» Reviews

Season 2

2x01 The Child
2x02 Where Silence Has Lease
2x03 Elementary, Dear Data
2x04 The Outrageous Okona
2x05 Loud as a Whisper
2x06 The Schizoid Man
2x07 Unnatural Selection
2x08 A Matter of Honor
2x09 The Measure of a Man
2x10 The Dauphin
2x11 Contagion
2x12 The Royale
2x13 Time Squared
2x14 The Icarus Factor
2x15 Pen Pals
2x16 Q Who?
2x17 Samaritan Snare
2x18 Up The Long Ladder
2x19 Manhunt
2x20 The Emissary
2x21 Peak Performance
2x22 Shades of Gray

» Details

» Series : The Next Generation
» Episode Title : Up The Long Ladder
» Episode Reference : 2x18
» Aired : 22nd May, 1989.

» Author : Richard Lyth

» Synopsis

None

» Review

» Worf looks constipated, then faints like a girl. Evidently we haven't reached the "treating the character with respect" phase yet.

» The European Hegemony lasted from 2130 to 2190. But still no mention of it on Enterprise.

» Worf performs the Klingon tea ceremony for Pulaski. They're really struggling to pad this one out...

» The survivors of an ancient colony are evacuated to the Enterprise. 200 people, plus lots of sheep and chickens, with jolly Irish folk music playing in the background. Oh dear...

» The colony is run by Danilo Odell, a jolly Irish tinker who makes the cast of Ballykissangel look grittily realistic.

» The colonists, animals and equipment are transported to the cargo bay, which miraculously acquires a layer of straw underfoot.

» Riker meets Odell's daughter Brenna, who looks like Princess Leia, and falls madly in lust.

» Picard laughs. Presumably this is also the intended reaction of the audience, it's hard to tell.

» Riker decides to 'help' Brenna. Guessing what he has in mind, she lifts up her skirts.

» "Do you not like girls?" Brenna asks him, thus earning the Least Perceptive Woman In The Galaxy award for 2165.

» The Enterprise visits another colony, this one all hi-tech and full of clones. Yes, they've based their entire culture around the last Star Wars movie.

» "The entire concept of sexual reproduction is a little repugnant to us," says the Prime Minister. Riker does not look at all pleased to hear this.

» Riker refuses to be cloned. Just wait till he reads the scripts for season six...

» Riker and Pulaski are sedated and have their DNA extracted, though the clones don't bother to remove their uniforms first. Which is gratifying for the viewers, but doesn't make much medical sense.

» Geordi can tell when anyone is lying. Funny how he never mentions this while playing poker.

» Riker destroys the nascent clones, thus earning a deluge of hate mail and letter bombs from anti-abortionists.

» Picard decides to leave the Irish peasants to live with the clones. I don't know which group I feel more sorry for...

» Pulaski decides each woman should have children by three different men. Sounds like she's been reading some early 21st-century social history...

» The Prime Minister's shell-shocked expression as he wanders round the cargo bay is a fitting ending, as it mirrors the expression of any viewer who's managed to sit through this garbage