The Enterprise must aid two colonies struggling for survival, each with its own peculiarities. One colony was made up of people returning to a simpler way of living (as they say), and the other included scientists who ended up cloning themselves after an accident killed most of the colonists (there are only five of them).

Notes

The episode wasn't great, but the most startling thing is the way the crew of the Enterprise feel about clones. Granger, the leader of the Mariposa colony, requests some genetic material from the Enterprise, so that his colony won't die out:

Since the Enterprise won't help them, the Mariposans steal some genetic material instead. Riker's reaction to this... I said startling, above, but shocking or appalling might be more appropriate.

Perhaps this shouldn't be so surprising, given Picard's treatment of his future duplicate in Time Squared, but it's still disturbing. And Riker scarcely defends himself. To the charge of murder he replies not 'this was not murder' but 'you are a thief'. Whether Granger was a 'thief' or not, the clone was certainly innocent, and Riker is still a murderer. And how must Granger have felt about this? He, too, is a clone: will Riker murder him for some little provocation?

Moreover, this isn't the treatment given to Riker's transporter-malfunction-created clone, nor do I recall any other clones getting this treatment during Trek. Just for this one episode, murder is fine as long as it's consanguineous.

Melinda M. Snodgrass, the episode's writer, commented on the issue:

Maybe the pro-life side had a problem with the pro-choice message, but I think this misses the point, a bit. No one on the pro-choice side thinks that a person should be able to sneak into a hospital and kill a baby in an incubator. No one but Riker, anyway.