Star Trek: The Next Generation cast skewers racially regressive, “embarrassing” episode

Jonathan Frakes (Commander Riker) look back on an early, embarrassing episode. “Can you imagine playing that right now in this climate?”

Star Trek began with a vision by creator Gene Roddenberry: he would create a sci-fi show set in a distant future where there was no racism or prejudice, a utopian world very different from the one where he was living in 1960s America. Star Trek has drawn a lot of praise over the years for its inclusivity and forward-thinking mission statement, but it’s still made by human beings, and sometimes those human beings make episodes that are, to put it lightly, imperfect.

Jonathan Frakes, who played Commander William T. Riker on TNG and who went on to direct on Trek shows like Picard, brought up one of those episodes at the virtual GalaxyCon earlier this year. The moderator started off talking about the series premiere, Encounter at Farpoint, before skipping ahead. “Are we just going to wipe right through ‘Code of Honor,’ is that what you are planning on doing here?” Frakes asked.

“Code of Honor” is the fourth episode of the show’s first season, and involves the Enterprise crew interfacing with aliens called Ligonians. While they’re not human, the Ligonians were very clearly modeled on non-specific African tribes, were primitive, and played exclusively by Black actors. The main conflict of the episode involves a Ligonian leader kidnapping Lieutenant Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby), a blonde white woman. Crosby was also on this panel, and seemed to agree with Frakes that “Code of Honor” wasn’t an episode to be proud of:

"FRAKES: “The embarrassment heaped upon us in season one, mostly on Denise.”CROSBY: “Can you imagine playing that right now in this climate?”FRAKES: [nodding] “That’s what I am trying to lead the witness to.”CROSBY: “Wow, wow.”MODERATOR:  “Maybe there were some good intentions there, but they got buried along the way.”CROSBY: [shaking her head] “Nah, nah, nah.”"

According to StarTrek.com, the original script for “Code of Honor” called for the Ligonians to be a reptilian race with a culture that evoked Japanese samurai. Reportedly, it was director Russ Mayberry’s idea to go with an African theme and cast Black actors in the roles. Making Black actors as the Ligonians didn’t sit well with Roddenberry, and Mayberry was fired partway through production and never brought back to work on the show.

The episode has long had a bad reputation among cast members alike. Brent Spiner (Data) told TrekMovie he thought “Code of Honor” was “racist” and the “worst” of the series. Michael Dorn (Worf) called it “the worst episode of Star Trek ever filmed” and LeVar Burton didn’t have a high opinion of it, either.

And of course, regressively written episodes like this feel particularly out of place now, with calls for racial justice having swept the nation and world over the past few months, a parallel Frakes drew during a different panel. “I think and I hope and I believe that not only will be we be able to put the bigotry behind us but there is a future in which we will be color-blind where all lives will matter and it would be ideal,” he said. “It’s really part of Roddenberry’s vision that there be no racism and there’d be no sexism and I’m very optimistic that the positive results of this worldwide awareness of how appalling people of color have been treated for centuries is the change. That there will be radical real change in people’s hearts and in their minds and I’m very optimistic that when things settle down people will behave differently and there would be more honor and more respect. I’m not usually this serious but I really believe that this is the time, and long, long past.”

Lately, there’s been more of a conversation about what to do with problematic pieces of entertainment. This discussion reminds me a little of WarnerMedia’s decision to remove the film Gone With The Wind from its streaming service HBO Max for a brief period, and then to put it back with a new introduction from film scholar Jacqueline Stewart that put the movie in a historical context.

Of course, one difference here is that “Code of Honor” never seemed to be particularly well-liked by anyone while Gone With The Wind is often considered a movie classic. If Netflix or someone wanted to put “Code of Honor” in context, it sounds like any number of Trek vets would be willing to record a new intro.

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