Star Trek Actor’s Stunning Theory Why TNG Succeeded

Obviously, the veteran Star Trek actor’s view on the success of The Next Generation is very unconventional. Normally, fans (particularly sci-fi fans) flock to series that seem perfect almost right away, and they have to wait for the inevitable heartbreak of the show’s quality eventually taking a nosedive (the 2004 reboot of Battlestar Galactica certainly comes to mind). However, Brent Spiner seems to imply that The Next Generation succeeded by doing this in reverse, showing fans exactly how bad the series could get before steadily getting better.

In retrospect, he might be onto something with this theory. It’s an open secret that the first season of The Next Generation is pretty bad and the second season is only a slight improvement, with the show not hitting its full stride until season three (thanks largely to the advent of new head writer Michael Piller). But for as bad as that first season is (complete with all the “boy genius Wesley Crusher saves the day yet again” stories), nobody ever claims any of its episodes are nearly as bad as “Code of Honor.”

While he wasn’t as explicit about this point, Brent Spiner also implied that this racist episode effectively tested fans’ willingness to stick with the show and ignore what appeared to be some blatant shortcomings. In that same interview, he noted that “Code of Honor” was “maybe not intentionally” racist but that “it felt that way and looked that way.” As the third episode, it could have easily turned away fans who were on the fence about the new spinoff; instead, the fandom collectively held its nose while watching this stinker and gave The Next Generation a chance to live up to its full potential.

While he wasn’t as explicit about this point, Brent Spiner also implied that this racist episode effectively tested fans’ willingness to stick with the show and ignore what appeared to be some blatant shortcomings. In that same interview, he noted that “Code of Honor” was “maybe not intentionally” racist but that “it felt that way and looked that way.” As the third episode, it could have easily turned away fans who were on the fence about the new spinoff; instead, the fandom collectively held its nose while watching this stinker and gave The Next Generation a chance to live up to its full potential.

This, of course, speaks to Brent Spiner’s major point that it was good to have such an awful episode almost right out of the gate. Then and now, fans are generally willing to forgive a new series for having a somewhat rocky start, and it’s relatively easy to overlook when the third episode of a spinoff is still trying to find its legs. Had such a stunningly racist and tone-deaf episode appeared later in the series (say, season three), it would have been a bigger deal because it would prove that the collective writers and producers had learned nothing from the tumultuous first two seasons.

Fortunately, everyone did learn from “Code of Honor” even as it was filming: as we previously covered, episode director Russ Mayberry went out of his way to make this a racist episode. The script didn’t call for the planet in the episode to be filled with, as Brent Spiner later described, “space Africans:” it was Mayberry who made that happen. After franchise creator Gene Roddenberry and others realized how bad the optics were of having a planet full of Black people whose leader goes out of his way to kidnap a white woman for her symbolic value, Mayberry was fired mid-episode, with First Assistant Director Les Landau taking over.

None of this changes the fact that “Code of Honor” is the worst episode of The Next Generation and quite possibly the worst episode of Star Trek ever made. However, I can’t help but think that Brent Spiner is right: TNG effectively ripped off the band-aid by making the worst ep fans would ever see into the third episode of the new spinoff. After that, the writers’ job of giving us better episodes was, as Riker might say, smooth as an android’s bottom.