Well, TNG caught me in sick bay for the second time in a row but I’m going to do my best at giving it a fair trial. This week was season 1, episode 3, “Code of Honor.” It’s based on the Enterprise crew visiting a planet that is the only source of some mega-important vaccine. The inhabitants of the planet comprise a tribal, patriarchal, and primitive race who base every action on ancient (to us) codes of honor. Unfortunately, this means that when the Enterprise crew arrives to get the vaccine, they have to jump through all sorts of hoops to satisfy the planet’s social-code-bound inhabitants. Namely, they have to say “Please” and “Thank you” a lot, ask politely for them to return their kidnapped chief of security (Tasha Yar), visit them on the planet and tell them how fantastic they are, and allow the kidnapped security chief to fight another woman in some deathmatch of love.

There’s a major aspect of this episode that anyone who has seen it will be waiting for me to discuss, so I’ll go ahead and get it out of the way: “Code of Honor” is a vastly, but unintentionally (I assume), racist episode. It’s one thing to present a primitive race of beings and have them base their entire lives on arbitrary codes of pride. But why, oh why, do the people of this society have to be copied directly from African stereotypes? These events are taking place in the twenty-fourth century. Couldn’t the writers have used some of that pluralist imagination that Star Trek is known for and made these guys a tribe of whites? Or, heck, why not some new race, like greens or yellows? Instead, they are essentially screaming, “Look at how unsophisticated Africans are.”

Let me reemphasize, though, that I do not think this racism was intentional. It seems to me that the writers came up with a story involving primitive views of honor, and they just sort of decided, “Okay, so the tribe will be like an African tribe,” without thinking about the implications of what they were doing. A pretty big mistake, yes, but a mistake nonetheless.

As for the story itself, it had its problems, but I honestly thought it was pretty good overall. The whole thing was about pride and the pointlessness of pride. The Ligonians are a very proud race, so they do things to get attention and to raise the stakes of their honor, like kidnapping Tasha Yar just to prove how brave they are and subsequently forcing Picard to acknowledge their prowess and ask for her return. Picard, then, has to drop all sense of pride and play along in order to get Yar back but most importantly to get the vaccine that millions of people need. Most of the episode consists of him talking with the Ligonian leader, Lutan, flattering him, and taking part in Ligonian customs. There are so many points at which you just want Picard to go, “No more games! Give her back, or we’ll take her back!” but of course he can’t do that or else he risks the lives of those who need the vaccine. There are a few moments when he starts to lose his cool, but he always quickly returns to his reserved British self. So, really, this is a story about humility. Pride, it demonstrates, is a primitive thing; while humility is a characteristic of more advanced cultures.

Don't try brushing your hair with that.

This episode does have a few flaws aside from its racism. The biggest of these involves, once again, Wesley Crusher. In the middle of this pseudo-crisis of Yar being kidnapped, Wesley’s mom talks with Picard about what great potential she thinks Wesley has to serve as a crew member. Picard caves in and basically says, “Come on, Wesley, have a seat at the controls,” so that he can get a sense of what it's like to serve on the Enterprise. I’m no Starfleet captain, but that doesn’t seem like the best time to let a kid mess around on the bridge.

The writers still seem to feel the need to pound it into our brains that a woman can hold a “man’s job.” Within just a few minutes of the show’s beginning, she has already flipped one guy for insisting that he hand Picard a vaccine by himself. Then the Ligonians make a big to-do about a woman being able to fight, and she soon after demonstrates a holographic fighting exercise at which she excels but at which a Ligonian male fails. Granted, this last part was more to serve the plot than to say, “Women can fight. Do you get it? Do you understand? Do you get it?” but coupled with the other displays of her physical ability, it's a bit much.

One thing I noticed about Yar in this episode is that the only hand-to-hand combat move she ever uses is a throw. At first I thought of this as a flaw, as it’s pretty boring to watch fight scenes that consist only of one person flipping the other to the ground. But, after giving it some thought, I think it makes sense. Her job is that of being the ship’s security officer. It makes more sense for her to get her opponents to the ground quickly and subdue them than it would for her to engage in a prolonged fight. So. Yeah.

I cheated a little bit for this entry and read some other people’s opinions, curious as to whether they matched up with mine, and I found some amusing stuff. First of all, it seems like pretty much everyone else views the episode’s treatment of race the same way I do – as an unfortunate mistake. What was more fun, though, was reading a review written by Wil Wheaton himself. Here are two passages that stuck out to me:

Picard meets with the Ligonian leader Lutan and his little buddy Hagon when they beam up into the ship's cargo bay. On the way to meet them, Troi and Riker tell Picard that the Ligonians are a proud people with a very structured society. Picard thanks them for waiting until they're in the turbolift, going to the meeting to tell him this important information, instead of bogging down the pre-meeting briefing with it. When they get to the cargo bay, we discover that the Ligonians are also descended directly from a 1940s pulp novel set in deepest, darkest Africa, and that they are amused to discover that the Enterprise's security chief is a woman.

Oh good! We're going to be racist and sexist in this one!

and

Tasha's marshal arts look real because she and Jonathan spent one or two lunch breaks a week taking actual training, so their characters could use it in the show. And before you ask, no, I didn't take annoying nerd lessons on my lunch breaks. I was already a level 29 master of those particular skills, thank you very much. I spent my free time rehearsing lame dialogue until I could read it without wincing. With the writing in the first season, I didn't have time for much of anything else.

Just thought I would share that with you.

Anyway, despite one big blunder and a few smaller problems, I thought this was an okay episode. For everything it did wrong, it had a pretty good story. It gets a little annoying and repetitive watching Lutan constantly smiling at his own “accomplishments” and expecting Picard to compliment him endlessly, but I guess that’s just part of the character. It’s an improvement over “Encounter at Farpoint” and a definite improvement over “The Naked Now.” Even though I expect more Wesley and Tasha badness, I look forward to seeing what other stories the writers come up with.

Next week: The Original Series, episode 1.4 - "The Naked Time."