TNG Flashback: Code of Honor

"Code of Honor" is the first real dud of Star Trek: The Next Generation's first season. The Enterprise is sent to negotiate with a more technologically primitive culture (with whom the Prime Directive forbids them to interfere), to obtain a vaccine for a plague ravaging another world. The leader of the aliens, Lutan, becomes enamored of Tasha Yar, and abducts her from the ship. His wife then challenges Yar to a fight to the death for the right to be married to Lutan, a battle Yar must wage in order to secure the vaccine.

I wrote of the previous episode, "The Naked Now," that it seemed unwise to have fashioned a copy of an original Star Trek episode so early in the spinoff's run. But that episode did at least have more modern sensibilities; it did seem to have updated the feeling of the story for 20 years later.

By contrast, "Code of Honor" is an original script (mostly; I'll get to that), but has a sensibility trapped in the 1960s. This baked-in attitude is then amplified by establishing shots of the alien city that feel very strongly like images from the original Star Trek, and by a musical score composed by original series veteran Fred Steiner. This was the only time he wrote for The Next Generation. And it's actually a good score -- wild, loud, and fun. But it has a very original series vibe, right down to referencing Alexander Courage's original Star Trek theme considerably more often than the regular Next Generation composers would ever do.

But ugh, that script! It has horribly awkward exposition in the opening sequence. It has oddly inappropriate scenes of levity (such as a dialogue on shaving between Geordi and Data) at times when people are dying of the plague and an Enterprise crew member's life might be in danger. It has an ending stolen straight from the original series classic "Amok Time" (that would be the unoriginal part of the script I hinted at), where the loser of the battle to the death is revived by futuristic medicine. And that's not even getting to the real flaws of the episode.

First, the episode is truly quite racist. Now admittedly, this isn't inherently baked into the script. But the director for the episode made the decision to cast the aliens entirely with African-Americans. Instantly, the interaction with their backward, honor-driven culture suddenly took on the vibe of an early 1900s elitist condemnation of "Darkest Africa." It didn't have to be that way; if the aliens had been of mixed races, it probably wouldn't have been an issue. But the result is in fact so offensive that, according to sources I've read, Gene Roddenberry himself fired the director partway through the filming of the episode. Another director was brought in to finish it, uncredited.

But if the episode is racist only by the actions of one person, it's sexist by the efforts of several. Now I'm not talking about the sexism inherent in the alien society; I grant that it's the writers' choice to portray a culture that way and try to contrast it with the Federation. (It's even interesting to watch Picard, in his efforts to be diplomatic, essentially stoop to their level and demean Tasha to Lutan in one scene.)

No, the real problem is one particular scene. After Lutan has expressed his desire for Tasha to become "his first one," Troi uses her counseling/empathic skills to trick Yar into admitting that she was thrilled to be asked. Then, even after bristling at being tricked, Yar goes on to admit that she'd love to fight his wife Yareena just to embarrass her.

Okay... what?! Is Yar so unprofessional that she loses sight of the need to extricate herself from this situation smoothly, preferably with the vaccine? So unprofessional that she puts a higher priority on the thrill of being asked to marry a man she should find repulsive, and on embarrassing his (to use the phrase that feels appropriate to this sentiment) "bitch wife?" Throw in Troi basically saying that it's understandable Tasha would be emotionally confused since Lutan is so attractive, and you really have one sexist mess of a scene.

Other random observations:

• The Blu-ray remaster is really almost too good. Lutan has scars on his face and chest, and you can clearly see in some scenes the seam where the makeup appliance has been glued on and not well blended to his skin.


• Though the episode has a strongly 1960s original Star Trek sensibility, there is one scene that's decidedly modern. This is the first time that a real moment is made about how Picard is not usually permitted to beam down to alien planets himself, and routinely sends his first officer instead. Kirk never played it that way.


• One of Lutan's guards has a missing eye, a fun detail I'd never noticed before.


• In the shaving scene I mentioned earlier, Geordi has his VISOR off and is blind. Data gets oddly aggressive with him, barring Geordi's attempt to get away from him. It's supposed to be playful, but comes off just a touch creepy.


• Basically the one rule we're told about the "fight to the death" that concludes this episode is that it won't be stopped for anything. And yet, when Yareena loses her weapon, they pause the fight to give it back to her. Huh?


• Tasha gets quite petty with Lutan at the end of the episode, telling him "how sad for you" that he's lost everything. Sure, the guy abducted her and was a total jerk, and Denise Crosby delivers the dialogue with sincerity instead of mocking. Still, it feels like Yar is really missing the Starfleet high road here.

There are a few saving graces to the episode -- none enough to make it "good" by any stretch, but enough to save it from me branding it with the dreaded F. There's that fun Steiner musical score for one. There's also the critical role of the Prime Directive in the plot, one of Gene Roddenberry's more interesting philosophical contributions to the world. (Essentially saying that a truly evolved culture should never try to push what it thinks is superior onto a culture it thinks is inferior.) It's also quite fun to see Picard play the diplomat for the first time, and indeed Patrick Stewart makes the most of some pretty weak material.

Still, even Jonathan Frakes and Brent Spiner have expressed some embarrassment at having been involved in this episode. I'm probably being too generous in giving it a D.