Riker, a murderer?

[Kobayshi Maru]

"Killing your own clone is still murder" Odo from A Man Alone DS9.


Looks like Riker got away with that one. I must say, regardless of that statement by Odo, I was always shocked at the idea of Riker murdering both his clone and Pulaski's as casually as if he was squashing mosquitoes. What were the writers thinking? Were they thinking at all?

Your thoughts?

 

[Catarina]

What episode? I have watched out of order.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

What episode? I have watched out of order.

Season's two, "Up The Long Ladder"

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

"Killing your own clone is still murder" Odo from A Man Alone DS9.


Looks like Riker got away with that one. I must say, regardless of that statement by Odo, I was always shocked at the idea of Riker murdering both his clone and Pulaski's as casually as if he was squashing mosquitoes. What were the writers thinking? Were they thinking at all?

Your thoughts?

Well, in the DS9 case, Ibudan cloned himself with the express intention of killing the clone. Riker and Pulaski were cloned without their knowledge or consent. (And the clones they 'killed' were not yet 'fully grown')

It would seem that in the Trekverse, everybody has the right not to be cloned. I sure wouldn't want another me around...

 

[T'Girl]

Riker and Pulaski were cloned without their knowledge or consent.

Which was hardly the fault of the two people in the "growth chambers."

If Riker were to phaser someone to death in outrage over being cloned without his permission, shouldn't it have been the people who created the clones, and not the clones themselves?

The two clones should have been either moved (in their chambers) to the Enterprise, or guarded by Starfleet security until they were able to live outside of the chambers and then taken to the Enterprise.

Both of these actions would have denigned the cloners the fruits of their crimes.

Neither action would have resulted in the deaths of two innocent beings.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

"Killing your own clone is still murder" Odo from A Man Alone DS9.


Looks like Riker got away with that one. I must say, regardless of that statement by Odo, I was always shocked at the idea of Riker murdering both his clone and Pulaski's as casually as if he was squashing mosquitoes. What were the writers thinking? Were they thinking at all?

Your thoughts?

Well, in the DS9 case, Ibudan cloned himself with the express intention of killing the clone. Riker and Pulaski were cloned without their knowledge or consent. (And the clones they 'killed' were not yet 'fully grown')

It would seem that in the Trekverse, everybody has the right not to be cloned. I sure wouldn't want another me around...

The casual brutality with which Riker executed these two, not knowing or even thinking about how close they were to being fully grown, makes me think that he didn't have to "de-evolve" all that much (someone should have told the writers that "devolve" was the word they were looking for) to become a Neanderthal (regardless of the fact that Neanderthals are not really our ancestors) in his full rights. I never liked riker, and this episode is one of the reasons. He's a brute and devoid of nuances and confuses courage with foolhardiness. Jellico should have had him court martialed for all the trouble Riker caused him. Seriously, who's ever heard of a first officer, disobeying a direct order and getting away with it?

 

[Marsden]

"Killing your own clone is still murder" Odo from A Man Alone DS9.


Looks like Riker got away with that one. I must say, regardless of that statement by Odo, I was always shocked at the idea of Riker murdering both his clone and Pulaski's as casually as if he was squashing mosquitoes. What were the writers thinking? Were they thinking at all?

Your thoughts?

I always thought that was wrong before Odo even showed up.

Data is a person but the clones aren't?

Those stupid little nanites of Wesley's and Data's new friends the Exobots are life forms?

They do seem to have some hazy definitions.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

"Killing your own clone is still murder" Odo from A Man Alone DS9.


Looks like Riker got away with that one. I must say, regardless of that statement by Odo, I was always shocked at the idea of Riker murdering both his clone and Pulaski's as casually as if he was squashing mosquitoes. What were the writers thinking? Were they thinking at all?

Your thoughts?

I always thought that was wrong before Odo even showed up.

Data is a person but the clones aren't?

Those stupid little nanites of Wesley's and Data's new friends the Exobots are life forms?

They do seem to have some hazy definitions.

Very good point!

 

[MikeS]

It was a foetal analogy wasn't it? The right to chose. The clones weren't viable.

 

[Leviathan]

Hogwash! Killing your own clone is not murder. Although hunting them down after you are done with them is quite a chore. Clever little bastards...

 

[Makarov]

Wasn't this in Up the Long Ladder? What Riker should have done was fire the phaser through the 4th wall and vaporise the script for that episode.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I don't remember the episode but it would depend to me how developed their brains were at the time. Whether they already had the frontal cortices necessary to contain personality and identity. Otherwise they weren't people yet, they were meat in the process of becoming people.

 

[Timo]

It was made pretty clear that our heroes hated the concept of existing in multiple. No matter how this was achieved - growing in vats like "Up the Long Ladder" or thrown back in time like in "Time Squared" - the very concept was so repugnant to them that they would have gone to war about it had that been necessary.

Our society may think differently, but theirs was consistent about that: duplicates must cease to exist. Sure, they may be living creatures and all - but they are just echoes of you, and nothing is lost from the universe if they are removed. Anybody can do it for you, but it's the simplest if you do it yourself and also happen to be a Starfleet officer empowered to enforce law and policy on the spot. It's not a matter of punishing, or venting anger, or anything; things like guilt are irrelevant to the issue. It's simply a matter of negating abominations.

FWIW, from many episodes, it's clear that our heroes have a mandate to kill. They are soldiers, after all, and the wars they fight are never declared. It's very difficult to find a TNG or DS9 character who wouldn't have terminated at least a couple of lives, and very few of those "victims" pointed a gun at the heroes. if our heroes only killed in self-preservation, they wouldn't be doing their jobs.

As for Odo, he doesn't care about the law: he is the law. But on DS9, he is at least theoretically supposed to be the Bajoran law, which is highly unlikely to be anything like UFP law, what with one of the political entities in question being a perverse theocracy full of alien ideas and the other being, well, Bajor.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I think that's overanalyzing it a little bit. In Time Squared and Up The Long Ladder, having the clones be killed like that was more a plot shortcut so they wouldn't have to deal with the ramifications. There's no indication in universe that the Federation does not value individual lives and individual rights just because those individuals are genetically identical to another person.

It's really similar to the abortion debate. Is somebody a person just because they have a living body with human DNA, or do they need the complex processes of the human brain that define identity and consciousness?

They are soldiers with a mandate to kill, but they kill within the rules, they don't just kill arbitrarily when another person's existence makes them uncomfortable.

 

[Timo]

In Time Squared and Up The Long Ladder, having the clones be killed like that was more a plot shortcut so they wouldn't have to deal with the ramifications.

Sure. But the characters themselves visibly shuddered from disgust at the idea of existing in numbers greater than one. Literally - you can see Stewart's and Frakes' expressing of whatever the script called them to express.

It's really similar to the abortion debate.

...But within the context of Alien.

They are soldiers with a mandate to kill, but they kill within the rules, they don't just kill arbitrarily when another person's existence makes them uncomfortable.

Actually, they do, a lot. Sometimes they phaser down people they think shouldn't exist - in disgust in "Up the Long Ladder", out of mercy in "The Vengeance Factor". More often, they condemn people, communities or cultures to death simply because they find them too alien.

Supposedly, that is their mandate: to make the universe conform to the human ways (and this means the 22nd, 23rd and 24th century human ways, respectively, these only occasionally touching upon ours), at least when fellow humans or suitably similar people or peoples are involved. It's not arbitrary, despite the appearances. It's merely futuristic, in terms of the laws, rules and mores to be followed. And of course at the same time consistent with what humans have always been doing, redefining their rights and wrongs chiefly for the purpose of exerting power over others.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Riker and Pulaski were cloned without their knowledge or consent.

Which was hardly the fault of the two people in the "growth chambers."

They weren't people. Yet.

 

[Trekker4747]

Thinking about this some, I wonder how different killing these clones is from abortion?

If the clones were not developed enough to live on their own outside of the growth chambers would killing them be any different than performing an abortion on a fetus not able to survive outside the womb? And we can infer abortion is still considered an option in the 24c from season 2's first episode, "The Child" where abortion is considered for the child in Deanna with unknown origins.

So, really, Riker performed abortions on two developing beings that were unethically generated.

 

[urbandefault]

Riker was just grumpy because he wanted his feet washed.

I took the implication to be that the clones were not yet fully formed sentient beings. Riker didn't commit murder, he deprived the (can't remember what they were called) of his stolen DNA to perpetuate their diminishing gene pool. He did what Jim Kirk would have done: force them to face their fate and deal with it.

The fact that it could have been written better is one that can be found in all Trek.

But if a clone has to be dispatched, who better to do it than the unwitting donor?

 

[Lance]

Thinking about this some, I wonder how different killing these clones is from abortion?

That's kind of the inference, although at the time of original broadcast the whole "right to life" debate hadn't even begun to get the momentum that it later had.

 

[borgboy]

I always thought that killing the clones were wrong. They were going for an abortion metaphor, but it didn't really translate well. The clones continued existence may have offended Riker and Pulaski's sensibilities and their treasured uniqueness, but that's hardly the same situation as going thru with an unplanned pregnancy.

I assume that the clones were "destroyed" before they were viable/sentient, but I still think it was the wrong decision. The clones were innocent of any wrong doing and deserved to live.