[ENTERTAINMENT] Star Trek Episode Ratings - Star Trek: TNG - Seasion 1, Episode 4 (Code of Honor)

Lloenflys

"Certainty is an illusion ..."
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Well heck, at this rate I'll get through Star Trek: TNG in about 12 years or so, so ... yeah. Gonna maybe need to pick up the pace a bit on these reviews. Phew! But hey, I'm writing one of them now and that's something right! So without further ado here is a review of one of the most infamous episodes of Star Trek: TNG that was ever produced. As a reminder, the scale I use to rate episodes is as follows!

A - Great episode, very rewatchable with excellent storytelling
B - Very good episode, rewatchable with few plot holes
C - Acceptable episode but nothing particularly outstanding - run of the mill
D - Poor episode - deficient in some way (characters acting abnormally, poor writing, etc.)
F - Unacceptable episode - Should be tossed into the bin and never dusted off again

+ or - grades of course are added to provide some further differentiation.

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 1, Episodes 4 - "Code of Honor"

A plague sends the Enterprise to the planet Ligon II for a cure, because the Ligonians are the only ones who produce a cure and Federation scientists have been unable to replicate the vaccine. This is despite the fact that the Ligonians are portrayed as being ... uh ... less than sophisticated, but hey the story is what the story is, right!?! The Enterprise makes contact with the leader of this world and he ends up offering the vaccine in exchange for ... uh ... Lieutenant Tasha Yar. Yeah. Yeah that happened. He ultimately declares that Yar will be his "First Woman," angering his current "First Woman" who challenges Yar to a fight to the death in order to keep her fella. In the ensuing fight Yar ends up winning, but Dr. Crusher is able to revive the Ligonian woman who, realizing her husband wasn't exactly loyal to her, decides to shift her allegiance to the former second in charge. Since woman own the property on this world, that gives the second in command the power and wealth to become the new leader.

Did you follow all that? No? It doesn't matter. The story is nonsensical anyway. Oh, yes, it's also racist. Did I not mention that? Yeah, they decided to make this "tribal" people that looks at women as property and has views that could come right out of the 1950's at best and make them all black. Oh, and if that wasn't bad enough their outfits look like they come out of the worst conception of a pulp novel trying to show what a village in Africa looked like. in the mid 1900's. Is it explicitly racist? I ... guess not? But the choice to depict this group of people as black seems suspect at best. The episode is also unquestionably sexist - and look, it would be one thing if they just depicted this group of aliens as sexist so they could set off Starfleet as being different and better but ... honestly, the portrayal of Troi and Yar here isn't really much better.

In the end the Enterprise got its vaccine, the bad guy got his comeuppance, and his spurned ex-wife found love with the long-suffering second in command. So ... let's just call that enough of a win and move on.

Notes of Interest

  • The cast hate this episode. You can find all sorts of quotes from virtually every member of the cast saying that this episode was ridiculous, racist, and misogynist and that they basically wish it didn't exist. Supposedly Jonathan Frakes has even tried to get it removed from syndication. Yeah, it's really that bad.
  • At one point data is discussing humor with Geordi and we see that he's just very, very bad at it. This makes sense, and establishes more about data's efforts throughout the series to understand humanity, so I don't mind this interaction at all. However, at one point Data "accidentally" has a slip of the tongue and says "includilling" instead of "including." The underlying joke that caused this misstatement isn't funny at all and doesn't bear repeating, but suffice to say we are lead to believe that Data is prone to slips of the tongue just as people are. I suppose that could be a programmed in feature of Data's speech patterns, but it never recurs and seems like a dangerous thing to try to program in - who knows if it manifested in the middle of a crucial situation? Surey his designer wouldn't be that careless? Chalk it down as bad writing and pretend it never happened, I say.
  • Worf didn't appear in this episode. The epsiode was about honor. Worf says "honor" approximately every 4.3 words. Yeah, why have him in this episode? No reason, am I right?
  • Wesley gets a chance to go back on the bridge this episode and even man's a bridge station. When explaining this to Picard, Riker says he "forgot" that he had given Wesley a chance to man that station before Picard came back. Uh ... I ... what? Yeah, let's just pretend that didn't hapen.
Final Grade: F

This episode is terrible. Racism and misogyny is bad enough. Add to it poor writing, bad characterization, and an outlandish storyline and there's really nothing redeeming here. If Frakes wins and this episode is thrown out of existence it really wouldn't be a loss for the show's history. Not much more to say, really. It just sucks.
 
I don't remember the early seasons of TNG, and maybe this is why...
 
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