25 WORST Episodes Of Star Trek EVER

In the original writing script, the Ligonian race was not entirely African-American. In fact, only two guards were specifically written as black. However, once the decision was made to make the entire planet African-American, a major issue of the presentation of the race exploded.

Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Levar Burton, Michael Dorn and Will Wheaton have all decried the episode as the worst of the Next Generation, racist and have all expressed the wish it had never been made at all. The first director of the episode, Russ Mayberry, was replaced halfway through filming as apparently he was thoroughly unpleasant to work with on set.

There is not much room for argument - the episode is bad. Very bad. This tribal planet, shown entirely depicted by African-American actors, is pandered to by the crew of the Enterprise, who could simply take what they want at any moment. Yar fights for the enjoyment of the crowd. Kathryn Powers who wrote the episode would go on to write an episode of Stargate SG-1 with basically the same plot, which was also widely panned by critics and fans alike.

There are however some voices who like the episode. Gene Roddenberry's son, Rod, likes the episode, saying that he doesn't see the racism on show. He felt that the aliens just happened to be dark skinned, and that the plot moved along at good pace regardless.

Whatever the consensus on the episodes racial undertones, Code of Honour tops this list as the worst that Trek had to offer. In the words of Brent Spiner - 'It was the third episode so it was fortuitous that we did our worst that early on and it never got quite that bad again.'

Maybe not. But Sub Rosa tried really hard.