Riker, a murderer?

[USS KG5]

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.

Exactly - it was a shitty episode, TNG S2 had more than it's fair share.

As everyone has said, Riker murders the two clones, or at the very least aborts them at a late stage. Either way, it should be controversial but the episode basically says "ahh what the hell".

 

[doubleohfive]

I think it's made pretty clear in the episode that these clones were created without the consent of Riker or Pulaski.

The other thing worth mentioning (I don't know if it's been mentioned here yet) is that even though Riker pulled the trigger on the phaser, Pulaski was right there -- a doctor, for crying out loud -- and stood by as Riker did the deed. Therefore, she's just as complicit and thus guilty of whatever crime you would have pinned on Riker.

Odo, in "A Man Alone" was speaking just as much from his own inflexible and unchanging view on the law. He even says in the episode itself:

Odo, in "A Man Alone" said:
"The law? Commander, laws change depending on who's making them. Cardassians one day, Federation the next... but justice is justice."

Odo was Deep Space Nine's frontier sheriff. Prior to Starfleet taking over, he'd had to make his own decisions about implementing justice on the station, especially given the casual brutality of the Cardassian rule. Odo's not concerned with the actual letter of the law; he operates by his own code of what constitutes justice. It's also why he constantly butts heads with Sisko and Starfleet over the years when they try to force-feed him their ideas of what the rule of law means.

To Odo, "Murdering your own clone is still murder" is not Odo speaking as an officer of the law (even though he is one) but rather Odo expressing his own personal viewpoint on the subject. There's no room for flexibility or any kind of gray area with Odo, which was a lovely foreshadowing of how stubbornly intractable the Founders would eventually be revealed to be as well.

Whoever said above that the idea of cloning was repugnant to the Enterprise crew and the rest of the civilized 24th century had it right.

Here's another way to consider all this from a different perspective: Those of you believing Riker were murderers, would you likewise consider it murder if a woman aborted a baby she became pregnant with after being raped?

 

[T'Girl]

^Riker wasn't carrying the clone inside of him.

 

[doubleohfive]

^Riker wasn't carrying the clone inside of him.

No, he wasn't.

But these were life forms created from him (and Pulaski) without their consent.

My question stands. Would you consider it murder if a woman aborted a baby she became pregnant with after being raped?

 

[T'Girl]

My question stands. Would you consider it murder if a woman aborted a baby she became pregnant with after being raped?

Riker wasn't pregnant.

Riker wasn't sexually assaulted

Riker's life wasn't in danger.

Riker didn't "abort" the two clones.

Riker took out his phaser, aimed it at two innocent life forms, helpless to defend themselves from Riker's up-coming attack, and Riker killed them both.

Your question doubleohfive has no connection to the event in the episode.

 

[doubleohfive]

Riker didn't "abort" the two clones.

The clones had clearly not reached maturity. They were still growing in the cloning tubes. If they were "done"/alive, they'd be wandering around the colony, not being incubated in those cloning tubes. I submit that the term "abort" could certainly be used here to describe, as near an approximation to what we can conceive, regarding Riker's actions. It certainly wasn't murder.

Riker took out his phaser, aimed it at two innocent life forms, helpless to defend themselves from Riker's up-coming attack, and Riker killed them both.

1) Riker and Pulaski.
2) The clones were not alive.
3) Riker did not kill them.

Your question doubleohfive has no connection to the event in the episode.

You still have not answered the question. I refute your dismissal of my question, too. Riker and Pulaski were violated. Is it exactly the same thing as rape? No. Nor is the "mind rape" shown in season five's "Violations" or in Star Trek Nemesis. But in all three instances, the characters were brutally assaulted and violated against their will.

Again I pose my question: Would you consider it murder if a woman aborted a baby she became pregnant with after being raped?

 

[borgboy]

Riker didn't "abort" the two clones.

The clones had clearly not reached maturity. They were still growing in the cloning tubes. If they were "done"/alive, they'd be wandering around the colony, not being incubated in those cloning tubes. I submit that the term "abort" could certainly be used here to describe, as near an approximation to what we can conceive, regarding Riker's actions. It certainly wasn't murder.

Riker took out his phaser, aimed it at two innocent life forms, helpless to defend themselves from Riker's up-coming attack, and Riker killed them both.

1) Riker and Pulaski.
2) The clones were not alive.
3) Riker did not kill them.

Your question doubleohfive has no connection to the event in the episode.

You still have not answered the question. I refute your dismissal of my question, too. Riker and Pulaski were violated. Is it exactly the same thing as rape? No. Nor is the "mind rape" shown in season five's "Violations" or in Star Trek Nemesis. But in all three instances, the characters were brutally assaulted and violated against their will.

Again I pose my question: Would you consider it murder if a woman aborted a baby she became pregnant with after being raped?

I don't consider first or second trimester abortion to be murder (regardless of how the fetus was conceived)
but Riker and Pulaski weren't raped. Violated, yes, but nowhere near on the same scale as rape.
Also, clones growing in a vat aren't the same thing as a pregnancy.
The episode clearly intended that Riker had the legal (and I think we're supposed to assume moral) right to kill the clones, so I accept, grudgingly, that we're supposed to assume the clones hadn't developed enough to be sentient.
But I also am sure that when Odo says killing your clone is murder, he means legally. The killer was arrested, and that makes it a legal issue, not just Odo's opinion.
I assume that the clone on DS9 had reached the level of sentience, and the ones on TNG hadn't.
I overall find this message on TNG to be poorly handled. There's potential for a good story in this idea, but it wasn't developed well. A court case with Riker and/or Pulaski debating for the right to terminate the clone could've been interesting, instead of the story we got, where the right side of the issue is assumed and the "abortion" is carried out without any exploration of the issue.

 

[Trekker4747]

I think the allusions going for in the episode were closer to an abortion one rather than any cloning one. Since while at the time it was seen as "possible" I doubt anyone seriously considered it as a currently realistic thing. Even today there's a lot of questions on how viable a cloned being would be. (IIRC "Dolly" the cloned sheep didn't live long and had a number of issues inherent to the flaws that crop up in DNA over time that are only magnified by cloning.)

But as I, and others, most recently 005 have said it's pretty clear the clones in the growth chambers weren't yet viable, they barely had humanoid features beyond "sorta human-looking" nor looked all that much like their genetic donors. (Again, waving away the effects limitations of a TV series in the 1980s and assuming the props represent the true look of the clones.)

Riker and Pulaski did not kill living, sentient, beings at least not by the standards of their society.

Of course, this -and the abortion discussion in "The Child" raises a lot of questions when it does come to Earth/Starfleet/Federation morals when it comes to living beings and when life begins. We've seen plenty of examples of the crew showing remorse or being guarded when it comes to harming or killing an innocent creature, no matter how insignificant the life is. But we've seen it inferred that abortion is okay. So it really does raise a question on when they see life as beginning and when that life has a right to it.

What makes an unborn fetus's life disposable? (FWIW, I am pro-choice.) It seems that int he 24c they'd be against abortion just as much as they are killing any other life, the problems with going against a woman's "right to choose" negated by the woman also living in a society that values life, making abortion never on the table to begin with.

But, we've seen that it is. So it can cause some questions on where the line is for morals and ethics in the 24c. But wherever that line is the clones were before it.

 

[Ithekro]

How much do we know of how this type of clone? How are they created? What is the cycle of generation from cells to fully adult copies of the life-form. It seems different from the clone style used in DS9. Here it looks like the machines copies the cells and then generateds a body template of some sort of fill in the other parts. It slowly grows the bones and organs and smaller systems over time. Also one imagines it develops the brain in some way to have the individual become a viable member of the local community. However they would have to implant a personality and culture on to the clones as they wouldn't want to make them like the two Starfleet officers they stole the DNA from.

If this is the case, than until the work is nearly completed, the clone is not yet a lifeform, but is more a collection of bits of a lifeform that is being mechanically crafted and designed to fill a role in a society.

The clone could only have been in production for hours, a day at best. So at the stage Riker vaporizes them, they are not remotely functional as a lifeform. They are, at best a collection of cells filling in a humanoid template mold.

 

[Ghrakh]

For all we know it was just a Riker shaped sack of meat. If Riker was a hell bent murderer of clones, then I'd be worried as shit if I were Tom Riker, now wouldn't I?

It looks like a heap of sculpted jello.

The DS9 clone that was killed:

 

[borgboy]

It's worth pointing out I think, that on DS9 Bashir uses a transporter to transplant Keiko's fetus into Kira's womb, so that suggests that a woman who didn't want to carry her baby could have it given to a "donor".
Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but I could swear at least on the new blu rays the clones clearly looked like Riker and Pulaski and not just like "bags of meat".

 

[Ghrakh]

Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but I could swear at least on the new blu rays the clones clearly looked like Riker and Pulaski and not just like "bags of meat".

Maybe they did? Its's not like viewers were freeze-framing the TV back then and scrutinizing the details like we do now. They were very briefly seen, meant to look like blobs but also recognizable as people in that short moment; the props department accomplished that objective with a minimum of fuss and effort. Trying to extrapolate that they've reach an advanced state of development based on that is very weak for an argument. We then have no choice but to accept that they were in an early developmental stage.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

^Riker wasn't carrying the clone inside of him.

No, he wasn't.

But these were life forms created from him (and Pulaski) without their consent.

My question stands. Would you consider it murder if a woman aborted a baby she became pregnant with after being raped?

It's not the right analogy. Would it be murder if a man aborted a baby when a woman became pregnant after stealing his sperm? I don't know the answer, but it's certainly a different question.

Anyway, your question depends on the trimester it's in and the law of the country we're talking about, so it's not the easiest thing to answer. My view tends to be the reason for the pregnancy is irrelevant and only becomes relevant if "fault" matters (i.e., that women can only have an abortion if they weren't at fault for getting pregnant in the first place). I think that's a mindset about punishing women for sex that's antiquated. But that's my personal opinion, which isn't exactly the answer to your irrelevant question.

 

[Grant]

How many people who are disgusted by what Riker did are pro-choice?

Clearly they were going for an abortion analogy and failed to make it clear what the exact level of development of the clones were.

A question by Riker before his act about whether they were viable or if their brains were developed would have been nice.

I watched it a few months ago and I found the lack of clarity disturbing, BUT I know that they were not advocating the slaughter of viable aware beings to satisfy the point of a person having the right to control procreation.

Poor writing, but hey, it was season 2.

 

[Trekker4747]

It's worth pointing out I think, that on DS9 Bashir uses a transporter to transplant Keiko's fetus into Kira's womb, so that suggests that a woman who didn't want to carry her baby could have it given to a "donor".
Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but I could swear at least on the new blu rays the clones clearly looked like Riker and Pulaski and not just like "bags of meat".

Looking at the screencaps of the BluRay and the DVD over on TrekCore, the caps above look to be from the Blu-Ray and other than the obviously better clarity the shot is identical to the DVD, which is consistent with how the BDs are being done. (They're not going back and remaking shots, especially shots of a physical set/prop built at the time of production since it's cheaper to simply reuse the original film than it is to rebuild and recreate a photorealistic shot in a computer.)

 

[Mojochi]

Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but I could swear at least on the new blu rays the clones clearly looked like Riker and Pulaski and not just like "bags of meat".

They look enough like them that they realize it's a clone of them. There's only 3 shots of the clones. Riker's clone's face, It's Body, (Which I posted earlier) & Pulaski's clone's face (Probably achieved though a face cast of both actors)

Riker

Pulaski

That it's shaped like an adult human, that it resembles the human it's reproducing & that it's state appears to be near that of a living human are not evidence that it is alive at all, or even almost complete. We know nothing about their process except that it is nothing like cloning that we are familiar with

Those two ugly bags of mostly water, which don't even appear to have stable molecular cohesion yet, might only be as far along as to be partially reproducing the outer form of a human. Nothing is known about the viability of any of its organs, including & especially the brain. Truth be told, the skin is an organ, & that doesn't even look finished. It can't be living if its organs are not finished to the point of molecular stability. They are a collection of molecules that are being processed into a human that will be made alive once it can be sustained as such.

No life is being taken here. Period. It's just partially formed people-stuff,

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

My question stands. Would you consider it murder if a woman aborted a baby she became pregnant with after being raped?

Riker wasn't pregnant.

Riker wasn't sexually assaulted

Not sexually, no. But Riker and Pulaski had genetic material stolen from them. That counts as some form of assault - not anywhere near as serious as an actual rape, of course, but it's still assault. Thus I think their reactions to being forcibly cloned would be a little more understandable.

 

[T'Girl]

Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but I could swear at least on the new blu rays the clones clearly looked like Riker and Pulaski and not just like "bags of meat".

Maybe they did? Its's not like viewers were freeze-framing the TV back then and scrutinizing the details like we do now. They were very briefly seen, meant to look like blobs but also recognizable as people in that short moment.

To me it looks like a average Human body with with some kind of liquid or make up applied to the skin.

The faces are full formed, and are not "blobs."

My understanding was that the clones were played by extras, and were not something the effects people made.

 

[borgboy]

Thanks for the pics.
That confirms what I was thinking, that the clones looked more like people than "bags of meat". Sci fi requires a certain suspension of disbelief, but this wasn't handled well. If they wanted us to accept the clones weren't viable they shouldn't have shown us their faces, which looked pretty well developed.
I am pro choice and I am disgusted by Riker's actions.
For what it's worth, Star Trek comic writer John Byrne wrote Namor, the Sub Mariner comic in the 90s. There was a story where he discovers that his dead wife has been cloned several times, resulting in fully grown women who have been living outside of vats or whatever for some time. They have the mental development at that point of two year olds, but only because they're young clones, and are expected to develop normally mentally in time. Namor is enraged and kills the clones.
Namor is king of Atlants, and cloning is illegal, so he has every legal right to kill them, but morally, I found this very very disturbing. It's worth pointing out that at this same time he learns that his beloved cousin is also a clone of her "mother", and he keeps quiet about it to protect her and continues to care about her.

 

[Mojochi]

If they wanted us to accept the clones weren't viable they shouldn't have shown us their faces, which looked pretty well developed.

Because everything you see with your eyes is true? I got a rabbit in my hat that would say otherwise