV shows are made, you might be wondering why “Shades of Gray” was named by a Star Trek production assistant rather than a writer or producer. The short answer is that Stillwell had the unenviable job of finding all of the different clips the producers might possibly use. He said that he spent a staggering 80 hours in one week finding all of these clips, so it only makes sense that he would have special influence over the final episode’s name.
A Fitting Homage
While the “Shades of Gray” production assistant didn’t elaborate on this, it’s possible his “Riker’s Brain” suggestion was meant to be an homage to an infamous episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. “Spock’s Brain” was the premiere episode of the original show’s third season, and it involves an insane plot (even by ‘60s Trek standards) where Spock’s entire brain is removed. “Spock’s Brain” is considered possibly the worst Original Series episode, and considering “Shades of Gray” is one of the worst TNG episodes, it would have only been fitting for it to have such a similar name.
While the producers didn’t go with Stillwell’s original idea, “Shades of Gray” still owes its final name to the Star Trek production assistant. The title has often seemed nonsensical to fans, but Stillwell liked it “because I decided it was a really bizarre episode that wasn’t black or white; it was just shades of gray.” And for going above and beyond in researching clips and naming the episode, the production assistant was given the credit of “Researcher” for this episode.
As fans, it’s wild to know that “Shades of Gray” nearly had the funniest possible name, but the episode itself is still one of the worst Star Trek stories ever aired. It was written by notorious former showrunner Maurice Hurley, and even he later declared that it was simply a “piece of s***.” Fortunately for us all, the franchise learned from this mistake, and we never had to suffer another entire clip show episode again.
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