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.
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)
'Dead' is a very fluid boundary. More so than usual, in this case.
Janeway made the right call, no one wanted that Tuvix weirdo around, that's why no one came to his defense.
It’s okay to murder people who are unpopular.
The gigachad viewpoint has arrived.
And you're next!
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?
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
"transporter puffer"
That's Chief Transporter Puffer to you!
I love the Geordi Grimace in this one.
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.
IIRC, it is explained (kinda) that the personal viewpoint of being solid within the matter stream isn't entirely real. Wishywashy, but how do you show that on a screen, really?
To the bigger issue above, the function of the transporter is that the pattern buffer isn't "storage" such that you cannot query against the buffer as if it's data in memory where individual particles can be pinpointed. (Obv this is not necessarily canon and some episodes poke holes in the idea).
I've always imagined it more like a mound of dirt dumped onto a conveyor in FIFO order, sending it up the beam, then rolling in order into the pattern buffer. The buffer is just holding all the matter in a continuous conveyor in the original order so it can be reassembled on the pad. Outright saving a pattern to memory where every particle location, energy state, etc. would take basically all the memory everywhere (TNG: Lonely Among Us). Weapon and bacteria/virus patterns could be simple enough to detect within the buffer to knock those bits out as the "dirt" rolls around continuously.
And of course the longer you roll a bunch of dirt down a conveyor, the positions of particles shift out of their original position until eventually there's not enough of the original pattern to reassemble properly.
My headcanon for Scotty locking the buffer into a diagnostic loop means additional scrutiny in the system's pattern scanning which then keeps "knocking" bits back into place they were in the prior 'pass' down the conveyor in order to continue calibrating scanners.
Don't look at me like I'm crazy, it totally makes sense!!!!!!!!!¡!!!¡!!! *cough
So, you’re saying Tuvix died for our sins?
Pardon my blasphemy.
No pardon, only meme
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.
The transporter doesn’t work this way
Sometimes it does but that doesn’t count because it’s not supposed to work this way
Just ignore it
Your soul is already lost to the warp.
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.
For more information, watch the documentary "The Prestige"
Oh man, that was a crazy reveal. And he kept them all!
Transporters were created to save money on the original series and have butt fucking plot holes ever since.
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!
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.
Lol, so given the basic trolley dilemma, you just gon run over as many as you can. In this case 2.
Star Trek memes and shitposts
Come on'n get your jamaharon on! There are no real rules—just don't break the weather control network.
