The Enterprise responds to a distress beacon from a centuries-old human colony on a threatened planet. The technologically primitive Bringloidi have to be evacuated, complete with their menagerie of animals and antiquated customs. But theirs is not the only colony in the area to come from an old Earth ship. Next the Enterprise meets the Mariposans, a race of clones sired from the only five people to survive the crash landing on their planet many generations ago. Facing a crisis of degraded DNA, they want samples from Enterprise crew members to continue their society... and they'll steal them without permission if they have to.
This episode is dreadful, and they even knew it at the time they were cutting together the original preview back in 1989. You can watch that trailer on the Blu-ray, and it shows absolutely nothing of the primitive Bringloidi colonists, focusing exclusively on the clone angle. And for good reason, as the Bringloidi are a borderline offensive Irish stereotype. Their leader is a cliché drunkard with a firebrand daughter; both of them are basically trying to whore the daughter out as a marriage prospect to anyone who appears to have money. Their people as a whole are overly attached to their farm animals, fearful of technology, and look like they haven't bathed in a week.
Hmm... maybe there's nothing "borderline" about the offensive stereotypes here.
In any case, the Bringloidi subplot offers nothing of dramatic value at all. The culture clash isn't compelling. The secondary characters are of no importance. They don't threaten our main characters in anyway. They don't even manage to annoy our main characters, really; at one point, Picard laughs out loud at their absurdity.
Then there are the Mariposans, the clone society that steals DNA samples from Riker and Pulaski to further their lineage. This subplot brushes up against some interesting subjects, but mostly tosses them aside. Riker and Pulaski destroy their maturing clones when they're discovered, and Riker makes a passing reference to exercising control over his own body. It's stepping right up to the front door of a compelling abortion allegory, but then refusing to knock, since the episode abandons this line of storytelling and Mariposans never get to argue their side of the case. There's also no acknowledgement at all of the potential rape metaphor in all this.
And then there's the conclusion of the story, in which our heroes ingeniously bring the two colonies together to live as one. The writers seem to think they're doing something in the classic Star Trek tradition here, but it's utterly preposterous. The gap of societal values and 250 years of technological growth seems far too large to be believably bridged, or at least, not in 3 minutes. And the resolution completely ignores the fact that the only thing the Bringloidi are missing is a planet to live on. Find the Bringloidi somewhere else uninhabited to colonize; don't force them to change their ways unnecessarily. They have no population problem, so why are they suddenly being asked to breed offspring in at least three different couples each generation? (Aside from letting the aforementioned drunkard leader have a "wah-wah" moment.)
Also very "classic Trek"-like in this episode is the writing of Commander Riker. While it's true that his character has always had a touch of Captain Kirk in him, this episode lazily writes him exactly like Kirk. He turns into an absolute horndog this episode, loving and leaving the firebrand Bringloidi woman. And then he practically starts shouting from some moral high ground at the very request that he allow himself to be cloned. He does a very poor job of articulating why he's so against the idea of cloning, which is rather interesting when you consider that later on, in the sixth season, there's an episode in which we learn that he essentially was cloned a few years prior to this. (The usually eloquent Picard can articulate the objections to cloning no better; he simply tells the Mariposan leader that he thinks everyone on the Enterprise will be universally against the idea. Why would he presume to speak for them all like that?)
There's only thing about this episode that comes anywhere close to good, and it's really not that close. In the opening 10 minutes, an additional subplot surrounds Worf fainting on the bridge, suffering from the Klingon equivalent of the measles. Before the next commercial break, Pulaski conspires to hide this embarrassing condition from the rest of the crew, and nothing more is said about it for the rest of the episode.
I think Michael Dorn was left out to dry by the director here, as his acting here is quite over the top. Dorn doesn't usually make that mistake, but perhaps he was coached to after a few days of filming cliché Irish folk -- over the top was apparently the norm on this episode. But there is at least a tiny taste of a decent character relationship between Pulaski and Worf here. Pulaski respects Worf's sense of honor enough to cover for him, and he in turn honors her with a Klingon Tea Ceremony. Michael Dorn says in an interview on the Blu-ray set that he thinks if Pulaski had stayed on the series, it's possible this might have blossomed into a romantic thread between the two characters. I don't know that I would have enjoyed that, but I do enjoy the moment here where Worf is finally the first person to bust Pulaski on needlessly insulting people. Good for Worf.
Other observations:
- Even the music gives over to stereotype. Composer Ron Jones serves up some Irish music that's rather uninspired. (Though his suspense music for the Mariposans is beter, particularly in the scene where they steal DNA.)
- Geordi reveals in this episode that his VISOR easily allows him to detect when a human is lying. This feels like a potential problem for all those officers' poker games.
- Even the costuming is bad in this episode. The Mariposan prime minister wears a white suit clearly too large for him that conjures thoughts of a Talking Heads music video.
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