Entertainment
The Golden Age Star Trek Episode That Got So Political It Annoyed All Sides
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
In the NuTrek era of shows like Discovery and Starfleet Academy, there has been a frequent criticism from certain elements of the fandom: the shows have gotten “too political.” This is often juxtaposed with the Golden Age of Star Trek of the ‘80s and ‘90s, which some fans are convinced never focused on politics. However, that’s not entirely true. Shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation often dabbled in politics, and when they did, it made almost everyone mad.
A perfect example of this can be found in “Up the Long Ladder,” a relatively obscure episode of TNG’s second season. It was a story explicitly written as a commentary on both immigration and abortion, with a focus on women’s right to choose what does and does not happen to their own bodies. Unfortunately, the execution of this storyline angered pro-life fans all around the world, while the execution of the immigration plot pissed off an entirely different group of people: Irish Americans, including Star Trek legend Colm Meaney.
Send In The Clones
The plot of “Up the Long Ladder” is that the Enterprise encounters two space colonies: one is filled with Irish colonists who have forsaken modern technology and mostly want to party like it’s still 1999. The other one is an advanced civilization of clones on the hunt for some new genetic material. The plot regarding this second colony was intended as commentary on women’s rights, though episode writer Melinda Snodgrass (who penned “The Measure of a Man,” generally considered the best Data episode ever written) tried to hide that commentary in the middle of a very sci-fi plot point.
After their ship crashes on the second colony, there are only five survivors, which isn’t enough to kickstart a civilization. They decide to solve this problem through cloning, and clones have been running the colony for the better part of two centuries. Due to replicative fading, they need new DNA for future clones. After the Enterprise crew refuses the colony’s request for new genetic material, the colonists kidnap Riker and Pulaski and begin making clones of them.
Riker Sets His Phaser To “Pro-Choice”
When Riker beams down to the clone labs and sees what’s cooking, he destroys everything, effectively killing the clones before they are born. According to episode scribe Melinda Snodgrass (as reported in Captains’ Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages), she “got enormous flak from the right to life coalition because they destroyed the clones. They thought I was condoning abortion.”
Continuing her thoughts, she revealed why the pro-lifers likely hated this episode: because she “put a line in Riker’s mouth that was very pro-choice … He says, ‘I told you that you can’t clone me and you did it against my will, and I have the right to have control over my own body.’” She clarified that this is exactly how she felt, stating, “and it was my soapbox, and it was one I got to get on,” with full support from then-showrunner Maurice Hurley.
An Entire Shipload Of Irish Stereotypes
If that’s not bad enough, her episode also angered Irish-Americans for its offensive stereotypes of Irish people. You see, the second colony is explicitly Irish (this was Hurley’s suggestion), and its characters are portrayed as ignorant farmers who want to spend all of their time making babies and getting drunk.
Adding insult to injury, all of these characters speak with the most exaggerated accents television has ever known. It was an episode that Irish actor Colm Meaney hated, and after he became a full cast member on Deep Space Nine, he convinced the showrunner to avoid channeling stereotypes and putting a leprechaun into the episode “If Wishes Were Horses.”
“Up the Long Ladder” regularly ranks as one of the worst TNG episodes of all time. However, the offensive Irish stereotype characters in this episode do offer a tried and true solution to the many problems Trekkies have with NuTrek shows like Discovery and Starfleet Academy: just drink until you finally like what you see.