wlswarts's Full Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation - Episode 4
It's usually a fairly crushing blow to have a bad episode early in your first season. Has "Star Trek The Next Generation" been a prime time show on ABC, "Code of Honor" would have canceled it. Of course, just as Fox will air anything, ABC will cancel anything. In the case of "Star Trek The Next Generation," through the third episode, who would have blamed them? Fortunately, Roddenberry released the show in syndication to avoid network difficulties and "Star Trek The Next Generation" had a chance to blossom. Still, "Code of Honor" did little to help that.
"Code of Honor" has the Enterprise reach a planet that does not belong to the Federation with the goal of getting a material desperately needed as a vaccine for a plague on another world. So, Captain Picard puts up the Ligonians, who appear to be alien only in that they are black. Sigh, apparently the budget was particularly small at the beginning if the "alien of the week" was supposed to be a society of people of color. Anyway, the leader, Lutan, becomes enchanted with Tasha Yar and captures her. Doing what any fine Captain would do in such a circumstance, Picard attempts to get both his officer back and get the vaccine. Things are going well until Lutan's wife challenges Yar in a fight to the death.
And then the fight happens and the episode is blissfully over.
What the episode does right is in making the Ligonians distinct. Not physically, as already noted, but as a culture. They have a noticeable social structure and the episode does a good job of fleshing that out. Out of the various aliens that show up on "Star Trek The Next Generation" for only one visit, the Ligonians have one of the most distinct cultures.
The episode also comes close to working on the area of our philosopher king (Picard) adhering to his values of noninterference. Denise Crosby acts well as Tasha Yar, thrust into a situation both dangerous and ridiculous.
"Code of Honor" fails drastically, however, in almost every other way. The acting is generally bad. One of the worst performances ever must go to Karole Selmon, who played Lutan's wife. While the culture is well defined, it's not a terribly practical or interesting culture and the characters that result from it are not terribly impressive. In fact, they are either power-hungry, jealous, and irrational or just plain naive.
"Code of Honor" may not be the worst episode of "Star Trek The Next Generation," but with its simplistic plot, attention to irrelevant details, unremarkable characters, and all around poor acting (even Patrick Stewart doesn't give his best on this occasion) put it easily in the bottom five. There is nothing to recommend this episode for those who do not like "Star Trek The Next Generation" and almost as little to recommend for those who are.
[Knowing that VHS is essentially a dead medium, it's worth looking into "Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Complete First Season" on DVD, which is also a better economical choice than buying the VHS. Read my review of the debut season at: http://www.epinions.com/content_61798846084
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