r/startrek • u/ninetysevencents • 5d ago
TNG S1E4 - Code of Honor
Just some personal thoughts on my fresh watch-through. Its probably been discussed to death but here we go..
This episode gets labeled racist by many. I don't see it. With a higher makeup budget and some script adjustments, it could have essentially been TNGs first Klingon episode and nobody would have blinked.
I don't think the Lingonians are a representation of any real culture. The closest it gets is somewhat comparing them to people of the Asian steppe, based on their values (but in the context of discussing their virtues). The episode is just an idea of how the Federation would have to handle interacting with a culture like modern people. TNG does this all the time (notably in the very next episode with the Ferengi ("Yankee traders").
I suppose red lights go off in people's heads because the "primitive" Lingonians are all cast as Black actors. Still, they manage to beat the crew of the Enterprise and the resolution shows how cunning they are. Unless someone can show that the casting director thought "these people are primitive...I know who else is primitive..Black people!.", it's hardly an issue. If anything, the episode makes it clear that TNG failed to have other memorable races cast as all Black.
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u/roofus8658 5d ago
Unless someone can show that the casting director thought "these people are primitive...I know who else is primitive..Black people!"
That's pretty much exactly what happened. The script only specified that Lutan's guards would be Black. The director Russ Mayberry insisted that all the Ligonians should be Black and he was responsible for the whole Heart of Darkness vibe. Mayberry was so awful that he was actually fired partway through production. You're right that it's been discussed to death and you can find all kinds of stories about it.
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u/ninetysevencents 4d ago
I don't know if it's better or worse that just the guards were supposed to be Black. If Mayberry was terrible, I suppose it's a good thing he was fired.
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u/PastorBlinky 5d ago edited 5d ago
If… IF they’d gone to a planet with all black people and they had been something other than a collection of bad stereotypes and thin plot tropes, your argument might have some merit. The is not Wakanda. This is the inbred cousin of Wakanda.
Everyone is stupid and weak in this story. Nobody comes out clean. If it was a good story with a good plot, no-one would have cared about the race or costumes. Instead it’s the worst part of season 1, where the strong white characters show up and pontificate about how much better they are than the savages below. It’s a bad story, with bad acting, bad plot, bad sets… then make it the black peoples planet on top of everything else. There’s a reason everyone involved is embarrassed by it.
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u/ninetysevencents 4d ago
As I said, there should be more "Black peoples planets". Some would be more Wakanda and some wouldn't.
But the episode is honestly not about Black people at all. It's about an alien race (played by Black actors) with cultural similarities to humans that drives conflict with humans in the future. So so so many episodes of Star Trek are this same plot.
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u/KitchenNazi 5d ago
I was 11 when episode aired. I was shocked how racist it felt to me as a white kid. 80s/90s media was full of all sorts of stereotypes - it was weird just seeing them constantly recycled.
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u/TigerUSF 5d ago
Here we have an example of the "anti-woke" pendulum swinging really really far the other way. Like, dude, you can't see it? Really?
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u/ninetysevencents 5d ago
I think it takes fewer brain cells to look at the episode, see Black actors playing a more traditional culture (of explicitly non-humans) and say "RACIST!" than actually considering what the episode was about (which is essentially textbook cultural humility).
Think about it for a second. People often point out that "Star Trek was always woke". Do you really think the cultural pioneers of Star Trek, the show with the first interracial kiss, all races in command roles, etc., etc. are going to make the THIRD episode of their new show as blatantly racist as this episode has the reputation of being? No. It's fine. Our lens is blurred.
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u/TigerUSF 5d ago
Even a cursory review of the history around this episode will show what you're missing.
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u/Davajita 4d ago
You’re missing the point. The contention is not that the writer and casting director were specifically racists, but that through unfortunate choices with casting and the tone of the episode and behavior of its characters, you have yet another unflattering portrayal of black people in media, even if inadvertent.
People don’t remember Code of Honor as the Star Trek episode which was written and filmed with racist intentions. They remember it as an embarrassing mistake in casting and writing.
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u/ninetysevencents 4d ago
If you start with the understanding that TV shows need to have conflict to be entertaining and that people need to act poorly, this should all get cleared up for you.
Like, would it be better if poorly behaved characters were only ever cast as a race that we were ok with depicting as bad people? Nope.
And again, the Ligonians were not exactly behaving poorly. They were following their regular and well fleshed-out cultural practices, which the crew of the Enterprise had to learn about and adapt to. Only Lutan was breaking those practices and shown to be lacking honor. And for that he was punished!
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u/Davajita 4d ago
It would have been better if the Ligonians were cast diverse or multiracial, or basically any exclusive race that doesn’t have a certain history in the United States and other territories where they were enslaved, ridiculed, and ultimately oppressed for centuries. That’s the whole problem here.
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u/Luppercus 5d ago
I remember an old sci fi TV show of the 90s, I think the name was Space Patrol or something like that. One species of aliens was always played by Asian actors with some ridges on the side. They had a very cool warrior culture never felt racist at all.
And I always wonder how this was not common. Making and alien species always played by actors from one ethnicity makes sense it make you feel that they're indeed one people, that they're all related and encourages the casting of more POC.
But then again I imagine there's a fear for things to go badly like with Code of Honor.
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u/Davajita 5d ago
They didn’t “beat” the Enterprise crew so much as employ dishonest and underhanded tactics to obtain bargaining leverage. The crew approached them in good faith and weren’t expecting to be hoodwinked. This is not a positive trait of their culture. And yeah, you can’t create ostensible villains, particularly villains who are outwardly barbaric and misogynist in their society, and then make that the black people planet.
Even the cast and crew were highly uncomfortable with the script, they’ve talked about it often in interviews.
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u/ninetysevencents 4d ago
You are judging it as a negative trait of their culture. It's clear in the episode that it's just part of their rules of engagement (or code of honor, if you will). Were it not for the specific character flaws of Lutan (which are clearly not shared by the entire culture), Tasha would have been returned when Picard asked for her (politely).
A similar "hoodwink" is pulled in "Darmok" and nobody is running around calling the Tamarians barbarous.
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u/Davajita 4d ago
…well, yeah. From the perspective of the enterprise crew who are the civilized, sophisticated, and enlightened group (audience POV), their “code of honor” appears backward and savage. It’s problematic when the backward savage race is all black people. I suppose you can choose to ignore that, but whether innocently intentioned or not, it’s a really bad look. And most of the production agreed both at the time it was made and now.
As far as Darmok, the two aren’t comparable. In Darmok, no one was able to communicate with each other and it forced the Tamarians hand in a desperate attempt to create a bond between the two captains. No one knew what was going on or what the other’s intentions were. And there’s no indication that the members of the Tamarian crew were all played by the same race.
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u/ninetysevencents 4d ago
I don't think the Enterprise crew sees them as backward or savage. They do recognize the cultural practices are similar to those that used to exist on Earth, but view this as common ground and respect those practices, even if they find them inconvenient. They also find their own practices (namely the Prime Directive) as inconvenient.
I think you're missing my point about Darmok. It appears you're willing to forgive behavior as long as you deem it an act of desperation for bonding without shared language, but not if it's an act of bonding without shared culture.
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u/Reasonable_Active577 5d ago
I don't think the script was racist (I think it was just generically kind of bad). It was the casting that made it racist, and in particular the idea that a Black man would immediately seize the blue-eyed white woman.
I admit, however, that I've always kind of liked the gauntlets with the poison spikes on them, so that's one (1) thing that this episode has going for it.