No episode since the pilot has yet merited even two stars, but the last couple travesties prior to this one were nevertheless slightly better than the previous three. Here, however, we return to the unbearably painful to watch, serious-candidate-for-worst-episode-of-the-entire-series level of the likes of “Code of Honor.” Like that episode, this one again features a visit by the Enterprise to a world whose level of scientific, technological, and cultural advancement is nowhere near meeting minimum standards for it to be appropriate for the Federation to be interacting with it (the Edo barely even understand the concept of a ship orbiting their planet; they are very clearly not a spacefaring civilization!)—and once again, too, the Prime Directive is a major plot point throughout the episode, even though it’s clear that said directive ought to have prevented the Enterprise from ever even considering visiting this world! I just can’t understand what the writers were thinking.
If one were to classify all TNG episodes according to a finite set of recurring “types” of stories (as I have begun attempting to do here), one such type would be the “Planet of the Week” episode—by which I mean any episode whose story revolves around the Enterprise visiting and interacting with the inhabitants of some obscure non-Federation planet. (Note that “story revolves around” are key words in my definition; plenty of episodes will involve visits to one-off planets without necessarily qualifying as POTW episodes.) This is a type of episode that crops up pretty often in the early going of TNG, but that gets increasingly rare as the series matures. It’s also a category that would never produce more than a small handful of episodes that would actually be any good. The causal relationship between these two facts, of course, is a bit difficult to suss out: Did the show move away from stories of this type because the writers realized they were hard to do well, or are most of the episodes of this type bad because they were made early in the show’s run, when the writers didn’t really know what the hell they were doing? Either way, though, what’s certain is that the first-season entries in this category are almost uniformly atrocious—even more so than first season episodes generally (which is saying something!). In particular, most of them run along the same formulaic and abominably ill-conceived lines: The Enterprise visits some wacky planet (often one that it has no business visiting) and gets involved in some kind of conflict with its people; the main characters spend most of the episode uselessly spinning their wheels and fretting about the dilemma that they find themselves in while nothing much happens; and then, in the final moments of the episode, they finally do something that magically resolves the whole conflict. The societies to be found on these planets-of-the-week tend to be fantastically one-dimensional and unrealistic, and the central plot conflicts are usually utterly asinine. “Code of Honor” certainly falls into this category in nearly every respect—and so, alas, does “Justice.”
To begin with, the problems with the Enterprise’s visit to the Edo go way beyond the (already fatal) issue of the Prime Directive. Even if the ship had any business being there, the visit represents an unbelievably insane approach to making first contact with a new world. “Hi guys, we’re from another planet; mind if we chill with you for a bit? We could really use some R&R. Wes, why don’t you run off and play with the local kids?” Let’s think for a moment about the excellent fourth season episode “First Contact.” Would anyone in that episode have even considered the idea of beaming a minor down to the planet and letting him run off to play with the locals with no supervision? Is “shore leave” really an appropriate way for a first contact situation to be handled? And don’t even get me started on the horribly lame contrivance of Yar’s “I thoroughly researched local laws and customs, but somehow missed the fact that even the most minor of legal transgressions is punishable by death here, with no exceptions allowed regardless of the circumstances”!
Then there are the Edo themselves, who appear to be a society consisting entirely of childlike airheads who pass their time playing and fucking. Does any “work” ever take place on this planet? Is business of any kind ever conducted? How does this society operate? Why do all the people dress identically and act as though they have no individual identities? If there is never any crime on this world, then why, when Wesley breaks the law, does everyone react as though what comes next is a total given, and as though executing him—while sad—is a relatively routine matter? Shouldn’t they all be like “Shit! Someone actually broke a law! This hasn’t happened in living memory! Now…well, geez, I guess we have to, like, kill him?!” Everyone is freaked out about the Enterprise people interfering with the enforcement of their laws, but no one seems fazed at all by the occurrence of what supposedly is the first crime to have been committed here in ages.
On top of all of this, the episode suffers from major execution issues (no pun intended!). Everything about the plot is telegraphed in so amateurish and glaringly obvious a way as to make every event that happens in the episode feel totally fake, and thus to rob everything of any dramatic impact that it might (in theory) otherwise have had. From the way that the teaser ends with Picard musing portentously “Let’s hope this place isn’t too good to be true!” to the episode calling explicit attention to Wesley’s inclusion on the away team and then all-too-predictably centering on bad things going down for him when he gets there, there might as well be a voiceover that summarizes the plot before the episode starts. Continuing in this vein, we are treated to a scene in which Yar and Worf, while conversing with locals, stumble upon the critical info about how laws are enforced, right as Wesley is about to run afoul of the law—and it goes as far as having Yar practically describe exactly what Wesley is about to do when she asks if the death penalty even applies to simple rules like “keep off the grass”! She and Worf, of course, then instinctively go running off to track down Wesley, as though they have been briefed in advance about where the episode is going—only to arrive with their new information mere seconds after he has inadvertently stepped out of bounds, with enforcers armed with a lethal injection already bearing down on him! Events simply could not have been plotted any less credibly or compellingly than they were in this episode.
Back on the ship, meanwhile, the Edo’s “god” is being encountered. The first season was obsessed with the Enterprise encountering phenomena that defy the characters’ normal range of experience and understanding—which gets old quickly—and while Picard’s irritated question about why everything has suddenly “become a something or a whatever” makes him, again, seem childishly irritable about the whole business of exploring the unknown, it’s also a question with which I sympathize as a viewer. This is a science fiction show, and our heroes are supposed to be seasoned explorers who are very knowledgeable about a wide range of phenomena—and in later seasons, they seem exactly like such people. Even when they encounter new and strange things, they are able to bring their knowledge and reason to bear, relate those things to knowns, and make reasonable inferences, instead of just reacting to everything with the same befuddled “my sensor readings don’t make any sense!” and “this is something I’ve never seen before!” tone. (And as an aside relating to the “Edo-Lord”—doesn’t Data’s line asserting that, following his information exchange with the god-entity, it now “knows everything that I know” raise some serious security issues?)
Also, what is with this episode’s treatment of Dr. Crusher’s anguish over the possible execution of her son? Her feelings are certainly acknowledged, but they are constantly treated as sort of peripheral—as though the episode knows that it has to give the matter its due attention, but doesn’t really want to be burdened by the tedium of the actual, human, emotional impact of its ridiculous plot. One can see Gates McFadden trying gamely to infuse her dialog with genuine emotion in a way that is appropriate to the situation, but it’s consistently sidelined. Picard seems singularly unsympathetic much of the time, for instance, only very belatedly giving Crusher any assurances about his intention to protect her son’s life. And wasn’t there arguably a missed opportunity for some actual character material here, given the back story of Crusher’s husband (Wesley’s father) having died under Picard’s command? Clearly, though, the episode isn’t interested in going there at all. Instead, it actually attempts a moment of humor at Crusher’s expense, when Data starts “babbling” insensitively about her emotional reaction!
The absolute clincher of the utter worthlessness of this episode, though, is its “resolution.” Following scene after scene of fretting about how they can possibly save Wesley without violating the prime directive, lots of talk with the Edo about their hands being tied by their own laws, and heavy-handed foreshadowing about the possibility that the god-entity might not allow them to rescue Wesley even if they should decide to do so…in the end, Picard simply decides unilaterally to defy the Edo and rely on the Enterprise’s superior might; and when the god-entity, predictably, does indeed stop him from doing so, this obstacle is overcome by Picard making a three-second speech into the air about how unreasonable the god is being! Even if the rest of the episode had had any merit, this total bullshit copout ending would reduce the whole thing to the level of an inconsequential joke.
In short, this travesty of an episode has basically no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and its writers should be smacked—hard.*
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*(Not really. I don’t actually condone violence as a punishment for bad writing.)