Shades of Grey

* (1 reluctantly repeating star out of 5)

With season finale music of great portent, Riker gets an ouchie on a survey mission of Surata IV.

O'Brien's transporter detects unknown microbes but the biofilter also reports its own inability to remove them. (As the Daystrom Institute corporate product slogan said on the 2364 Biofilters: Useless in Every Way, but very Considerate.)

O'Brien teases Pulaski, pretending he's muddled about the transporter coordinates.

"Just kidding Doctor. I know how much you love the transporter."

"About as much as I love comical Transporter Chiefs," she retorts.

And about as much as I'll miss you, you joy-sucking harpy.

So with the most cursory tricorder exam, Pulaski beams Riker up anyway! Not into quarantine! Just trundle him around wherever you please, unknown infection coming through, might wanna hold your breath, O'Brien!

It just seems ludicrous to me after all the rigamarole she went through with styrolite and shuttles in 'Unnatural Selection'. I guess there comes a point when you just stop giving a crap about possibly killing a thousand people with some boring old disease.

It's neither virus nor bacteria, it's fused to Will's nerves, and it's spreading toward his brain.

While dying, Riker is jovial with the doctors. "My great-grandfather once got bit by a rattlesnake. After three days of intense pain- snake died."

Not that Pulaski doesn't know her craft, but wouldn't amputation have solved this when it was limited to the leg? Why did she let it spread to the spine?

She breaks out an Iron Maiden and stabs Riker's brain with electricity to keep it active. It's effectively creepy, but strange: this seems like awfully primitive tech. Dr. Crusher once told us that the 'brain has been mapped'. Pulaski must not have that map.

Riker's memories and dreams of events from the past two years (some of which he was not present for) are brought to vivid, tedious life as a horrible, half-assed, virtually unwatchable clip show. Which I fast-forwarded through because despite the evidence of this blog project I am not a glutton for punishment.

Kissing scenes don't drive the bugs out, but fight scenes do. Stupid problem, stupid solved!

And we never saw Dr. Pulaski again, Admiral. No, I'm pretty sure the airlocks were malfunctioning...

"Shades of Grey" is embarrassing. What most boggles my mind is when I look at TV shows made in the United Kingdom and they make 6 to 13 episodes per year. Why insist on 22 episodes during a writer's strike, America? If you know it's gonna be sub-par, why not, god-forbid: 21? Dragging down the quality of Season 2 and the series for all time, this has been 'Shades of Grey'. Avoid it like the plasma plague.