TNG: Code of Honor

            Wow, this one is straight out of TOS, but with an extra dose of racism. Jonathan Frakes described this episode as a, "racist piece of shit," and I am not one to disagree. I don't think it necessarily would have been remembered that way if it the aliens weren't portrayed as a colonialist version of an African tribe obsessed with honor on the silliest of most primitive of ways. I know, I know, the women own the land in the culture, but they clearly have only that power and are dominated by the men in the culture for the most part. Also, these people have transporter tech and communicate with cultures from beyond their solar system, does the prime directive still apply? I guess in this case they are using more of a TOS definition of the prime directive which is basically, "don't shoot primitive aliens," rule rather than what it is known as later in TNG.
            The Enterprise is sent to try to convince a people who are at a transitional technological period in their development to give the Federation large quantities of what they keep describing as a vaccine for a deadly disease that is ravaging some Federation planet or another. The leader of the planet, an imposing man named Lutan, insists on beaming over himself and has an entourage with a red carpet proceed him. He seems very intrigued by Tasha Yar who is in the party greeting him. After a formal hang out where Picard gives him a ceramic horse Lutan asks to be shown the holodeck by Lt. Yar. After an Aikido demonstration he kidnaps her and beams down to his planet. Picard shoots some photon torpedoes down to explode above the surface to show he is serious, but there is no reply from the planet below.
            Riker and Data decide it is a tribal honor thing for some reason and eventually Lutan calls. Troi advises Picard to ask for her back politely and Picard does. Lutan agrees to return the lieutenant at a banquet on the surface. Picard agrees to beam down but when it comes time to return her Lutan says he has fallen in love and wants to marry Tasha. His first wife is pissed and challenges her to a duel to the death. Picard has Data and Geordi examine the dueling weapons and they find most of them are coated in a deadly poison. Tasha agrees to the duel and they fight with spiky poison gloves in a strange child's play gym type thing until Tasha poisons the other woman and they are both beamed back to the Enterprise. Lutan for some reason agrees to release the vaccine and then Picard beams him over to the ship. Surprise, his wife isn't dead! But apparently because she died she is now free to leave him for his second in command stripping him of all his resources. 

            Review: There are some good character moments between Geordi and Data in this episode and Wesley manages to be present without being literally the worst thing in the universe. But pretty much everything else about this episode drags it down a lot.

3 out of 10