Up The Long Ladder

DVD, TNG S2 (Up The Long Ladder)

Sometimes you just have to bow to the absurd, says Captain Picard at one point, and if you take his advice this episode has a certain rustic charm to it. Mixed with a certain suave, detached sterility (the Mariposans were very Vulcan). Add them together, and what have you got? If only we could see a few decades down the line, whether the two so different peoples managed to bond together, or if they became segregated. I don't think the multiple partners idea would work too well, as the jealousy and strife caused by it could bring the society down! Can you imagine Brenna as three men's wives?

Of course the episode isn't really meant to be a heavily serious and scientific piece, and indeed, that side of human nature is portrayed as rather villainous, but how can the Starfleet people think they're a model for these two incomplete races when they're quite happy to murder their own clones? Happy isn't the right word, both Riker and Pulaski grimaced as their doubles-in-the-making were vaporised, so they seemed to know the gravity of their actions, which makes it all the more chilling! In an early 'DS9' episode Odo arrests a villain for murdering his own clone and clearly states it's a crime - maybe clone rights changed in the intervening years? It was ironic that Riker should be so vocal on the subject of two of him being a bad thing as it would be but a few short years before he was proved right.

I wondered why the Bringloidi were supposed to be so unused to technology. They arrived on a ship, so presumably their ancestors were capable. Would knowledge of technology really have died out in a few generations even given their simple lifestyle choices? Once the cloning came to the fore it was easy to see where the story was going, but it still worked. At first the episode was a bit all over the place with Worf's mystery collapse, finding the colony, Riker's impropriety and unprofessional behaviour with Brenna, and on to the next planet, but this fragmented, higgledy-piggledy style suited the energetic Irish characters well. It was bizarre and fantastic to see pigs and sheep and chickens being beamed up and I expected O'Brien to get into the spirit of his homeland a bit more. Maybe he got out of bed the wrong side.

Worf's offer of information pertaining to alcoholic beverages would become a bit out of character when in later episodes we learn he only drinks prune juice, but the Irish jollity was worth any inconsistencies - Americans love the Irish, even as far back as the Original Series they had Harry Mudd putting on the accent, and in 'Voyager' two whole episodes were devoted to a holographic village so the bemusing antics must have worked for viewers. The wardrobe and architecture of the Mariposans, although severe, was quite pleasing. It could have been that the contrast showed strong after the rustic, messy impression left by the Bringloidi, and it certainly made sense to bring two such cultures together, and it made for plenty of absurdity to bow to.

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