Star Trek The Next Generation: Every Season One Episode Ranked From Worst To Best

25. Code Of Honour

Code of Honour is perhaps one of the more infamous episodes of the Next Generation's first season. As it came so early in the running order, there was not much in the way of good will built up by the audience, so to drop an episode that fails so badly so early could have resulted in dire outcomes for the rest of the series.

The episode just stinks of racism, regardless of the original intent by the writers. The Ligonians are depicted as a tribal people and are played by coloured actors down to the last extra. Tasha is forced into ritual combat with Yareena to secure a vaccine and the almighty Prime Directive prevents Picard from doing much to stop it.

However, Roddenberry's original rewrite of the script had the Enterprise firing at full power at the planet. Gene was a little more bloodthirsty than some give him credit!

The director Russ Mayberry left/was fired midway through production on the episode, being subsequently replaced by Les Landau. The cast remember the episode as 'truly sub-par' and with other, more strongly worded descriptions. Brent Spiner offered a glass half full take on the episode, saying that it was good to get some of the worst of the Next Generation out of the way early.

The novel Dark Mirror takes a different approach to the episode. When the mirror Enterprise D is faced with the Ligonians demnds, they just sterilise the southern continent. Not that genocide is ever a good thing but it sure would have made for a more engaging episode than this one.