Up the Long Ladder by: Melinda M. Snodgrass and directed by: Winrich Kolbe

 

“Up the Long Ladder” is written by: Melinda M. Snodgrass and is directed by: Winrich Kolbe.  It was produced under production code 144, was the 18^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 2, the 44^th episode overall, and was broadcast on May 22, 1989.

 

It’s the final act of “Up the Long Ladder” that makes this just one of the worst episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Melinda M. Snodgrass’ third script for the season and series as a whole is one that doesn’t actually have any focus, the plot doesn’t introduce any conflict until well into the second act and the third act just ends with like “Samaritan Snare” the week before can only be read as quite awful.  The conflict is that there is this planet that has cast off all of sex, reproducing via cloning and that cloning has failed.  They are dying and need more genetic material, that they steal without consent from Riker and Pulaski.  So, the crew of the Enterprise blackmail them into taking on a group of space Irish stereotypes, quite literally Irish people who have been on the ship because they are a group of colonists from two centuries in the past.  The blackmail completely violates that own society’s consent to take on these people, and the Irish’s own consent if they even want to go there.  The Irish colonists are literally referred to as breeding stock and Riker mentions that this would be a shotgun wedding.  The episode then has the one female guest star who actually raises the consent issue mollified by the fact that she will be given three husbands, because she has an active sex life and clearly would want more, playing into particularly bigoted Irish stereotypes of being sexually promiscuous.  Again I feel as if I must emphasize that the stealing of genetic material from Riker and Pulaski is actively framed as a violation of consent, the clones in incubation are shot dead because as the ‘mothers’ in this anatomy Riker and Pulaski rightly have autonomy, Snodgrass’ script being explicitly pro-choice in this scene, and this scene only.  The rest of the episode is explicitly both anti-choice and comes to the conclusion that violating consent is totally fine when it’s for the greater good.  The cast do this with smiles on their faces, it’s played for comedy.

 

This is also quite literally the last 15 minutes of the episode.  The first 30 minutes are either time with the space Irish colonists and played more explicitly for comic relief, though practically every Irish stereotype except those involving potatoes are played into, or with genuinely nice character beats for Worf contracting essentially Klingon measles and connecting with Pulaski when recovered.  Barrie Ingham and Rosalyn Landor play the main father/daughter duo of the Irish characters, and while they are stereotypes they are at least having fun with the material they  are given.  In terms of being well written, it’s not, but it’s at least hammed up to the extreme that until the plot with the cloning colony begins the episode is only slightly offensive.  It reminds me a lot of “Mudd’s Women”, an episode that becomes equally poor in its messaging but has camp appeal, though “Up the Long Ladder” is explicitly worse due to the message being anti-consent.  It baffles me that this is a script that comes from Melinda M. Snodgrass, since “The Measure of a Man” was the polar opposite.  The only thing that would make sense would be that the script was rewritten by showrunner Maurice Hurley, something he was certainly known to do.  From cursory glances, Snodgrass apparently wanted to write an allegory for immigration, there are moments near the end where this does slightly come across, but like the Doctor Who episode “Kill the Moon”, this is an episode that may have had an interpretation in mind, but that is buried under a different, far more harmful message that permeates every seen (oddly enough similar messages against bodily autonomy).

 

Overall, “Up the Long Ladder” probably would be the worst episode of the season and contender for worst of Star Trek: The Next Generation if it wasn’t for at least some camp appeal in the opening act, though camp appeal through stereotype.  It wants to be progressive, Snodgrass is a progressive writer, but there’s this glee in the terrible things it advocates for.  2/10.