I have to admit that I’ve taken some time to mull over what exactly I want to write about Code of Honor. I don’t know if you were around or culturally aware in the late eighties and early nineties. I was pretty young, and am pretty much the whitest white girl imaginable, but my family is mixed race and my siblings were pretty caught up in the general cultural interest in Africa. What I’m saying is that my sister made me watch Coming To America a lot. Getting back to those roots was something of a fad, and I suspect that this episode was trying hard to capitalize on that.

So here’s the thing: I don’t know if this episode would have been a problem at that time, but it gives me a hell of a case of liberal guilt. The Ligonians (right? I don’t quite remember, and I’m feeling too lazy to go to Memory Alpha) are aliens described as “remarkably close to humans.” Remarkable indeed. We haven’t seen any awesome aliens yet, actually. Visually awesome, I mean, and not counting the what, one appearance Worf has made so far? Anyway, “remarkably close to humans” means “pseudo tribal African and a hell of a lot of Jeri Curl on Yareena.” Actually, Yareena isn’t bad, it’s Lutan that seems to be this played up Noble Savage who thinks he’s so clever, but meanwhile, here he is leering at Lt. Yar and making kind of childish and arrogant power plays. I know the civilization is supposed to be behind Starfleet and this gives the Prime Directive a chance to stretch its legs and all, but there’s this implied “black people are simple and arrogant” that just does not sit well with me. Sure, they’re not technically human (which is funny - they couldn’t be an independent colony like the ones that were so often visited by Olde Trek? They had to be some example of parallel evolution?) but they’re too close to human and too close to an existing Terran culture for comfort.

It is, of course, perfectly likely that I’m reading way, way too much into this whole thing. This, however, is a blog of my impressions of the episode, and my main impression was “Whoa, this seems kind of racist!”

So yeah, this isn’t a comedy Star Trek entry.

Some bits from the notes I took while watching:

• Again we see that ugly metallic prints are a galactic fashion craze.
• I almost immediately predicted that Yar would have “to do some Thunderdome shit.” Go me.
• I guess if a catfight is hot, a catfight to the death is even hotter.
• Okay, so there’s this scene with Data and Geordi, and it feels badly wedged in, even though it is used later so that Picard can bitterly remark that the whole situation is a joke. Still, feels clumsy.
• Speaking of Picard, I actually really liked that he caught himself halfway and said, “I’m sorry, this is becoming a speech,” instead of launching into a monologue.
• How many times in the history of Star Trek have Starfleet crewpeople been forced into gladiatorial combat of some type? It seems like a lot to me.
• What the hell is with the weapons? Those look like the least graceful weapon I’ve ever seen, clumsy and difficult to use. It seems like it’d be easy to accidentally nick yourself, and as the Ligonian equivalent of a red-shirt showed us, you are straight screwed if that happens.

This is a really unfunny entry, but this one didn’t lend itself to humor. Let’s hope the next few episodes lend themselves to comedic commentary better.