The crew of the Enterprise D visit a planet full of scantily clad care-free joggers, what could possibly go wrong. Wesley! Listen to John and Ken take on Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Justice” in the brand new Mission Log podcast below.
Mission Log 102 – “Justice” (Star Trek: TNG Season 1, Episode 8)
Picard wrestles with the Prime Directive after Wesley gets condemned to death for stepping on some flowers on a planet full of half-naked running enthusiasts. Today’s new Mission Log podcast takes on this episode which often shows up on “worst” episode lists.
LISTEN: MISSION LOG PODCAST
The jogging craze of the 80s lives on with the Edo
The Baywatch planet.
Whoever handles screengrabs for TrekMovie deserves a raise.
Uh-oh. Kayla’s here. Um, I mean… I hate to see nubile actors objectified… unless it’s in a better episode.
Seriously… Kayla, can you find a shot of Rod Roddenberry and circle him. C’mon!
This episode was kind of boring to me at the time, but as im 36 now, its not so bad
An episode that bore a resemblance to the TOS episode ‘The Apple’. That was bad and so is this.
All episodes with Pestley Crusher were awful. Just another GR egocentric character.
How this episode passed the censors in the 1980’s is beyond me. Unless it’s because people didn’t use freeze-frame quite as much as they do now. Or maybe the censors didn’t.
Once again: Baywatch meets ST:TNG. The only thing missing is the slo-mo and faux-techno music. And sand.
You know it’s a slow Trek day when this episode is being talked about….
This was even worse than the one where those black aliens kidnapped Tasha. It would have been better if Picard had just let them execute Wesley.
2. CmdrR – September 11, 2014
Ha!
Outside of the eye candy, this episode has nothing to offer. One of the 10 worst episodes in franchise history.
Hey, every planet has to have its laws.
One that says that ‘any person named Wesley Crusher who should crush a flower by standing on it should be put to death’ seems perfectly reasonable to me.
whys that guy looking at Wesley’s penis !
This is one of Trek’s all-time low points… but DAMN, that girl Wes was hanging out with was hot.
I noticed that in many of these S1 TNG episodes, the visited cultures had qualities that were exaggerated to the extreme as a means of illustrating the point that humanity was “balanced”. Very simplistic writing style.
Uuggh. If this show had been aired on a major network and didn’t have “Star Trek” in the title, it wouldn’t have lasted 13 episodes.
Lieutenant Yar had a very bad day that day.
13. SirMartman – September 12, 2014
Hilarious. He is indeed meat-gazing.
Amazing (and a good thing) how this show progressed. With writing like this, TNG surely wouldn’t have lasted long. I do like a couple of the later Wesley-centric episodes, but early on his storylines were just awful.
13 & 18
That’s assuming, of course, that Wesley had meat to gaze.
I have never seen this episode all the way through. Every time it comes on I turn it to something else. When I watched season 1 on Netflix I skipped over it. It is just a terrible episode, painful to watch.
9. Legate Damar – September 11, 2014
It would have been better if Picard had just let them execute Wesley.
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I’m literally laughing out loud, picturing Picard go…..”Execute him? Oh, very well…..Close your mouth, Beverly. Prime directive.”
I suppose with all that jogging, even a super open-minded culture would have their women wearing supporting tops, and likewise for the male’s shorts — though there’s nothing supporting about the tops I’ve seen. But otherwise clothing of any kind makes absolutely no sense. Indeed for many of the women in my life, the “support” is the first thing that comes off when they get home.
If this episode was shot today for a cable network would they do it a la “Dating naked” on VH1, actually shooting the cast naked and blurring out the appropriate areas for the markets it was sold into? And what if it was being produced for HBO or Skinemax? Hmmmm.
I don’t know, any episode that has the execution of Wesley Crusher as a focal point has to have some redeeming value…..
This episode is the “Spock’s Brain” of TNG..
Brain and brain!
I don’t know, the flying Aztec castle in space episode is probably in the ‘Spock’s Brain’ category for s**tty TNG episides, too.
24. “Justice” is pretty bad, definitely in the bottom 10 TNG episodes (although there is at least one comparable stinker every season, “Sub Rosa” anyone?).
I hope someone does a book (or series of books) like “These are the Voyages” for TNG, because it would be interesting to see what the original storyline was like and how it evolved into this mess. And yeah, the Edo wearing clothing at all was simply a necessity for TV at the time (that also happened on Season 2’s “Unnatural Selection”), so Roddenberry got them into as skimpy attire as possible. It seems pretty clear from the context that these unabashed and completely casual about sex people would be nudists if this were on HBO or Showtime.
do people ever listen to the podcasts before commenting?
28. Jack… Nope. Podcasts are somewhere between Twitter and Facebook on my ‘avoid at all costs’ list.
Re:18. Danpaine – September 12, 2014
showed your posting to my freinds at work today,,they all started using the term “meat-gazing” too now.
haha,,
Justice came off as a clumsy, dumb episode. Everyone on this planet appeared to be clones of one another.
“It seems pretty clear from the context that these unabashed and completely casual about sex people would be nudists if this were on HBO or Showtime.”
Except that genuine naturists/nudists are no more or less casual about sex and relationships than the rest of the population who feel the need to adorn themselves with coverings, or have this need to tease others with how little or much they may wear on particular areas of their anatomies. Some of the naturists that I have heard about seem rather fussy about who, when, if and why’s of sexual intimacies.
Jack – I tried to listen to the podcast but these guys were just engaging in some boring babblefest and after a couple of minutes of their bs, I paused it…I did not have the patience for someone to get to the point, if indeed they actually had a point to make.
30. SirMartman – September 14, 2014
Excellent, happy to pass that one along!