#TNGWatch #S02E18 #UpTheLongLadder

I don’t remember what this one’s about!

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Guys, why can’t you pronounce "hegemony"? Guys?

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Well, this episode’s pretty ridiculous so far. Also, maybe a little racist? I honestly can’t tell.

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This is a terrible episode with a terrible message!

The Enterprise finds two old human colonies: an Irish one with no technology and on a planet that’s about to be consumed by its sun, but with thriving families (and a lot of farm animals); the other with only five genetically distinct people and a lot of clones that are likely to fail soon, and a bunch of technology. The clones are dying off thanks to "replicative fading" (making a copy of a copy of a copy means a certain amount of degradation with every successive copy, until you finally get to the one that just doesn’t work), and after trying to forcibly take genetic material from Riker and Pulaski (which Riker correctly equates to rape, again without actually using the word), Picard comes up with the "brilliant" idea of merging the two colonies on the clone planet and having them all mate with each other so that both colonies can survive. Pulaski tells the two colony leaders (both men) that this means every woman will have to bear at least three children by three different men in order for the genetic stock to be viable, and the Irish leader readily agrees because of course he does. The clone leader is less happy with this, but only because his society finds sex repugnant. He still agrees in the end. Missing from this discussion? Women (aside from Pulaski, who seems to view all of this as some kind of science experiment).

Setting aside the fact that nobody asked any women from either society if this was something they’d be okay with (and you know the clone women at least are going to be super unhappy with this since their society finds sex repugnant), how is an Irish colony of 200+ merging with a clone colony with only five distinct genetic makeups going to give you a genetically viable society, even with all the crossbreeding?!

Picard, the actual fucking solution to this is to integrate both colonies back into the Federation, which is what you were going to do anyway when you only had the Irish colony to deal with.

The daughter of the Irish leader is made to be a strong independent woman who is not afraid to voice her opinions (she also seduces Riker, which isn’t very difficult at all), but at the end, she doesn’t get a say and is understandably pissed with her father and Picard, but then agrees because she thinks the Prime Minister is rich. What? I’m happy she’s seemingly portrayed as sex-positive, but sex positivity doesn’t translate to “I want to have three men’s babies”, and that weird last minute rationale of “oh, I can marry three rich men”? I mean, what the fuck? Never mind the fact that every woman needing to be impregnated by three different men also means that every man needs to impregnate three different women.

There was also a bit at the beginning between Worf and Pulaski in which the writers tried to salvage Pulaski’s character by making her not a racist, but I think it was too little too late.

This entire episode is a shitshow, and the worst episode of TNG so far.