“Up the Long Ladder”
Written by Melinda M. Snodgrass
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Season 2, Episode 18
Production episode 40272-144
Original air date: May 22, 1989
Stardate: 42823.2
Captain’s Log: The Enterprise is given custody of a distress call that a starbase picked up. It took the starbase hours to figure out that it is a centuries-old S.O.S. that was in use by the European Hegemony in the twenty-second century. But there’s no record of an Earth ship in the Ficus Sector, where the signal’s coming from. The time frame was sufficiently chaotic, following World War III, that the lack of records isn’t surprising, but Data suggests looking for a manifest, which turns up the S.S. Mariposa, which fits the bill. Said manifest includes some incredibly sophisticated technology for the time, as well as a great deal of farming equipment and livestock.
The ship traces the signal to a system with a habitable planet, but which also has nasty solar flare activity—which explains the distress call. There are about two hundred colonists—as well as a considerable number of animals. These are the Bringloidi, who have no technology beyond the radio they used to send the S.O.S., but live an entirely rustic existence that was considered a throwback in their own time (and in ours).
As they settle in, the colony leader, Danilo Odell, asks Picard if they ever in their travels heard from the other colony.
Assuming that that was where all the high tech stuff went, they find another Class-M planet only half a light-year from the Bringloidi colony, only to discover a colony of humans. They had thought Earth had suffered some catastrophe when nobody checked on them, when the simple truth was that they were lost in the bureaucracy.
It turns out their arrival was fortuitous. The S.S. Mariposa was damaged upon arrival, and only five people survived. Three men and two women weren’t enough to form a viable gene pool, so they turned to cloning. Unfortunately, after three hundred years, the clones are suffering from replicative fading—subtle errors that creep in when you’re making a copy of a copy. Apparently clones are analog and not digital.
The crew refuse to offer tissue samples so that the Mariposans can create new clones. Riker is particularly effusive on the subject of his refusal. The Mariposans try to steal tissue samples from Enterprise crew, but that is discovered and stopped immediately.
Pulaski points out that even if they did clone Enterprise personnel, it would just delay the inevitable. What they need, she says, is breeding stock.
Everyone stops dead: “The Bringloidi,” Picard says, and suddenly they have a solution both to the Mariposan problem and to getting all this stuff off the ship.
Can’t We Just Reverse the Polarity?: Apparently, the cells lining the walls of the stomach are the best ones to use for cloning. For those of you planning to raise a clone army out of your basement lab.
Thank You, Counselor Obvious: Troi tells Picard that Prime Minister Granger of Mariposa is hiding something. But she can’t say what, so her advice really just serves to create artificial suspense.
There is No Honor in Being Pummeled: Worf suffers from Rop’ngor, a childhood ailment. In exchange for Pulaski keeping the specifics of this rather embarrassing illness a secret, Worf performs a Klingon tea ceremony for her—though it requires her to take an antidote, as the tea is poisonous to humans.
Later, Worf gets to intimidate Odell (“I can’t imagine security is much of a problem for you”), provide Odell with booze (“If you wish, it can be real alcohol, with all the deleterious effects intact”), and fail to intimidate Brenna (“She is very much like a Klingon woman”).
If I Only Had a Brain : Data is the one who thinks of checking the manifest, and who also cites a contemporary “back to nature” movement led by someone named Liam Deegan that was likely the inspiration for the Bringloidi’s way of life. He also tells Picard, rather uselessly, that mariposa means “butterfly.”
No Sex, Please, We’re Starfleet: Worf tells Pulaski that it is among the Klingons that love poetry achieves its finest flower during the tea ceremony, prompting her to ask him to quote some of it.
Riker and Brenna totally hit all over each other and are knocking boots within an hour of meeting each other. (Or, rather, “washing feet,” which seems to be the euphemism among the Bringloidi.)
Both members of the Odell family salivate at the idea of having multiple partners in order to re-seed the Mairposans.
I’m a Doctor, Not an Escalator: Busy week for Pulaski. She gets to hide Worf’s embarrassing illness, have a Klingon tea ceremony, suggests sending the Bringloidi kids to the ship’s school, surreptitiously examines the Mariposans to discover they’re clones (which is probably unethical), and helps Picard broker the deal between the Bringloidi and Mariposans.
Welcome Aboard: Rosalyn Landor and Barrie Ingham are walking, talking clichés as the Odells, but they’re actually very entertaining with superb comic timing, for all that their characters grate. Jon de Vries is mostly awful as the various Grangers.
I Believe I Said That: “What the hell was that thing?”
“Automated fire system. A forcefield contains the flame until the remaining oxygen has been consumed.”
“Ah, yeah. What—what if I’d been under that thing?”
“You would have been standing in the fire.”
“Yeah, well, leaving that aside for the moment, what would have happened to me?”
“You would have suffocated and died.”
“Sweet mercy ”
Odell asking about the shipboard fire-suppression systems, and Worf answering.
Trivial Matters: This episode would be followed up on in the Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers eBook Out of the Cocoon by William Leisner (reprinted in the eponymous trade paperback), where the U.S.S. da Vinci goes to Mariposa eleven years later to find that the melding of two cultures hasn’t gone as smoothly as Picard had hoped.
The episode was initially titled “Send in the Clones,” which would’ve been a much better title. The line is used by Odell in the episode.
Writer Snodgrass’s original notion was to do an immigration riff, and it was co-executive producer Maurice Hurley—an Irish-American who leads the St. Patrick Day Parade—who suggested they be agrarian Irish people.
The Mariposa launched during the rough timeframe that Star Trek: Enterprise would take place in, which was established as a period of intense colonization.
Make it So: “I must be out of my mind.” It’s remarkable that an episode with this pedigree—the writer responsible for “The Measure of a Man,” the best director in the TNG slate of regulars, not to mention a guest star of Barrie Ingham‘s calibre—is such a total misfire. The episode has two major shifts in tone, from the artificial suspense of Worf fainting on the bridge, which turns out to be utterly meaningless, switching to the low comedy of the Bringloidi, switching to the cheap drama of the Mariposans, and none of it works particularly well.
The Bringloidi are the worst Irish stereotypes, and the Mariposans are even worse—they’re boring.
Having said all that, I will give the episode this—it’s funny. The gags are cheap, yes, but you watch this episode and you laugh. Not only the lines I quotes above, but so many others (“I have a daughter.” “Felicitations.”) are just out-and-out funny.
But the laughter does catch in your throat when you realize just how dumb it is.
Warp factor rating: 4
Keith R.A. DeCandido has short stories out in the anthologies Liar Liar, More Tales of Zorro, and Tales from the House Band. His most recent novels are Guilt in Innocence, part of “Tales from the Scattered Earth,” a shared-world science fiction concept, and the fantastical police procedurals SCPD: The Case of the Claw and Unicorn Precinct. Find out more about Keith at his web site, which is a portal to (among many other things) his Facebook page, his Twitter feed, his blog, and his podcasts, Dead Kitchen Radio, The Chronic Rift, and the Parsec Award-winning HG World.
This one looks like it’s made up of such a metric tonload of groanworthy tropes, that I’m intensely glad I never clapped eyes on it (says the urban Dubliner). Talk about getting the 19th century agricultural cliches out for an airing – I’m surprised there wasn’t any brawlin’, just to complete the list.
And for what it’s worth, Bringloidi is an only slightly mangled version of the Irish word for dream or vision, brionglóid.
Utter crud; 4 out of 10 seems generous. This episode is, however, Pulaski’s finest hour – she gets lots of choice lines.
You gave this episode a 4 because it was funny, when “The Naked Now” only got a 2 and “Haven” got a 3??? Snodgrass paid you off, right? :-)
I always found this episode rather offensive, especially the ending. There doesn’t seem to be any logical reason to put these two cultures together except for the fact that they both appear in the same episode and thus merging them gives us the best chance of getting them out of Picard’s hair in 60 minutes minus time for commercials. Given all the planets in the Federation, there is really no agricultural planet where they can settle the Bringloidi and allow them to continue the lifestyle that they chose? And no biotech experts who might find a way to help the Mariposans without forcing them to give up their culture?
Oh, and let’s not forget about Pulaski and Riker murdering their clones. I get that they’re upset about their DNA being stolen, I would be too, but I’d be even less thrilled about murdering my siblings/children.
Blech.
Gods below, this one was aweful…
Lsana @@@@@ 4 is right: Riker and Pulaski are murderers, which no-one in universe seems to notice or care about. Not to mention the standard Hollywood assumption that cloning means instantaneous Xeroxing of people.
The less said about the “Brigadoon IN SPACE!” other colony, the better…
Really? I like this episode! Granted, it’s not making any of my Top Star Trek lists, but its funny. Sure, the Odells are walking, talking stereotypes, but Barrie Ingham and Rosalyn Landor play it to a tee, and play off each other quite well. Also, Rosalyn Landor is easy on the eyes.
This episode may have it’s faults (and I acknowledge them), but I still enjoy it each time I see it.
This episode does not go.
@@.-@: Funny you mention that, since that’s a big part of the SCE story krad mentioned: that it seemed like Picard made a bad decision just to get the Bringlodi off his ship as fast as possible, and obviously it didn’t turn out as well as anyone hoped.
This episode’s footwashing scene and Dauphin’s constant references to Thalian chocolate mousse left thorns of annoyance in my brain that never came out.
I always remembers season 1 as weak but I forgot how many groaners there were in season 2.
Idunno, I had a bit of a ‘fridge brilliance’ (I refuse to link to TV tropes — go there at your own risk) moment with this episode regarding the agrarian Irish group. Of course they’re going to be stereotypes. It’s been so long since the original group existed that, when these people decided to build their culture based on a ‘throwback’ way of life they are not going to create their culture based on what it was actually like, but on an idealized vision of what they think it would have been like. It’s as if a bunch of Ren Faire attendees decided to build a society based on those days — do you think that culture that they created would be an accurate representation of medieval times? Of course not!
Not saying that the episode is actually good, but . . . just had to share that when it hit me.
-Beren
I am going to mesh two of my favorite shows together here, and sadly TNG doesn’t seem to measure up. In this episode, Pulaski mentions that she and Riker are missing “epithelial” (or something?) cells. She then mentions that epithelial cells are the cells lining the wall of the stomach. I also watch CSI, which frequently mentions epithelial cells. However, CSI identifies them as sluffed off skin cells. Unfortunately, I am no biologist, but I am inclined to believe CSI over TNG. Is there anyone who can actually confirm exactly what epithelial cells are? Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
from http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/kabernd/BerndCV/Lab/EpithelialInfoWeb/index.html
So the answer is . . . both? Idunno, I know very little about medical stuff. Seems to be saying that it’s the stuff that lines . . . everything. On the inside and the outside.
-Beren
@13 – Thanks a lot :) I REALLY appreciate being able to think that TNG wasn’t careless or mistaken.
Despite being Irish, I’ve always loved the Bringloidí. Maybe it’s the self awareness of the script, maybe it’s the over the top acting, I don’t know.
Epithelial cells are found in both places; however, the idea that one could detect a few missing cells is fairly ludicrous. The lining of the digestive system is in a state of constant regeneration (it is subjected to a rather harsh environment after all) so the idea that one could tell that a few cells were stolen out of millions that die and are replaced every day is fairly silly. (Not as bad as the airborne T cell that turns Barclay into a spider, but bad enough.) If ST routinely abuses physics first, it abuses medicine and biology second.
This is not just a bad episode, but I actually find it racist. If the brigiloidi were shuckin’ and jivin’ feets-don-fail-me-now hey massa figures, people wouldn’t be having any of it. And they *are* that level of crudely-drawn stereotype.
This episode is the reason that I avoid anything Snodgrass is involved in.
I’m sure if you ask her, she’d assure you that it’s okay, some of her best friends are Irish ….
It would be later established by Constable Odo on DS9 that “killing your own clone is still murder.” Leastways, according to Bajoran law it is. In the Federation apparently it’s perfectly OK.
DRickard: the colony in DS9’s “Meridian”, which appears only once every sixty years, could more accurately be called “Brigadoon IN SPACE”. This one isn’t quite the same thing.
No one mentions what I consider one of the funnier scenes in which Picard just loses it and starts laughing. Riker calls him on it and Picard says something to the effect of bowing to the invetiable or the absurd. Cracks me up every time.
ok it may not be scientifically accurate, or politically correct but this one always has me laughing and for that reason if I see it on, i will always stop and watch!! LOL
Just like bowing to the absurd, occasionally one has to just put aside pre-conceieved notions and just enjoy the episode for what it is: a funny romp. And although I hate beating a dead horse, Ron Jones’ score is fantastic. The individual themes for the Bringloidi and Riker & Brenna are things that Jay Chattaway could only dream of composing.
Just watched this one again; had me laughing out loud again. Excellent episode.
Is it racist? Of course it isn’t! Though it could show how a form of racism – as shown by the Mariposans and to a lesser extent the Bringloidi – can be overcome for the benefit of all.
Anti-pro-life? Of course it isn’t! The reaction of Riker and Pulaski to the clones is perfectly reasonable and understandable. Just because you wouldn’t do it isn’t a reason to complain.
It’s a story, for crying out loud! People really need to get over themselves.
Note to Americans: please don’t try to ‘do’ Irish or British. The resulting car-crash is intensely painful to watch to those of us who are actually from these places.
Lets change the story slightly: Imagine Riker finding out that he has a twin that was kept secret from him for whatever reason. What would his natural reaction be? Well of course kill him, because he is and wants to stay unique. And everyone is perfecty fine with that?
This episode really bothered the hell out of me.
I had to look up this godawful episode after catching it on TV the other day. It’s genuinely offensively bad. I’d heard of it but luckily somehow missed it till now.
I couldn’t stand to watch the whole thing but I’d like to know why teleportation accident ‘Thomas’ Riker gets to live but not a clone.
Also, I’d love to know what Colm Meaney thought of it.
I didn’t start reading the re-watches until sometime in 2012, which is why this comment is years after the fact, but the foot washing thing makes me grin, as pretty much any Biblical scholar can tell you that ‘foot’ is a commonly-used euphemism for (male) genitalia in that Book. Not always, of course, but it makes Bible-as-Literature courses really interesting.
Kill the clones ! keel zem, zeel zem all!
My favorite is when Worf serves up a Klingon drink from the replicator. I love the look on his face!
I know it’s only a story, but when you’re a star trek fan, you come to expect certain behaviour, and the enethical MURDER of the clones is just so totally absurd, even in our current time period of 2013, let alone in the tng time line where they are supposedly much more enlightened and have eliminated poverty, disease, corruption etc.
Now we have seen many many examples in star trek where killing a clone or duplicate was unethical, I could list dozens of examples but most important is when Riker was duplicated and yet his clone was allowed to live (the same character who murdered his clone in up the long ladder)
Also let’s not forget the flawed concept of cloning.. since when does a clone of a clone of a clone “develop subtle flaws” if the clone is copied exact each clone will be identical. Also if you take a dna sample of the or original human, each subsequent clone will only be one step removed from the orginal, not the clone of a clone of a clone, with the stored dna of the original you never need to take fresh samples from each new generation of clones, only from the original !
let’s not also forget the atrocious imitation of the irish… Americans always badly portray irish british or pretty much any foreign (to them) culture.
@32 Here is what I assume about the clone and replicate fade. In order to make clones they need actual cells with DNA in order to make stems cells. This could also mean they lack the technology to store DNA as computer information and replicate the cells to produce clones from computer information. They might need actual cells to splice to stem cells in order to make clones. DNA degrades over time and the amount of deterioration after a period of time could be significant enough that new clones using the original cells is impossible.
Now this would mean they take cells from a clone to make future clones, but this present another problem. It is suspected that telomeres are one of the possibilities that causes aging in people, yet each time a cell divides telomeres get shorter and shorter. So original person would have the longest life span, while first generation of clones will have a shorter life span then once the first set of clone cells become unusable for production then second generation of clones would be produced would have even shorter life spans. This process of shorter and shorter lifespan would continue. Over 300 years this could very will result in the situation of the Mariposans now face.
Nothing about the whole “Force the Mariposans to have sex with the Bringloidi” “solution” to this week’s contrivance? When your plot is resolved by having one group of people rape another, I think something has gone seriously wrong with your show.
Thank you Matt_in_Boston! You took the words out of my mouth. That saves me from that particular rant…
I’m hearing a lot of false comparisons to the clone killing scene. The clones were only partially formed and had never experienced consciousness, so what Riker and Pulaski did was more akin to abortion.
@34 No one was forcing Mariposans to have sex with anyone. The Enterprise would have happily left them alone if they wanted to maintain their celibacy and accept the consequences. It did puzzle me that the Mariposans didn’t consider artificial insemination, which is a much less advanced technology than cloning and would spare them the dreaded indignity of copulation.
With regard to killing the clones, it’s clear that ST:TNG was not pro-life. Since Picard, Riker, and Worf basically assume Deanna is going to have an abortion when she gets pregnant in “The Child”. Ted Riker was a different matter since he was already a fully-functional human when they met him. It’s possible these clones were in a less developed state — they didn’t appear to be conscious in the lab and didn’t react to being zapped.
People need to chill about the ethnic stereotypes. It was done playfully, not hatefully. No one is going to develop a low opinion of Irish people from this episode. I agree that a similar treatment of African-American culture would not go over well, but that’s a sad thing in itself. Racism won’t be conquered until we can all laugh at each other’s racial stereotypes and not take them so seriously.
This episode is a total failure. First time I rewatched it, and the only reason I did was because I didn’t remember anything about it (no wonder why). I agree that 4/10 is a generous mark, barely a 3 for me.
So nothing about how the original idea was that they were Irish tinkerers–not actually Irish, just the Irish concept of a tinkerer?
And the clones were not conscious, so it was in fact similar to abortion–in fact, analogous to abortion for the victim of rape, to be precise–something a lot of pro-lifers are okay with.
Well I ended up just skipping through this episode as it neared the end. Just skipping ahead 5 seconds here, 5 seconds there, as it all too slowly arrived at its obvious and uninspired destination. I haven’t done that with any other episode yet although it must be said that I did totally skip Too Short A Season and The Dauphin entirely.
The racial stereotypes didn’t bother me in and of themselves. It was two things that bothered me: one, that current stereotypes of Irish people find themselves manifested as reality in the 24th century. Even if they were true now (and I can attest that, like all stereotypes, they certainly can be true in some instances) it seems strange that nothing would’ve changed in almost 300 years. And not just any 300 years, but a period of time that’s seen us colonise space and largely, it would seem, do away with very segregated Earth cultures. The second thing is that totally putting aside whether or not stereotypes are bad things in an of themselves, it basically gives us some awful characters in this episode. As beautiful as she was, the Irish woman was quite an awful person. She was openly a gold-digger, she blamed everyone else for anything that went wrong, and was repeatedly sexist. Her only “positive” trait was perhaps in Riker’s eyes only, that she’d have sex with (almost) the first man that came along. The father comes across as a pushy, scheming drunk. In general, they seem dirty and self-centred, like none of them care they’re messing up someone else’s home and workplace.
And yeah, the Worf fainting thing was an odd little dead end. I can’t help but think that as it had some romantic overtones with Worf and Pulaski, it could be said to tie in to the themes of romance in the main story. It just didn’t go anywhere after being set up.
I’m Irish but I can’t say that I have ever been offended by the Bringloidi. Yeah, large parts of the episode were pretty cringeworthy and highly stereotypical but I have seen far, far worse. I genuinely liked Brenna’s scenes with Danilo and Worf – not so much the ones with Riker; the one in his quarters is pretty painful – and I found Picard’s reaction to Danilo offering him Brenna’s hand in marriage very funny.
As for the rest, they could have gotten a fascinating, thought-provoking episode out of the idea of a colony of clones but, sadly, they didn’t. The ideas are great but the execution is poor. It is not helped by the fact that only the last 15 minutes or so dealt with the clone storyline so it obviously feels very rushed.
Star Trek would do a much better examination on the ethical implications of cloning when Star Trek: Enterprise did “Similitude”.
This episode? Mediocre all around. The Pulaski/Worf scenes were good though.
I can’t believe nobody on the Enterprise (not to mention the what? hundreds of billions of humanoid folk throughout the Federation) would’ve willingly given up a little genetic material to help out the Mariposans. I wouldn’t have minded
This is bad. I mean really bad. I mean as in embarrassing.
It isn’t all bad. It has the wonderful Klingon tea ceremony scene.
Personally I pitied the Mariposans with all my heart. Is extinction really worse than having to live with the Bringles? BTW, what’s the point of adult clones? Don’t you want to educate and socialize them?
@@@@@ 26 It’s not much better when the Irish or English try to “do” Americans. I’ve read some pretty horrendously stereotyped American characters by English authors before, and believe me, it’s just as painful when you guys do it to us (some English authors seem to think all Americans come from Texas, for example).
It doesn’t matter to me what some snobbish sounding types say, this episode made some excellent points. The clone thing? The involuntary taking of genetic material is the moral equivalent of rape. The clones (unlike where Riker was “split”) were not yet developed or self-aware as far as we can tell from the script. How many of these who objected herein would be just fine with the notion of forcing rape victims to bring a resulting child to term? The right over one’s “self” was the point of that plot line.
As for the “Americans trying to do Irish” tripe… I LOVED Rosalyn Landor’s character Brenna, thought she did a wonderful job with that part, and she is a BRIT doing an Irish role, NOT American. Yes, the Bringloidi culture was INTENDED to be a caricature of an old Irish culture…just as the advanced culture was INTENDED to be a caricature of some technically advanced but morally defective culture. It was an intentional jab at all extremists…or rather, the human condition. That is to say, regardless of the culture or level of technology, we can all lose our moral compass. It is not okay for your culture or genetics to survive through rape or otherwise forcing an individual to procreate, even through technology.
@48/FryMan: I agree that Brenna was a fun character. But I dislike Picard’s solution to the Mariposans’ problem. Yes, what they did to Riker and Pulaski was wrong, although I wouldn’t call it “the moral equivalent of rape”. But if they think sex is icky and they want to reproduce by cloning, it’s their business and their culture. As leo_ninety-nine wrote in comment #43, surely someone on the Enterprise would have been willing to donate their genetic material.
If I had been Pulaski or Riker, I would have told the Mariposans to ask next time, but I would have allowed them to keep the clones and asked them to keep me informed how my offspring was faring.
And if they’re able to grow clones, why not gestate babies in a similar fashion?
I don’t know if it would fit in the Trivial Matters section, but there’s a freeze-frame bonus when the list of ships launched around the time of the Mariposa is displayed. One of the ships has a Captain Snodgrass, while another is the SS Buckaroo Banzai.
Only three real points about this one:
1. 1989-era ethnic stereotyping aside, this episode is a lot of FUN.
2. It’s nice to see that the underappreciated Dr. Pulaski drives basically all the action in this episode. I thought that she and Picard had a refreshing tense relationship, as she wasn’t afraid to speak to him as an equal (see the prior episode).
3. The scene where Rosalyn Landor confidently drops to her skivvies (and shows off her admirable midriff) might be the sexiest scene ever in the always tame TNG. Even at a prepubescent age 10 when this first aired, I knew that this was hot stuff.
Riker and Pulaski killing their clones brings to mind the DS9 episode A Man Alone when Odo tells Ibudan that killing your own clone is still murder.
@53 That was Bajoran jurisdiction, not Federation and that clone was fully aware and sapient while these were not. Plenty of differences. Plus Odo is a bit of a high handed asshole, so that might have just been something Odo made up on the spot to satisfy his own prejudices for a guy he had a hate-on from the start of the episode and who’d tried to frame Odo for said “murder” too.
I like Sonnenburg’s take on this: “Meanwhile Colm Meaney is gritting his teeth muttering, ‘Paycheck…paycheck…paycheck…’ under his breath” (paraphrased. Probably).
Years late in responding to this — somehow I missed this thread until now. I liked the episode okay when it aired, though that was mainly due to Ron Jones’s score and the lovely Bringloidi theme. Rosalyn Landor was pretty lovely too. I guess it was a nice idea, contrasting two opposite human colonies from the same origin, but it did go too broad in the execution. Although despite the stereotyping, it was fun to see the hyper-professional, clean, high-tech world of the Enterprise disrupted by more down-home rural types.
@11/Beren: “Of course they’re going to be stereotypes. It’s been so long since the original group existed that, when these people decided to build their culture based on a ‘throwback’ way of life they are not going to create their culture based on what it was actually like, but on an idealized vision of what they think it would have been like. It’s as if a bunch of Ren Faire attendees decided to build a society based on those days — do you think that culture that they created would be an accurate representation of medieval times? Of course not!”
That’s my preferred explanation for the fake/composite Native American cultures of the “Journey’s End” planet and Chakotay’s people — that they were latter-day attempts to reconstruct what traditional Native American culture had been like, based on an amalgam of history and folklore and the biases and values of the people shaping the reconstruction.
@32/anthonyholl: “Also let’s not forget the flawed concept of cloning.. since when does a clone of a clone of a clone “develop subtle flaws” if the clone is copied exact each clone will be identical.”
For a while there, it was believed that something very like this was actually the case. When Dolly the sheep was cloned, IIRC, it was found that she was biologically older than she should be, and it was suspected that cloning adult cells with shortened telomeres would produce offspring that were “old” to start with and would thus have shorter lifespans with each generation of clone. So for a while, it seemed the episode’s conjecture about “replicative fading” was actually prophetic. Although I think it’s since been discovered that Dolly’s premature aging was a fluke and that clones in general don’t have that problem.
@49/Jana: “But if they think sex is icky and they want to reproduce by cloning, it’s their business and their culture.”
That’s only true until they try to force it on others without their consent, as they did to Riker and Pulaski. Conversely, Picard didn’t force them to give up their culture; he explained to them that they couldn’t survive without change, and they chose to accept the change. Just having people donate genetic material would’ve been a stopgap, not a permanent solution to the problem.
@50/LordVorless: “And if they’re able to grow clones, why not gestate babies in a similar fashion?”
The issue is where they get the genetic material from, not how fast the offspring gestates. With only five donors, they don’t have the genetic diversity for a sustainable population, which is why they had to resort to quick-cloning to build their population to a reasonable size.
@56/Christopher: Having people donate genetic material once would have been a stopgap. Asking people to donate genetic material once a century or so would have been a permanent solution. And they could always hope that cloning would advance and they would become self-sufficient one day.
@57/Jana: But a simpler answer is just to let more people immigrate to the colony, surely.
I’m sure I remarked in the “When the Bough Breaks” thread how much it annoyed me that the writers of the episode never considered adoption as a way the Aldeans could solve their problem. There are bound to be plenty of orphans needing to be adopted, even in the Federation, so if the Aldeans can’t have children of their own, the solution should’ve been self-evident. That could work for the Mariposans too, now that I think about it.
@58/Christopher: That’s true.
Come to think of it, why did they resort to cloning in the first place? Even with only two men and three women, sexual reproduction would yield a more diverse population than cloning. There’s the issue of hereditary diseases, but if they are technologically advanced enough to clone people, surely they could have treated or prevented many of these.
Waiting one generation before resorting to cloning would have increased variation. How about alternating cloning and natural reproduction? Every time chromosomes resort themselves they come up with a new pattern. It might have helped with the copy machine effect too.
@59/Jana: Given that their clones apparently were formed as full adults rather than developing at a normal pace, I’d assume it was a matter of time — five people couldn’t do the work of establishing a colony, growing food, building homes and defenses, etc. all by themselves, so they needed to increase their numbers quickly in order to have a sufficient labor force. The kind of magic sci-fi cloning that churns out adult copies in a matter of days or weeks was the only way to do that.
@61/Christopher: That’s a better explanation than the one given in the episode (“two women and three men represented an insufficient gene pool”).
Couple things:
1. People keep bringing up Tom Riker, but if he is considered a clone, then isn’t everyone who’s ever used a teleported just a clone of themselves, since the “original” was destroyed and then reconstructed? Whatever is in the vat is just going to be a physical copy of Riker, but it is not going to BE Riker and have any of his knowledge or memories, right? Was their cloning tech good enough to get the thoughts in with the epithelial cells? Tom was actually Will Riker, the exact same person from body to mind, so calling him a clone doesn’t make sense. An exact copy, maybe, but in that case it’s just a flip of the coin as to who is actually the copy.
2. I find this episode amusing, but you can’t think about the actual cloning process without it falling apart right away. The writers wanted them to kill their clones at the end, so it meant the clones had to look just like adult copies – if their cloning made a bit more sense, they would have had to be shooting babies onscreen. Probably a harder sell. What also doesn’t make sense is why the Mariposians didn’t mix in the new DNA with their own to create new people – again, it would have led to less drama with Riker phasering a test tube.
Final point: I’m writing this as the world is in Covid-19 lockdown: I’ll be curious if there are more rewatches now that everyone has a lot more time on their hands and subsequently more returns and discoveries of this rewatch series.
@63/kalyarn: You’re quite right — it’s a common mistake to use “clone” to mean an exact duplicate when it’s actually a word for an offspring with a single parent. A clone is not a copy of the original, but a child of the original, and will grow up with their own distinct personality shaped by life experience. I think the episode made that quite clear — the various Mariposans all had their own separate identities and personalities despite being physical duplicates of one another.
Woo, I got a CLB response! I’ve enjoyed reading all your posts throughout these rewatch threads!
@63: While I’m still very fortunate to have a job in these trying times, you can count me as one of those people who has more time on his hands to return to these rewatches, take part in the current Voyager rewatch, rewatch favorite Star Trek episodes across the various series in general, as well as watch episodes I’ve never seen before. Be well!
Yeah, a lot of old episodes are getting commented on as people do COVID19 binge watches…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
It’s a very minor point but Picard mentions the European Hegemony on Earth was happening in 2153 and was “the first stirrings of world government”. 2153 is in the middle of Star Trek: Enterprise as I remember. Seems the government was pretty well established by then. I don’t really expect them to maintain continuity to that degree but it stood out for me in retrospect.
And this was Mariposan jurisdiction, not Federation. To the Mariposans, this was murder. Personally, I think it was murder too.
Yes, they should not have stolen Riker and Pulaski’s cells, but that doesn’t change the issue of their destruction.
The Mariposans did ask. The problem, as I saw it, was Picard made the decision for the entire crew. I didn’t have any problem with Picard, Riker, et al refusing to participate, but other members of the crew might not have had an issue.
@70/costumer: Despite being adult-sized, the clones’ bodies had the translucent, unformed look of fetuses. They weren’t meant to be sentient, viable individuals yet. The analogy was to a rape victim choosing to get an abortion.
@71
Which I don’t agree with. I understand the analogy, but still, to the Mariposans they were people and killing them was murder.
@72/costumer: But the point is that it wasn’t the Mariposans’ choice. It was Riker and Pulaski’s bodies that were violated, so they’re the only ones who had the right to decide there. The Mariposans were the assailants, so they had no more right to claim the moral high ground than a rapist whose victim aborts her pregnancy.
Interesting that the Mariposans don’t even consider natural reproduction. Are their genes too degraded for that? Apparently not since it’s the eventual solution.
But I don’t agree. They were on Mariposa. Mariposa law should rule. Riker and Pulaski certainly have a strong case, but Mariposa could have arrested them for murder and put them on trial. It would seem to me that the Prime Directive, as it should reasonably be interpreted (i.e. not Homeward) would require Picard to allow the Mariposans to keep and try them.
@75/costumer: The point of the episode was not about the letter of the law, because laws can be immoral. It was making a statement about human rights. Do you believe Wesley should’ve been executed in “Justice” because Edo law should rule? As Picard said there, “There can be no justice so long as laws are absolute.” Mistaking law for morality is the essence of tyranny. And allegorical fiction is about asserting a moral position, often by pitting the characters against immoral laws and institutions. So what Mariposan law said is irrelevant to the moral allegory intended by the story. That’s just the straw man for the story to knock down.
I get that. My problem is I found Riker and Pulaski’s actions equally immoral. But this is going to descend to a argument no one wants. I greatly respect your opinion and have agreed with many of your posts. I certainly don’t want to generate an antagonistic situation. I’m willing to drop it.
Kissing your own clone is still incest.
Look I am totally pro-choice. But I had the exact same reaction as a lot of posters above when they straight up murdered their mostly grown clones.
“Holy crap! I guess they REALLY don’t want to be cloned.”
We already knew that elements of Stage Irish culture had survived in the Federation up to Kirk’s time — consider Riley from The Naked Time, or Finnegan from Shore Leave.
I remember there was something in this one where Geordi claims his visor allows him to tell when humans are lying. Pretty cool trick, to my knowledge never heard about before, or since.
Also the callousness with which Picard, Pulaski and Riker treat the request for tissue samples was kind of weird. Just a few episodes ago they were willing to go down to a planet and violate the prime directive 18 different ways because a cute little girl said pretty please. Now these people are struggling to remain viable and the response everybody gives them is like sorry can’t do it well see you later bye. Riker responds to the request by staring them down like they’re evil bastards. Pulaski just wants to go back down to the planet to study them. I get that Cloning is Bad. But that’s how these people survived for as long as they did, so stop being so judgy.
Speaking of clones, Brenna is pretty close to a copy of Mary Kate Donaher in The Quiet Man.
I hate to say it, but the main word that comes to mind when I think of this episode is stupid. I will admit that the Space Irish are kinda fun, and they are entertaining for a bit with their over-the-top Irish stereotypes. But sadly, the whole plot is just kinda dumb. And I can’t say that I was pulled into the story in any capacity really, and the resolution of having the two groups get together is pretty ridiculous.
I didn’t really mind Pulaski and Riker destroying their clones, as it was pretty clear that the clones had barely begun to be “constructed.” It was kind of shocking for a moment, but given how translucent and unformed the clones were, I don’t think we should read into it too much. I don’t think Riker’s action was equivalent to murder, or to fetal termination. And one would hope that had the clones been “finished” and walking around, that Riker wouldn’t have blasted them.
Add to the that, the romance scenes with Riker and the Bringloidi woman are awkward, and the “skirt-lifting” flirtation stuff is supremely cringe. Not much good I can say about the episode. I think KRAD was generous with this one.
I will add that the Worf/Pulaski scenes were pretty darn good. And I do like that she gives off a Dr. McCoy vibe.
The single worst thing about this episode — past even Danilo’s whisky-wheeze mugging — is how the first half of the episode is completely forgotten until that point in the second half when the coin that we all knew was going to drop finally clicks for Picard.
A deeply flawed episode. One can only imagine what Colm Meany thought at the time. I’ve read that during the production of the DS9 episode “If Wishes Were Horses” he was adamant that a leprechaun story line be removed from the script. Of course on DS9 he had quite a bit more pull as one of the series regular stars.
I thought the Worf/Pulaski interaction was fantastic.
@11/Beren: I don’t necessarily agree with this comment when it comes to the Bringloidi, but this does seem eerily prescient of the Hysperians on Lower Decks: It’s as if a bunch of Ren Faire attendees decided to build a society based on those days — do you think that culture that they created would be an accurate representation of medieval times? Of course not!”
A horribly offensive episode, less for the stereotypes than the sexual politics. Others here have mentioned it, but it’s disgusting that the women are given off as breeding stock without their consent. And it’s all rather glibly handled.
Also, they’re so excited about multiple sex partners — but isn’t there really one Mariposan woman?
Just an out and out gross episode. I would have rather it dealt with Warf’s measles. That showed more promise.
“but isn’t there really one Mariposan woman?”
Of course not. Repeating my above comment, “A clone is not a copy of the original, but a child of the original, and will grow up with their own distinct personality shaped by life experience. I think the episode made that quite clear — the various Mariposans all had their own separate identities and personalities despite being physical duplicates of one another.”
Also, there were two women and three men among the original five Mariposan survivors.