Code of Honor

The Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns on Heroes & Icons have cycled around again and last night was the all-time stinker, “Code of Honor.”

I’ve written before how bad the first season is, but this one has to be the single worst episode. It’s worse than “Home Soil,” worse than “The Naked Now,” even worse than the cheapo clips show, “Shades of Gray.”

Why? Racism! It’s just staggering that they cast all black actors to play the tribal aliens obsessed with honor. Apparently this was director Russ Mayberry going rogue; the script mentions that only some guards are black:

After only a moment, a slightly different kind of

TRANSPORTER EFFECT materializes five people. There are

four extremely tall, elegant Black Guards who form a

square.

Roddenberry, to his credit, fired Mayberry during the shoot and replaced him with Les Landau (who went on to be a significant director).

But the script is full of weird sexist asides that obviously were written by Gene. Super cringe.

It was so dispiriting to watch this in 1987 as a 13 year-old. We finally had new, weekly Star Trek and OMG it was so bad.

I love Fred Steiner, and his score is musically really good, but so dated in context.

It’s so terrible it’s actually fascinating to watch.

Well, this one will live on, and on...