YMMV / Star Trek: The Next Generation S2E18 "Up the Long Ladder"

• Angst? What Angst?: The moral implications of killing a partially matured clone (your own or otherwise) are never brought up. Obvious parallels to the abortion issue are likewise never touched on.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Riker gives an impassioned speech about how cloning him diminishes him in ways he can't even imagine. In the episode "Second Chances" it turns out that he's had an identical duplicate, created by a Teleporter Accident, for years!
  • In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "A Man Alone," Odo states in no uncertain terms that "killing your own clone is still murder."
    • Of course, there could be differences on this point between Federation and Bajoran law. Moreover, the clone in "A Man Alone" was fully formed and conscious when killed; destroying half-formed clones like these ones could be understood by the Federation as analogous to abortion rather than killing a sapient.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Riker makes a little speech demonstrating to the Mariposan Prime Minister stating exactly why he objects to being cloned, stating that one William T. Riker might be unique and even special (or words to that effect) but multiple Rikers would not be. Four seasons later in "Second Chances", we find out that due to a transporter accident, there in fact is now more than one William T. Riker and he ain't so unique after all.
• Informed Wrongness: The bridge crew react with horror to even the idea of voluntarily donating DNA to the Mariposans. Riker sneers at the idea of other "Rikers" running around the world, saying it would make him less "special." Picard confidently assures Granger that no one on the whole ship would ever agree to such a request (and no one suggests sending a request back to the Federation for volunteers in case anyone anywhere else in the Federation might feel differently). Apparently we're just supposed to accept that it's better to let an entire civilization die than to know that there are other people in the universe with the same genes as you.
• Padding: The script is essentially two completely separate stories that they couldn't stretch into a whole episode, with the second colony's story completely taking over from the first until the abrupt ending brings them together. Not to mention that bit with Worf that has nothing to do with anything else.
• Squick: A lot of these people are being married against their will to people who will, in all likelihood, repulse them.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Riker is supposed to be in the right when he kills his and Pulaski's clones, but the Broken Aesop used to justify it doesn't hold water with some viewers. In real life and as shown in other parts of the franchise, a clone is an entirely separate person from the person they were cloned from, just an artificially created identical twin, not some abomination of science. In addition, when Riker says that having clones made of him is a repulsive thought and would make him less special, he's telling this to a clone. Geez, way to be not-so-Innocently Insensitive.

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