In 2246, Kodos served as governor of the planet Tarsus IV, who had seized power and declared martial law when an exoitc fungus destroyed the colony's food supply. He earned the name "Kodos the Executioner" when he rationed the remaining food supply by condemning some 4000 colonists to die, selected according to Kodos' personal theories of eugenics. Kodos was believed to have died at the colony shortly thereafter, but he actually escaped persecution and assumed a new identity, as Shakespearean actor Anton Karidian.

See: Karidian, Anton