Up the Long Ladder (Episode)

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Up the Long Ladder
"Up the Long Ladder" (TNG144)

"Up the Long Ladder" (TNG144)
Series Star Trek: The Next Generation
Season 2
Episode 18
Production Number 144


Previous Samaritan Snare (TNG143)
Next Manhunt (TNG145)
Released 22 May 1989
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Prime Timeline
(The root of all realities)


Stardate 42823.2: Two lost colonies fight for survival

Stellar flares are about to destroy the Bringloidi homeworld when the Enterprise rescues the colony, populated by a lively, agrarian people long forgotten beyond fragmentary records from two centuries earlier. The Bringloidi bring along their livestock and set up camp in a cargo bay. Riker is soon keeping company with the bumbling leader's feisty daughter. Then Picard and Data discover that the colonists were one of two groups to settle in the system, and the Enterprise heads out to warn the other colony of the danger.

Soon, they find the Mariposans, and entire society composed of clones from the five crew members who survived the original colony ship's crash landing. Now fearful of degeneration due to replicative fading, the Mariposans beg for fresh DNA from the Enterprise crew, but the idea is repugnant to the Starfleet personnel — just as the idea of sexual reproduction is to the Mariposans. Desperate, the colony's leaders kidnap Riker and Dr. Pulaski, and collect DNA samples, but the pair return to destroy the clones and bring a compromise from Picard: rejoin with the Bringloidi on a new colony world.

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