TNG - The Masterpiece Society

[CharlesPhipps]

"Code of Honor" is the worst episode in the history of Star Trek.

[Riedquat]

"Code of Honor" is the worst episode in the history of Star Trek.

That's one for the "offensive" box (although personally I found "Dear Doctor" to be the episode that left me angry with it the most). "Threshold" has a bit of "so bad it's good" about it, at least it's easy to make fun of.

[CharlesPhipps]

"Code of Honor" is the worst episode in the history of Star Trek.

That's one for the "offensive" box (although personally I found "Dear Doctor" to be the episode that left me angry with it the most). "Threshold" has a bit of "so bad it's good" about it, at least it's easy to make fun of.

As much as I love the "Dear Doctor" criticism for Phlox advocating genocide, Chuck overlooked how the entire planet is under the control of an apartheid racial dictatorship. I'd have some respect for Phlox if he was like, "Yeah, fuck these guys who force the Menk into not even ghettos but their own impoverished village continent."

[Deledrius]

Clearly, the descriptor of "worst" requires a qualifier: "in what way".

You can have more than one worst. Star Trek certainly has a few.

[McAvoy]

Clearly, the descriptor of "worst" requires a qualifier: "in what way".

You can have more than one worst. Star Trek certainly has a few.

Trek certainly has them. There are to be sure widely consensus of some Trek episodes like Code of Honor, Spocks Brain, Shade of Gray etc.

A Trek episode being the worse, when being compared to the widely panned when you mention let's say Dear Doctor, you will get more push back. If there is push back, arguing for it, I doubt we can call it the worse.

[Deledrius]

A Trek episode being the worse, when being compared to the widely panned when you mention let's say Dear Doctor, you will get more push back. If there is push back, arguing for it, I doubt we can call it the worse.

There must be a threshold for this kind of measurement; it's always possible to find some voice in opposition to anything.

[Lazerlike42]

"Code of Honor" is the worst episode in the history of Star Trek.

That's one for the "offensive" box (although personally I found "Dear Doctor" to be the episode that left me angry with it the most). "Threshold" has a bit of "so bad it's good" about it, at least it's easy to make fun of.

As much as I love the "Dear Doctor" criticism for Phlox advocating genocide, Chuck overlooked how the entire planet is under the control of an apartheid racial dictatorship. I'd have some respect for Phlox if he was like, "Yeah, fuck these guys who force the Menk into not even ghettos but their own impoverished village continent."

I can see that interpretation, and actually we just watched this two nights ago (my wife is watching the series for the first time) and not having seen it in a while my first reaction when you meet the Menk was also to think that it was a sort of "apartheid," but after finishing the episode, and then reading various discussions online about the episode, I'm not so sure that this is a necessary or even a likely conclusion. The episode seems to go out of its way to try to claim that the Menk are not being mistreated, even to the point of having some of the human characters interpret it this way and having (if I recall correctly) Phlox essentially disagree.

[Lazerlike42]

"Code of Honor" is the worst episode in the history of Star Trek.

That's one for the "offensive" box (although personally I found "Dear Doctor" to be the episode that left me angry with it the most). "Threshold" has a bit of "so bad it's good" about it, at least it's easy to make fun of.

I think Code of Honor is offensive in various ways, but I also think it's been overstated over the years. The reason is that if I recall there are some ways in which the episode seems to specifically try to be progressive or that it subverts expectations in ways that go against standard politically incorrect ideas or tropes, so I think the creators were actually consciously trying be "modern" and diverse and all of that, but they just sort of failed at it.

For example, having the property/power go through the women with the men essentially at their mercy is clearly an attempt to be, for lack of a better term, "anti-offensive."

I could be wrong, but I suspect that this is a case for that saying about not attributing malice where incompetence suffices to explain the problem. Remember that this was made in very early season 1 TNG when they were trying to tell all their stories in very direct TOS fashion, where some alien civilization serves as a relatively heavy handed comparison or contrast to the real world to make some point. My take on that episode has always been that they were trying to make this planet where instead of white men having dominated so much of the power and culture, it was black people and women who were dominant - in other words, I that civilization was was intended to be a positive thing, almost as if like how TOS said, "see, we can have a black woman on the bridge of a starship" they were saying, "see, a whole planet can be dominated by the people who aren't dominant on earth!" I think Angel One was also supposed to do this. The problem is that both episodes crash and burn by, from that starting point, making the cultures on these planets problematic enough that it almost comes across as saying, "see how awful a planet would be if minorities were in charge?"

[TGLS]

For example, having the property/power go through the women with the men essentially at their mercy is clearly an attempt to be, for lack of a better term, "anti-offensive."

I don't know. Lutan handles all the negotiations, Lutan can displace his wife at will (though Yareena could challenge to a fight to a death, though this is described as rare), and if Yar refused the fight to the death/marriage Lutan could torpedo the whole agreement. It honestly sounds like a 19th century aristocracy where the husband controls all the assets of his wife.

[Madner Kami]

Except the woman decides who controls the assets in the first place and without her assets, he's got fuck all to say and decide.

I feel it's a bit more complicated than breaking it down to just a few things and the main problem with the episode is, that we're almost 34 years away from it's inception and, like many episodes from early TNG, it is very much a TOS-episode in all but name and along with all the implications and points of view of a 60s show. It's one of those works which you need to see through a certain lense, because it's completely out of it's time and thus much important context is lost.