There are two people!
Janeway did nothing wrong.
Tuvix was never meant to be, and cannot help the circumstances of his creation, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
I wouldn’t feel good about it, as clearly Janeway did not, but I would make the same choice.
The way I see it, Tuvok and Neelix died in an accident, and a separate life emerged from it. The crew just couldn’t accept their deaths so they killed Tuvix to get them back.
I don’t see it as a logical decision but an emotional one. How Tuvix came to exist doesn’t matter, he was still a person, and they basically murdered him to get their friends back. He wouldn’t be the first living thing that wasn’t “meant” to exist.
Either way it’s a very difficult moral question and probably the best episode in Voyager as far as emotional impact.
I agree with this. However, I can understand why Janeway did what she did. Two crew members are better than one in the world where their crew had to survive in.
Same. It’s understandable, yet at the same time horrible when you look at it from Tuvix’s perspective. You make a good point about the survival aspect though. From that perspective it is logical.
I really wish Voyager had spent more time on the survival theme throughout the show, kind of like BSG did. Trying to survive in a remote part of the galaxy should’ve had a much bigger impact on the characters than it did.
The Doctor said it the best with that simple line of “first do no harm”. He’s acting in the present.
The way I think about the scenario is this:
- Two Main cast crew members die on away mission
- Q shows up and says I will bring them back to life and in exchange I will erase some random Starfleet member from the timeline and make it as if they never existed.
- Would anyone in Starfleet be ok with this?
I’m guessing no…
The only moral solution to the trolley problem is to arrest the experimenter and charge him with intellectual terrorism.
- Would anyone know about someone that doesn’t exist?
#JanewayIsAMurderer #SorryNotSorry
I feel like this is true for most of the crew too.
It’s a good thing O’Brian was on Deep Space 9 and Janeway was in the Delta quadrant, or the federation would would have turned into a STARBUCKS with 2 remaining employees (one of whom is in the pattern buffer).
All except Ensign Kim. She doesn’t even demand coffee in exchange for Kim.
That would be too close to giving him a promotion, and she can’t have that
He’s the creamer she refuses to put in her coffee.
Trolley Problem:
Option 1: Do nothing. Save Tuvix, but lose Neelix and Tuvok forever
Option 2: Pull lever. Kill Tuvix, but regain Neelix and TuvokOption 3: More Transporter shenanigans, end up with all three of them.
Yeah, given how the technology works, the only reason they can’t just save a copy of everyone to reconstitute later if something unexpected happens is the handwavium compensator.
I think S1 TNG had an episode where Picard’s “transporter energy” was stuck in the ship
Sadly, Voyager didn’t have access to Chief O’Brien.
What are we? A Futurama sub?
Daystrom institute. For shenanigans.
But then they’d have to contend with the idea that every time someone enters a transport they die.
That’s what happens, though, as proved in that Riker episode. He never left the planet, and a clone was created.
You only feel like you because your brain contains your memories. We could secretly clone you atom by atom and kill the original, and no one would be the wiser. Not even you. The new you.
In “Old Man’s War” they explain their mind uploading to a new improved body by a short moment where you feel like you’re in both bodies at once. Basically if you can synchronize both consciousnesses you can terminate the old one without it feeling like your existence is ending, because you exist in two places at once. That’s kind of what most episodes about the transporter suggest too, that you’re conscious during the transfer, and consciousness exists outside of the “physical” world.
Since that’s not possible in the real world, mind uploading would mean death too. The only way mind uploading can work for human minds is if you’d slowly alter the brain synapse by synapse (say over months or years) and slowly upgrade your brain and turn it into a computer without there being any determinable break in consciousness. You still couldn’t beam your mind to Saturn and back at lightspeed though.
In The Culture series they address the problem of cloned minds send into android bodies that it’s possible to reintegrate two consciousnesses back into one. But only if they both agree to it.
Well that’s neat. Sounds like nonsense to me, but at least it makes the technology less horrible in their universe.
Option 1, all the way. Neelix and Tuvok were already lost in a tragic transporter accident.
More lives saved more better in most cases. Option 2 no question
Yep. I always vote that she did the closest to the right thing. It was an absolute no win situation and she made the tough decision.
And I will always love the fact that she herself did it. She didn’t make anybody else push that button
She told the doctor to do it iirc who refused based on first do no harm.
oooh yeah. Forgot that.
Can we kill you to harvest your organs? Think how many people we can save.
You haven’t seen my organs
If I was built out of the organs of two other people who were dying as a result, yes you can return them to their original owners
Janeway was given the option to murder a sentient, self-aware individual being in order to bring back her two dead friends. The ends don’t justify the means.
She killed one non-crew member to save two crew members (one of whom was important to ship functions). She did the Starfleet thing.
Yeah, that’s murder. Why she decided to murder a guy isn’t terribly relevant, she straight up murdered Tuvix.
Absolutely it’s murder, but she murdered a non-Federation citizen with good cause, which is what I’d expect a Captain to do
What if you could save two of your friends by killing a sentien, self-aware alien that is trying to kill them? What makes their lives more valuable than random alien mook #49. In this case it’s the justice and motivation that justifies the ends.
PS: And yeah it’s still wrong to murder tuvix but very “primitive human” to sacrifice one to save their own tribe (see quark in little green men). But her real crime was insisting to return to the alpha quadrant instead of settling somewhere safe and build a second federation.
False analogy.
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No one was trying to kill Tuvok and Neelix, they were already dead. Victims of a tragic transporter accident which unfortunately ended their lives, with the additional result of a completely different individual coming into existence. Which brings me to
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Tuvix isn’t a belligerent, he is a complete innocent. He bears zero responsibility for the manner in which he came to be, he simply exists and, like every other living, rational being, wishes to continue existing.
Janeway’s actions were not a matter of defense of others by killing an enemy who was threatening them, they were a ritual sacrifice of an innocent as a dark offering to return her dead back to life. The fact that her means was technological rather that magical doesn’t change the fact that she murdered an innocent person to bring back two people who were already dead.
a ritual sacrifice of an innocent as a dark offering to return her dead back to life
Haha I love that. It would have been awesome if Tuvix “mental energy” would have reappeared later to haunt the ship and take possession of various ship systems to kill Janeway. Mostly by coffee.
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Given all of the issues that the federation has seen with transporters, I am shocked that they are even allowed to be used at all.
Fewer mouths to caffeineate.
She murdered her way into this, and by God, she’s going to murder her way out of it.
