It was a total mess of a situation with no 100% morally correct solution. I think she did the closest to the right thing though.
Related...I don't understand the hate this episode gets. Treck is at its Treckiest when it's weird future moral dilemmas.
People argue about it instantly decades later. That proves it was effective.
All it proves was that the dilemma itself is effective.
The episode and its resolution are crap, because they don't justify her decision. They leave it to the viewer. They do a disservice to everyone involved.
People don’t hate the episode, they hate the “debate.”
It's clear to me that if a sentient crewmate says "please don't kill me" you should not murder them, no matter how grief stricken you are.
Tuvok and Neelix were dead.
(I do like this episode)
Janeway made the right call, no one wanted that Tuvix weirdo around, that's why no one came to his defense.
Tuvix was 50% Neelix which qualifies him for the death penalty. The real travesty is that Neelix was allowed to exist afterwards. /s
Janeway made the right call, Tuvok and Neelix had their own lives and families and they could be saved. Tuvok was also a majorly important member of the crew and his skills could easily have been instrumental to their salvation.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Tuvix needs to continue existing.
Tuvok and Neelix need to exist again outweighing Tuvix's need
The crew needs to be saved from Neelix's cooking and general incompetence, which have proved to be a more consistent threat than the borg. Thus, Tuvok and Neelix's needs are outweighed.
Janeway needs Tuvok to be there to talk her out of doing impulsive things like starting wars, causing civilizations to fall, buttfucking the timeline, or murdering crew members. This effects whole worlds, so the needs of the crew are outweighed.
They once showed Neelix taking a bath, and there is a chance (however small) that he might do it again. The audience's need to not risk seeing that outweighs all the previous needs.
Duplicate Tuvix, divide the duplicate at the moment it is formed and before it achieves self awareness, execute Neelix. What’s the issue?
Janeway gets to "execute" someone and we get both Tuvok & Tuvix, win win win
I was reflexively mad reading the start of this comment but by the end you had me 100% sold on your analysis.
Your mom outweighs the needs of the many
I never understood how transporters are not basically used as quicksave devices. Redshirt died on the planet after beaming down? Just create another copy from the transporter puffer. Tuvix deserves to live. Sure, just recreate tuvok and Neelix from the transporter puffer.
Edit: "Transporter puffer" may come from me watching the German dub
It's my head-canon conspiracy theory that the true workings of the transporter are hidden/obfuscated, even from the technicians and engineers, to avoid the existential dread of facing the truth: you die, and then it clones you.
All these systems to make it appear as if it's a single, consistent matter stream, to leave room for the possibility of a consistent consciousness or even soul. It all falls apart in light of William Riker. You can't duplicate matter. The only feasible explanation is that they got his scan, and successfully materialized him, but the signal that would have disintegrated the original failed.
Tuvix died because people couldn't accept how many times they had technically killed their colleagues, or commited suicide.
Sure, but different writers treat it differently. What about the one episode with Broccoli, where we get a first person view of being in the transporter, and he clearly has a continuous consciousness throughout the experience.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realm_of_Fear
Based on this episode, you aren't killed and recreated.
When you're advanced enough to let go of concepts like having a soul, the idea of having your being destroyed and remade elsewhere becomes a lot let problematic. What's the difference between being anesthetized and revived VS transported?
Shit, for all we know the universe just started five minutes ago and all of history is just a collective delusion. Just go with the flow and stop worrying about existential problems. One day you'll die forever and that's OK.
The transporter is just a people replicator. Same technology. Why reinvent the wheel?
The cannon answer is that it doesn't work that way, it coverts you to energy and that energy is turned back into you so "nothing changes". In cannon it doesn't kill you and assemble a new copy, and you can't duplicate a person because you only have one copy of their energy.
Accidents like Thomas Riker are not supposed to be possible and only happen when they encounter strange energies which cause reactions that aren't understood, so they can't just make duplicates on demand.
Transporters become horrifying when you think of them as something obliterating all your molecules then recreating them somewhere else. The thing that comes out the other side has all your memories and personality and looks the same… but you 100% died when you got vaporized in the teleport.
I would never do it.
If it has my memories and affects the world the way I would, that's me.
Look at any photograph or work of art. If you could duplicate exactly the first tiny dot of color, and then the next and the next, you would end with a perfect copy of the whole, indistinguishable from the original in every way, including the so-called "moral value" of the art itself. Nothing can transcend its smallest elements.
CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "The Ethics of Greed"
So... don't think of them like that. They clearly don't work that way in Trek.
Transporters were created to save money on the original series and have butt fucking plot holes ever since.
That's because of the plots they specifically made around the Transporters.
They don't create matter, they create an energy matter stream that moves the person molecule by molecule. How it happens is scifi magic, but it's not the same as creating new atoms, which would require every replicator to have the energy to obliterate a planet.
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Of course Janeway made the right choice. Anyone who says otherwise is either trolling or sexist. No one would care if it was Picard splitting Guiker or Sisko splitting Quira.
Can you imagine an episode where Picard doesn't agonize over this decision for 22 minutes and ultimately not do it? The guy spared the Borg.
Picard would have justified his choice. Janeway didn't even try.
That's not an indictment of Janeway, but of the lazy writers of that episode.
It’s the No Stametses Club, we’re allowed to have one.
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Tuvix was an atrocity and extinguishing it would have been morally correct even if it had not resulted in numerically more living beings.
That and, specifically, Tuvix probably suggested promoting Ensign Kim.
Manpower is crucial when you're stranded, definitely the right choice, a two for one deal!
Is this Quark's account? 100% Ferengi thinking you got there.
Look, there's no way Tuvok didn't have "under no circumstances is my body, my mind, my soul, my organs, my DNA, or any products thereof to be integrated into any form, permutation, or byproduct of Nelix" in his last will and testament. Therefore, Tuvix had to go.
She's just following Spock's wisdom.
2>1. The needs of the many, yadda yadda...
If only they could recreate the transporter accident that makes a perfect copy of a person. Then all that has to happen is to take the clone and split it before it realizes anything.
That way EVERYONE could exist together.
That's exactly what I've been telling people for ages regarding the Tuvix issue. Simple, yet effective.
Somebody made a full video explaining why that would make stuff twice as bad https://youtu.be/17cbC1AR7FE?si=StNEBon_i88Pt1hm
I didn't realize that Allison Pregler was still making videos post Channel Awesome fiasco. I always liked her movie and show reviews back in the day. Thanks for the recommend!
I can now see how I could be VERY clearly wrong in every way on the Tuvix topic from another perspective...
Bye dear Stamets, it's been lovely knowing ya! /s
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Lol, so given the basic trolley dilemma, you just gon run over as many as you can. In this case 2.
It’s called multitrack drifting.
I think tuvix was asking for it. Remember that time he swapped out Janeway's bra for a slightly smaller one. And it irritated her to the point she committed genocide on the breegans. He knew what was coming.
Ha yeah. Classic Tuvix. He got the whole section on double secret probation for that one.
In my mind, Tuvix continues to live on within Tuvok and Neelix, waiting for the day when he can reunite himself once again .
I bet there's some good slashfic about this.
