Star Trek: The Next Generation 1.3 (Code of Honor)

Cast:
Lorine Mendell(Diana Giddings)
Jessie Lawrence Ferguson(Lutan)
Michael Rider (Transporter Chief)
James Louis Watkins(Hagon)
Karole Selmon(Yareena)

Writers: Michael Baron, Kathryn Powers

The Enterprise goes to a planet that is not as advanced as the Federation to get a vaccine that will prevent a nasty disease.  The leader of this world, Lutan, kidnaps Tasha Yar.  He then tells Picard to visit them and he can have her back.  Only he doesn’t want to – Lutan decides to make her his first wife, which means his current first, Yareena, can challenge her to a fight to the death!  And she does!  Apparently the women own all the land – if Yareena wins she stays married to Lutan so he still has access to it, if Tasha wins it moves over to him!

They fight, Tasha wins, Yareena is poisoned and both Tasha and Yareena beam up to the Enterprise.  As soon as she dies her lands pass to Lutan, and he gives Picard all of the vaccine that they need.  Then they all beam up to the Enterprise and although Yareena died, Beverly bought her back to life.  Now, at the moment of death her marriage dissolves (although somehow her right to the lands does not, which makes no sense at all).  So she keeps the lands, and gets a new husband.

This episode is a very poor effort, even for season one.  In fact it is so crap it would not have looked out of place in season three of the original series.  The subject matter and even the direction and incidental music really sound as though they belong in the original series, not this one.  I am unsure what purpose it fulfils – we get to find out a little more about Tasha’s background – last time we heard mention of rape gangs, in this episode Tasha states that she was used to having to use vicious weapons to protect herself.  But although it is her episode, we don’t see a lot of her.

Wesley Crusher is finally allowed on the Bridge by Picard (only after Beverly pleads with him) and he is even allowed to operate one of the bridge stations for a while.

We see the start of the friendship between Data and Geordi in this episode – Data has made Geordi a razor that is apparently super efficient.  And once again Spiner steals the show – although not very important to this episode, there is an excellent scene where he tells Geordi a joke.  The way he delivers it – advancing on Geordi in an almost threatening way – is deeply funny and possibly the only good bit in the episode. 

Crew Deaths: 0
Total Crew Deaths So Far: 0
Score: 3/10