2x18 Up the Long Ladder

[4.0/10] What even is this episode? It isn’t. It’s three episode, vaguely chunked together, with little uniting them beyond a thin sense of “You got chocolate in my peanut butter.” I don’t know how the writer of “The Measure of a Man” could also have penned this lumpy pile of targ manure. (Word is there were substantial edits and rewrites from showrunner Maurice Hurley.) But whatever the explanation, “Up the Long Ladder” may be the least essential, most skippable episode in Star Trek: The Next Generation history.

The strange thing about the episode is its best storyline is also the slightest (and the most disconnected to the overarching plot). Early in the episode, Worf faints having contracted the Klingon equivalent of measles, and Dr. Pulaski covers for him given his worry over humiliation from contracting a childhood illness. In return, he performs a Klingon tea ceremony with Pulaski.

It has essentially nothing to do with anything else that happens in “Up the Long Ladder” beyond the broadest of thematic ties to the idea that cultural exchange produces benefits and promotes understanding. Why it’s even in this episode, god only knows.

But god help me, I like it! It’s nice to get these “slice of life” interludes on the Enterprise. It may not advance the plot, but we get to see a more human side (pardon the expression) of Worf and Dr. Pulaski. The Klingon is a little vain and image-conscious, but also grateful and even romantic in his appreciation. Dr. Pulaski is a committed physician but one who accommodates her patients’ cultural needs and is plainly touched when getting to participate in one of Worf’s people’s rituals. You could watch this is an isolated clip on YouTube and lose nothing in context, but it’s still a lovely little vignette.

The same cannot be said for the arrival of the Space Irish and just why god why? Who thought this was a good idea? Who took a look at the staid but dignified confines of the Starship Enterprise and decided that what it really needed was a punch of creature-drinkin’, brogue-spittin’, Riker-seducin’ stereotypes to liven the place up.

I don’t even know what to do with them. It feels like for brief stretches, another show takes over, like a strange BBC comedy meant to make fun of their country cousins. Supposedly Maurice Hurley is Irish himself and was driven to include them out of a sense of community pride, so I don’t think the intent was to make fun of the folks from the Emerald Isle. And yet, we get only the most exaggerated clichés here, with the Space Irish as backwards space bumpkins who only live to get drunk and be ordered around by their huffy yet alluring distaff counterparts. I’ve seen more nuanced depictions of other cultures in a 1930s cartoon.

Their presence is also all but pointless until the very end of the episode. They’re not plot relevant for a looooong time, so really we’re left with nothing more but the “charm” of their antics here. I’ll confess to getting some amusement from stick-up-his-behind Captain Picard breaking down and laughing at the absurdity of these ridiculous folks at some point. But I have no idea why we’re subjected to Riker aiming to bed yet another pre-warp pinup. (I guess to contrast the Space Irish from their chaste equivalents?) And I also have no idea why we spend so much time on hacky humor like the Space Irish leader trying to get Captain Picard to marry his daughter, or build a fire in a cargo bay, or have cartoonish reactions to Klingon liquor.

The closest thing to a real plot doesn’t arrive until two-thirds of the way through the episode, when the Enterprise finds the Space Irish’s sister colony. It turns out the original settlers crashed and the few survivors cloned themselves for lack of proper breeding pairs. Now suffering from the cloning equivalent of “xerox of a xerox” disorder, they want the ship’s crew to contribute some genetic material so they can clone their way to robustness again.

Look, is this the most engrossing plot Star Trek has ever come up with? Obviously not. But there’s something there. You can see spinning moral dilemmas about what desperate measures people take to ensure their community’s survival versus the right to self-agency and bodily autonomy. Supposedly this plot thread was meant to be a commentary on abortion issues, and while you have to squint to see that, there’s meat on the bone to the scenario.

The problem is that the Clone Brigade doesn’t show up until so late in the episode that there’s no time to explore the moral or personal implications of any of this. It’s just show up, demand clones, secretly create clones, blow up clones, the end, without time or space for rumination or time for the conflict to simmer. The only approaching a genuine story in all of “Up the Long Ladder” dissipates faster than the fire the Space Irish try to build in a cargo bay.

The solution to the Clone Brigade’s reproduction problem turns out to be the Space Irish! And their ancestors were part of the same expedition anyway! You can feel the show going for a little bit of City Mouse/Country Mouse here, but there’s nothing to it. Just a series of further jokes at the Space Irish leader getting to have multiple wives and more nudge-the-audience humor based on hoary cultural stereotypes.

If there was some point to any of this, some genuinely successful humor, something that unified all three tales crammed together here, I might cut it some slack. But there’s nothing. It’s nothing more than a hodge-podge of different ideas -- some decent, most bad, all undercooked -- slapped together with duct tape and Irish Spring. The tone is off; the narrative cul de sacs are weak as all get out, and the only abiding moral question anyone seeing “Up the Long Ladder” will be left with is “What the hell did I just watch?” TNG would still have its share of stinkers after this one, but it would rarely produce episodes that feel like such a misguided waste of time as this one.