Thoughts on "Code of Honor"...

That episode of Farscape where they could view a massacre through a time leak near the space Alamo.

 

Yeah I seriously dont think the writer sat down and decided to write the most racist script he could think of. I think it was good intentions to add some diversity and a different culture that just accidentally ended up a offensive steaming pile of shit. No bad or malicious intentions. Just a good idea horribly executed that inadvertently ended up offensive..

 

I specifically said there's nothing wrong with that. "And in that respect, it's a positive if any character's love interest -- or any woman who's defined on her own terms rather than just as someone's love interest -- is a role that goes to a black actress." The word "any" should have a pretty clear and unambiguous meaning.

Seriously? You trot out the lazy "Not all ____" response? That's never helpful. If someone says "Help, I'm being attacked by a lion!," it's an utter waste of time to respond by saying "But all those other lions over there aren't attacking you." By definition, the statement is not about the ones that aren't doing it. It's about the problem caused by those who are doing it. It shouldn't be difficult to figure that out.

And it's a nonsensical response here because something doesn't have to be universal to be pervasive. It's not about whether 100% of individuals do it, it's about whether the viewpoint is dominant or commonplace in the aggregate. There are always dissenters, obviously, so it's trivial and facile to point that out. The question is what the predominant viewpoint is, or whether a minority viewpoint is still widespread enough to have influence.

They -- Katharyn Powers and Michael Baron.

I think you're giving Powers too much credit. Her work is full of the kind of condescending Orientalist and exoticizing stereotypes of non-Western cultures that were pervasive in TV from the '60s through the early '90s (SG-1's "Emancipation" being as egregious an example in its way as "Code of Honor"). She probably just didn't know any better, but that isn't really an excuse, because just resting on your preconceptions about a subject, rather than doing your homework to find out for real, is a choice.

 

Actually it was a she and a he. Katharyn Powers was the writer alongside Michael Baron. Powers also wrote and episode of Stargate: SG1 called 'Emancipation' which was equally as bad and filled with racial stereotypes. Some of Powers other SG1 episodes were very good. I just think when it came to race, Powers had a very myopic view that probably came from a lack of exposure to other cultures. I don't think she was intentionally racist either, and both Code of Honor and Emancipation deal with female empowerment albeit in ham-fisted ways.

 

Katherine did a prime directive story about samurai space cobras.

Nothing racial about that?

But, they couldn't do space cobras because it was too expensive.

The appearance of the aliens was fiddled with well after Katherine was paid, and fucked off.

Did the producer/director pick an all black (supporting) cast because you could pay them less than white actors?

That would make the industry racist, and Star Trek was just along for the ride.

Although if you could pay black men half as much as white men, why the hell would you ever hire any white men any way?

Although....

There were a shit load of black actors at the big girl fight.

Maybe what they did was hire twice as many black actors as they would have white actors, rather than pocket the surplus?

 

I gather "Emancipation" also suffered from that commonly quoted excuse of early season weirdness: Powers did not quite know what sort of encounters the heroes should have with recognizable Earth cultures, much like somebody working out of Roddenberry's "Wagon Train to the stars" pitch might be at loss to figure out what style of Western to imitate. (Wagon Train, definitely not!)

For her, "nuanced" might actually have been going against the perceived series credo, and "stereotype" might have been a requirement for allowing the audience to relate. It's not as if the original movie really treated its exotic culture any differently, after all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

The script isn't racist. The people who cast the actors are the reason it's considered racist. Had the cast been all white people or various races, no one would even care. It wouldn't be considered the worst episode it would just be another boring first season episode.

 

I didn't mean a fun Holo romp interactive just to be clear. More of a see the horror through or alongside the vicitms

 

As I said, it kind of is, just not against black people specifically. It's rooted in decades-old TV stereotypes about "Oriental" and tribal cultures and takes a generally condescending view toward Ligonian culture and thus implicitly toward the non-Western cultures it's inspired by. It's a throwback to the sixties in a lot of ways, the kind of story you might've seen on TOS, and indeed it has commonalities to TOS episodes like "Amok Time" and "Friday's Child." If the attitudes hadn't been there in the script, if the Ligonians hadn't been written as an irrational and socially backward "tribal" culture, then the race of the actors wouldn't have been an issue at all.

 

It is kind of weird how Emancipation and Code of Honor are basically the first episodes after the pilot episodes of each show or close to the next episode. A time when your main characters haven't been fully established yet and as a writer I am guessing she didn't have anything to go on watch in order to figure out who the TNG or SG1 characters were though at least with SG1 you at least had the movie for Jack and Daniel.

Jason

 

I enjoyed it back in the day. Never had a strong feeling one way or another for it

 

Wrong way around.

She wrote a prime directive story.

The aliens had to be less advanced.

The federation had to jump through hoops to respect a childlike culture of idiots who needed a good slapping.

"less advanced" was first, then she picked which ancient earth culture to ape.

Japan.

So that means that the women at the end were originally fighting with katanas or shinais?

That would have been a lot cooler.

 

When I saw Code of Honor for the first time back in 1987 I was disappointed by the boring and predictable plot more than anything.

Coming right after the retread Naked Now we get a dull as dishwater story that doesn't do justice to an interesting actor in the late Jesse Lawrence Ferguson.

I always thought a closer examination (building on The Omega Glory) of a Starfleet Captain breaking the Prime Directive for reasons he thinks are just was a story that could be told. This was 1987 and I wanted new stories or stories giving more depth to things we saw in TOS like a Captain going rogue.

I saw this as a missed opportunity to tell a better story and make better use of an underrated actor. Maybe we could have seen another black Starfleet Captain (Commodore Stone was retired when we saw him) in action and in the field in a sympathetic light and driving a morally complex story.

I do like the costumes and TOS like sets which are here and in many season one shows.

 

Yeah -- the racism charges came along more in retrospect, I think. At the time it aired, the criticisms were mainly "Aww, it's just an 'Amok Time' knockoff!"

 

To be fair, part of the Robin Hood legend IS about the Saxons being oppressed by the Norman overlords, even if it wasn't very historical.

 

Wow...

Wow again

Cassidey was his girlfriend at the time, but otherwise yes.

 

Plantation whipping?

You don't want to bore Levar?

Been there, done that.

 

One can only think of what Stewie Griffin would have to say in regards to plantation whipping.


Jason