‘Star Trek’s Most Hated Episode Is Still the Sci-Fi Show’s Biggest Mistake

There’s little doubt that Star Trek: The Next Generation saved the franchise, bringing Gene Roddenberry’s creation to “the next generation.” With a bigger production budget and a focus on what’s happening with the crew – their beliefs, relationships, and decisions – as opposed to what’s happening to them, the series was markedly different from Star Trek: The Original Series, yet retained Roddenberry’s optimistic vision of a hopeful, inclusive future.

And sparking the eternal Kirk vs. Picard argument. But one episode in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation is so far removed from that vision that it’s cited by cast member Michael Dorn as “the worst episode of Star Trek ever filmed.” And he’s not alone.

‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Code of Honor” Sees Tasha Yar Fight for Her Life

In the episode, the Enterprise heads to Ligon II, a planet that produces a vaccine needed by the denizens of Styris IV, in the throes of an Achilles fever outbreak. The crew knows little about Ligonian culture, other than that men rule society, while women control the land. Ligonian leader Lutan (Jessie Lawrence Ferguson) arrives on the Enterprise to provide a vaccine sample, and is fascinated by head of security Lt. Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby), a woman. Further impressed by her combat skills, Lutan and his party of Ligonians abduct Yar and return to the planet’s surface.

The act enrages Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart), who demands that Lutan return Yar immediately, but receives no response. He tries a more tactful approach, which does elicit a response from Lutan, who grants Picard and his crew permission to beam down to the planet, promising to return Yar following a banquet in his honor.

But at that banquet, things get really complicated, really fast, after Lutan announces that he intends to make Yar his “first one.” No one is more surprised than Yareena (Karole Selmon), his current “first one,” and she challenges Yar to a fight to the death to restake her claim. Yar will have little choice but to participate, as Lutan refuses to release more of the vaccine unless she does. The weapons used are coated with a lethal poison, meaning one scratch is certain death. But the combatants are equally skilled, and the intense match finally comes to an end when Yar lands a strike on Yareena.

At that, Yar orders the Enterprise to beam them both aboard the ship, where Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) can revive Yareena. They return to the surface, where Crusher explains to Lutan that Yareena was officially dead for a time, meaning Yar wins the match, thus breaking Yareena’s “first one” bond with Lutan. Free to choose a new mate, Yareena ditches Lutan, who achieved his power on the back of her wealth, and chooses bodyguard Hagon (James Louis Watkins) as her “second one.” Yar is free to go, and the Enterprise is given its full supply of vaccine.

‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Code of Honor,” Ironically, Has Little of It

Before you say, “That doesn’t sound all that bad,” let’s add some context. The Ligonians, for one, are all depicted as one-note characters by Black actors, wearing non-specific African tribal culture garb, in a one-note, non-specific African tribal society. Lutan, a Black man – sorry, humanoid – kidnapping a blonde white woman whom he is creepily obsessed over, is problematic, to say the least. Originally, the episode called for a reptilian alien race with a culture akin to Kamakura-period Japanese samurai. But the African theme and casting of Black actors for the roles was the choice of director Russ Mayberry, a white man. That choice of casting all Black actors as members of an aggressive, primitive race did not sit well with Roddenberry, who fired Mayberry during production and never hired him to direct another episode again (per TrekMovie).

“Code of Honor” might have found a degree of redemption with a profound statement on gender roles. Only it drops the ball with that, too, with Yareena still yielding a position of power in society to her “second one,” instead of claiming it for her own, thus starting a new, gender-balanced societal path for the Ligonians. But the overwhelming amount of vitriol reserved for the episode is in its glaring racial insensitivity, particularly among the cast themselves.

Per TrekMovie, Jonathan Frakes is reported as calling it a “racist piece of s—,” Brent Spiner said he felt it was “racist” and the “worst of the series,” LeVar Burton assesses that the episode “stinks, without question,” and Tracy Torme, a writer for Season 1, said the episode was “offensive” and drew a parallel between it and 1950s sitcom Amos ‘n’ Andy, long decried for its negative depiction of Black Americans. Likewise, critics have cited “Code of Honor” as, in no particular order, “possibly the worst piece of Star Trek ever made,” “idiotic,” “pure trash,” and OkayAfrica, a website devoted to bringing African culture to a global audience, simply calls it “absurdly racist.” “Code of Honor” is a stark outlier in a franchise that once made bold, groundbreaking moves when it came to tearing down racial barriers.

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Release Date

1987 – 1994-00-00

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Network

Syndication

Showrunner

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Gene Roddenberry

Directors

Cliff Bole, Les Landau, Winrich Kolbe, Rob Bowman, Robert Scheerer, Jonathan Frakes, Robert Wiemer, Gabrielle Beaumont, Alexander Singer, David Carson, Paul Lynch, Corey Allen, Patrick Stewart, Chip Chalmers, Joseph L. Scanlan, James L. Conway, Robert Lederman, Tom Benko, Timothy Bond, Robert Legato, Adam Nimoy, Robert Becker, David Livingston, LeVar Burton

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Writers

René Echevarria, Maurice Hurley, Richard Manning, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Tracy Tormé, Hannah Louise Shearer, Stuart Charno, Ira Steven Behr, Sara B. Cooper, Peter Allan Fields, Herbert Wright, Frank Abatemarco, Burton Armus, Hilary Bader, Morgan Gendel, David Kemper, Michael I. Wagner, Philip LaZebnik, Robert McCullough, Susan Sackett, Nick Sagan, Fred Bronson, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, Sam Rolfe

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