“Tuvix”
Written by Andrew Shepard Price & Mark Gaberman and Kenneth Biller
Directed by Cliff Bole
Season 2, Episode 24
Production episode 140
Original air date: May 6, 1996
Stardate: 49655.2
Captain’s log. Neelix and Tuvok are on the surface of a planet gathering samples of a flower that is high in nutrition. Neelix continues to play McCoy to Tuvok’s Spock by trying to get him to be more emotional and enjoy the beautiful day, but Tuvok isn’t having any of it.
Kim and Hogan are fixing an imaging issue in the transporter, but it should be fine now. (It isn’t fine now.) They beam Neelix and Tuvok and their plant samples up, and wind up with a single person in the transporter (with no plant samples) whose uniform is a melding of Neelix’s gaudy outfit and a Starfleet uniform, and who looks both Vulcan and Talaxian.
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The person identifies himself as both Neelix and Tuvok, and says he should probably report to sickbay. The EMH performs an examination, and he seems to be a complete melding of the two beings—but he’s also completely healthy, er, somehow, and also has plant DNA in his system, which would be the flower samples.
Kes is hugely weirded out by the whole thing and is very awkward around the being, who decides to call himself Tuvix (after suggesting and then rejecting Neevok). Tuvix is eager to return to duty, and the EMH is eager to get him out of sickbay, especially since he seems to have all of Tuvok’s and Neelix’s most annoying qualities. Janeway isn’t ready to let him do bridge duty, but he does go to the mess hall and rein in the chaos that has been let loose in the kitchen as the crew tries and fails to fill in for Neelix’s culinary service.
Tuvix also attends a staff meeting, and he suggests that the plants might provide an explanation: they reproduce by symbiogenesis, the merging of two different species to form another. The Andorian amoeba also reproduces that way. Janeway sends Paris down in a shuttlecraft to collect more samples of the orchids.
Kim and the EMH are able to replicate the transporter accident that created Tuvix with various orchids from the planet—but every attempt to separate them is disastrous.
Two weeks go by. Tuvix has settled into his new role as combination tactical officer and chef and the crew has grown accustomed to him—except for Kes, who remains incredibly uncomfortable around him. Eventually, however, they do come to a kind of rapprochement.
The EMH and Kim then have a breakthrough, a way of detecting one of the types of DNA strands and separating them out that way. However, Tuvix doesn’t wish to undergo the procedure. He’s a unique person, different from Tuvok and Neelix, and he doesn’t want to die—but that’s what will happen. He tries to convince Kes to talk Janeway out of forcing the issue, but Kes can’t do that for him, because she misses Neelix terribly.
Janeway orders him to undergo the procedure—she has to call security to bring him to sickbay—and then the EMH refuses to perform the procedure, because his program won’t allow him to go against a patient’s express wishes like that. So Janeway does it herself, beaming Tuvix away and beaming Tuvok and Neelix back.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The method of separating Tuvix back into his original bits, as it were, is based on a current medical practice, to wit, the swallowing of a radioactive substance like barium that irradiates certain internal organs in order to make them easier to scan. (Your humble rewatcher had a barium swallow a decade and a half ago to diagnose a hiatal hernia.)
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway discusses with Kes the difficulties of knowing that she’ll probably never see Mark again fighting against the hope that she will.
She also performs the separation of Tuvix herself after the EMH refuses to do so.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH has always found Tuvok to be arrogant and Neelix to be annoying, and now he gets them both in one person! He also comes up with the method of separating him but also refuses to perform the procedure because he was programmed to be ethical, which is more than can be said for the captain…
Everyone comes to Mr. Vulcan’s. Tuvix fixes a problem Tuvok said would take weeks, due to his following a hunch, and he also proves to be a better chef than Neelix. His Vulcan discipline has toned down the Talaxian’s exhausting cheeriness, and his Talaxian ebullience has smoothed down his Vulcan snottiness.
And in the end he refuses to willingly undergo the treatment that will restore Tuvok and Neelix, though he does forgive Janeway for her action.
Forever an ensign. We see Kim practicing his clarinet without Baytart bitching about it like he did in “The Thaw,” though this time he’s interrupted by the EMH with a new theory on how to split Tuvix back into Tuvok and Neelix.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Tuvix still loves Kes as much as Neelix does, plus there’s the mentor/mentee relationship Tuvok has with her, but Kes doesn’t see how she can pursue a relationship with him—in particular, she asks what about T’Pel, Tuvok’s wife? Tuvix’s answer is not entirely satisfactory…
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. Tuvix proves to be better at pool than either Tuvok or Neelix, to Paris’s chagrin.
Do it.
“According to my tests, he’s quite correct when he says that he possesses Tuvok’s knowledge and expertise. He also possesses Tuvok’s irritating sense of intellectual superiority and Neelix’s annoying ebullience. I would be very grateful to you if you would assign him some duty—any duty—somewhere else.”
–The EMH’s diagnosis of Tuvix and also his fervent desire to get him the hell out of sickbay.
Welcome aboard. Tom Wright does an amazing job of channeling both Tim Russ and Ethan Phillips as Tuvix. Wright was one of the people considered to play Benjamin Sisko on DS9. He will return to play Ghrath on the Enterprise episode “Storm Front.”
Simon Billig is also back as Hogan.
Trivial matters: The first draft of the script by Andrew Shepard Price & Mark Gaberman was much more humorous, but Kenneth Biller was charged with taking the high concept much more seriously.
The original plan was to have Ethan Phillips play Tuvix with different makeup, but that was nixed due to Phillips’ distinct voice and character.
We once again see Tuvok’s interest in orchids, as established in “Tattoo” and seen in “Alliances.”
Set a course for home. “At what point did he become an individual and not a transporter accident?” And now for a phrase I’ve used far too many times in this rewatch: This was a great episode until the ending.
I admire the execution of most of this episode. What had been pitched as a comedy, and which could have devolved into the most tiresome of farces, a batshit-science-fictional take on The Odd Couple, instead is a fascinating colloquy on the subject of individuality. Way back in 1970, James Blish wrote the second original Trek novel, Spock Must Die!, and it included a fascinating philosophical discussion as to whether or not you’re killed and a copy made of you every time you use the transporter.
In “Tuvix,” we see that taken to an extreme. We’ve seen awful transporter accidents before, from “The Enemy Within” to The Motion Picture to “Rascals,” and it would have been an easy out for scripter Kenneth Biller to work in a medical reason why Tuvix had to go through the procedure to separate. But he didn’t do that, instead having Tuvix be completely happy and healthy (even though the notion that this kind of fused being could survive for more than half a second is laughable—I would think the transport of the pig lizard in Galaxy Quest would be a more likely outcome). Because the point here is whether or not Tuvix is a viable sentient being in his own right, and should he die so that Tuvok and Neelix can live?
It’s a question with no easy answer. Kes’ question about T’Pel is a valid one, but it’s also exceedingly unlikely that Tuvok will ever see T’Pel again.
Tom Wright does amazing work here, and it’s what makes the episode sing. He manages a perfect melding of Tim Russ and Ethan Phillips’s mannerisms and speaking styles—it’s a bravura performance, one of the best in Trek history because it so perfectly embodies the character he’s playing.
He’s aided by amazing work by Kate Mulgrew and Jennifer Lien. Mulgrew’s struggles with the awful decision she has to make is palpable, and Lien magnificently plays Kes’ anguish, as she finds herself confronted with someone who is both her lover and her mentor, and yet is neither. She’s grieving twice over, and what’s worse, she’s got a constant reminder of what she’s lost wandering the corridors.
But when it comes time to make the final decision, the episode falls horribly short. Part of why is Voyager’s aggressive standalone nature. Actions very rarely have consequences on this show because they avoid consequences like the plague, but Janeway’s decision here is the most consequential she’s made since she decided to blow up the Caretaker’s array. However, aside from a brief mention by Naomi Wildman in season seven, Tuvix will never even be acknowledged ever again.
That wouldn’t be so much of a problem if the episode didn’t end with the separation, but we don’t get that until the last possible second. So we don’t get to see how Janeway deals with a decision so awful that the EMH wouldn’t even perform the procedure. (More on that in a minute.)
What’s infinitely, horribly worse is that we don’t see how Tuvok and Neelix react to it! Do the two of them feel the same way Tuvix did? Are they upset that he’s dead? Are they grateful? Do they have mixed feelings? This is extremely important information to have. I mean, my guess would be that Tuvok the rationalist is more okay with it than Neelix the emotionalist, but we don’t know.
And it absolutely ruins the episode, because the moral dilemma here is a terrible one, one that results in the captain of a Starfleet vessel—an organization that is supposed to be upholding the Federation’s firm belief in the rights of the individual regardless of what species that individual is from—forcing a sentient being to undergo a medical procedure against his will. On the face of it, it’s a hugely despicable act—it’s so far beyond the pale that the EMH out-and-out refuses to do it. On the other hand, Starfleet is a military organization, and Tuvok, Neelix, and Tuvix are all serving under Janeway’s command, and ordering subordinates to their death is something that every ship captain is likely to have to do at some point.
For this episode to truly work as the morality play it set itself up as, the procedure needed to happen at the end of Act 4, not Act 5. Because we know that everything will be back to normal again at the top of the next episode, the consequences of this incredibly difficult decision needed to be seen in this script, and the script utterly botched it, ruining what could have been a great episode.
Warp factor rating: 4
Keith R.A. DeCandido encourages folks to check out “KRAD COVID readings,” in which he has been doing readings of his various writings, mostly short stories—including the Voyager story “Letting Go” from the Distant Shores anthology. In addition, his reading of a chapter from the Star Trek: Klingon Empire novel A Burning House, originally done for KAG Kon 2020: Home Invasion last weekend, is now available on the channel as well.
I never quite forgave Janeway for her decision in this one. Effectively, Tuvok and Neelix were dead. Tuvix was a new person.
Added to that is the awareness that, when plot permits, the transporter can make perfect duplicates of people, and had it been one of those days, the ship could have had all 3 people–not really an in show answer, through, because no one remembers the transporter’s ability in between problems.
Also: this episode proves that Barclay’s reluctance to use the transporter is 100% reasonable.
It would be one thing if Tuvix was placed in a medical coma until Tuvok and Neelix could be restored – that at least would be consistent. But they treated Tuvix as a person, giving him duties, etc., until the moment he became inconvenient. Mirror-Janeway would have made a ship-wide announcement, “Tuvix has been destroyed, for the glory of the Terran Empire. Each of you must do your utmost, or be judged equally unnecessary,” but our Janeway just lets that lesson be implied by her action.
this is an episode that I’ve only seen a handful of times because its a tough one to rewatch. I don’t even know why that is for me. Maybe too sad or tough to see Janeway in this position? Anyways, one thing that I find interesting is a panel that I attended in 2016 at STLV that was for Kate Mulgrew. Someone asked her how she personally felt about the ethics of this episode and she actually just waved it off saying she was perfectly fine with the outcome because she didn’t like the actor playing Tuvix at all and was glad to be rid of him. It was funny if only because that wasn’t what anyone expected her to say and certainly didn’t really answer the question but definitely makes you wonder about the filming of this episode.
Tom Wright is sooo good in this ep & I can see why he was considered for Sisko.
Ugh that end! The very happy hug Neelix immediately bestows upon Kes after the separation made we want to scream! Not even a subtle, WTF just happened expression from him over Kes’ shoulder. There is just no reaction from Tuvok or Neelix AT ALL over what happened to them & there never will be because of the damn reset button that always has someone’s hand on it…
Perfect review. It’s just like The 37’s or Phage, a ton of time is wasted getting to the most interesting part of the episode, then they rush through it without real discussion or thought.
It’s a question with no easy answer. Kes’ question about T’Pel is a valid one, but it’s also exceedingly unlikely that Tuvok will ever see T’Pel again.
More to the point, it’s even more exceedingly unlikely that Tuvok will ever see T’Pel within Kes’s lifetime. Kes is two years old as of Twisted, which was a season one episode (at least by production order). Even in the insane hypothetical where Kes stays on the ship, marries Tuvix, and the ship still gets home at the end of season 7, by then she’ll be 8/9 and knocking on death’s door. So this is really just inventing problems, even if the ship finds an insane shortcut the overlap between being home and Kes’s death from Ocampa Old Age would be tiny. Far more likely, the ship never makes it back or Kes is dead by then anyway. And even that is assuming T’Pel stays single when logic dictates her husband is almost certainly dead, which is by no means a guarantee.
Indeed, a great time until the end. But we do get Janeway’s anguish and then resolve at the very end, etched perfectly on Kate Mulgrew’s face. Sadly, that’s all we get as far as consequences.
I only watched this once because of how uncomfortable it made me. But I watched it again for this rewatch and I think I was even more uncomfortable this time. Bravo to Ethan Phillips for causing me such discomfort. He acted the hell out of this episode. But that ending…when he’s begging everyone on the bridge to let him live…and then Janeway just coldly forces him to undergo the procedure. When I first watched this, I assumed that they would take the cliched way out and come up with a solution at the last minute. So when Janeway forced him to the medical bay, I kept thinking she actually had a different plan in mind. But no, she really did decide to kill him. That really threw me. I felt awful at having watched it.
So, yeah, a really uncomfortable episode for me. I wonder if any philosophy classes ever discuss this episode?
@1. IBookwyrme: I heartily disagree with the assertion that Mister Tuvok & Mister Neelix were dead, not least because the episode revolves around them being safely separated once more, but also because (even just within the scope of VOYAGER to date) we’ve seen Starfleet officers substantially altered and then restored to their original selves, so why should the life of Tuvix be privileged over the lives of Mr Tuvok & Mr Neelix by being allowed to supersede them?
Austin: Ethan Phillips was barely in the episode. Tuvix was played by Tom Wright.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@3, Lauren: Someone asked [Kate Mulgrew] how she personally felt about the ethics of this episode and she actually just waved it off saying she was perfectly fine with the outcome because she didn’t like the actor playing Tuvix at all and was glad to be rid of him.
That’s hilarious. Years back, the actor did an AMA on reddit and, of her, said: “Voyager was one of the most professional sets I’ve ever been on. Rarely did anyone play a practical joke or deliberately try to make another cast member laugh on camera. Kate Mulgrew is a very serious performer and everyone followed her lead.”
So, uh, reading between the lines sounds like there was some tension between the two and he was way more diplomatic about it, at least in print.
I smiled at your unique “Everyone comes to Mr. Vulcan’s” heading
Seriously, Janeway stops and stands outside the Sickbay doorway for a mere 2 seconds and then walks away as if nothing had happened. Personally I understand she had a tough decision to make, but without shedding a tear? Without a sad face while leaning against the wall? I don’t think “it was the end of Act 5” is a good excuse, either. “Charlie X,” “The City on the Edge of Forever” and “Who Mourns” did a much better job with “I wish we hadn’t had to do this” even though they, too, had their tragedies at the end of act 5.
What, does Janeway have a stone cold heart? Or maybe she feels 100% justified (ugh)
Ah, I believe this is the most controversial episode of any iteration of Star Trek, no? I believe it also added to the consensus of a segment of Trek fandom that Janeway was a bad a captain, or just a bad person period, because she’s a murderer!
But I agree that this is a mostly good episode on what it means to be a unique individual and your right to exist, which is then botched by the ending because of the implications of snuffing out that individuality (that life, really), is given absolutely no screen time for the implications of that action to be explored. And it’s all because of the standalone nature of the series that we have the immediate reset button in time for next week’s episode. One does wonder, if Tuvix has been aboard ship living life and making friends for a longer period of time, say a year, and then the EMH discovers the separation treatment, would Janeway still go through with the procedure? How long does this new sentient individual need to be around before Janeway won’t allow it? Apparently two weeks is not long enough.
The acting across the board is excellent with obviously Tom Wright standing out. I doubt it was ever seriously considered by the Voyager showrunners and creators but there would have been so much new storyline potential with having this new character on board essentially replacing two others and upsetting the status quo. But that would be too bold a move for this series.
The name “Tuvix” always made me snicker. It sounds like the name of a candy bar to me.
This one was better than it had any right to be. It was a good decision to take a wacky, comic premise and treat it seriously. Voyager’s weakness was invoking big ideas and not developing them, but in this case they followed it through, at least within the bounds of this one episode. The show began to get better when they made good episodes out of ideas that should have been disasters.
The reset button is annoying, but part of the deal with almost all pre-21st-century television. At least they didn’t, like ST:TOS often did, follow up some horrific trauma with a quick joke and the main characters sharing a laugh to end the episode.
Janeway’s decision might have been dramatically mistimed at the very end, but it is right in character for her — she is the most ruthless of the ST captains. She has compassion and comes from a science background, but when a drastic decision is necessary she does not hesitate. It would have been just as awful to decide to let Tuvok and Neelix die when they could have been brought back.
@9 – Ugh, brain fart! I, of course, meant Tom Wright but my fingers typed something else. Sadly, I do that all the time…
@1 – I’m not at all going to say you’re wrong, but since they were able to bring back both of them, you could argue that they weren’t dead.
And then we’ve got a decent dilemma – do we sacrifice one life to save two? “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few… or the one” (Although that’s an argument that other captains have not chosen to use, notably Picard in Insurrection).
@12 – I hope it’s not a consensus, because Janeway is my favorite of all the captains! Well, mostly because I’m in awe of Mulgrew’s acting. She can convey so much with a facial expression…I think she gives Stewart a run for his money in the acting department. I also enjoy the cold practicality of her character. She makes the tough decisions.
I remember this episode vividly. I think that if they’d been able to separate Tuvok and Neelix immediately, or within a couple of days, it would have been an easier decision. But the waiting (without putting Tuvix in stasis, as mentioned above), and giving the blended entity his own identity and purpose was what made it so difficult. If they had perhaps continued to treat him like an unfortunate transporter accident, addressing him as Neelix or Tuvok as the need arose, or something. And yet he did seem to be his own person, which makes those actions seem demeaning as well.
Great episode, as it addressed something very difficult and terrible. I appreciate the pains the writers took to make sure it truly felt like a dilemma. I fall squarely on the side of Janeway. The transporter created Tuvix, whose life is not more important than those of Neelix and Tuvok. I went through the episode frustrated with everyone who kept talking about killing Tuvix, as though he were not the product of an accident that needed a medical/technological fix.
And kudos to Tom Wright. Excellent blending of the two characters. I was totally convinced by his performance and enjoyed it very much!
I’ve always thought this was a brilliant episode, for the most part. It’s the best kind of science fiction story — one that literally could not exist without its speculative premise, and that uses that premise to explore philosophical, ethical, and emotional questions that could never have been asked in any other genre. Sure, the science is absolutely idiotic, and the concept basically boils down to “The Enemy Within” in reverse, but the questions it raises are so compelling and unique that I can forgive that. And yes, Tom Wright was brilliant in the role.
I also had a lot of respect for the way Voyager explored stories that forced Janeway to make impossible moral choices, “Death Wish” being another. Naturally, it was obvious all along that the episode would end with Tuvok and Neelix restored, and that Janeway’s decision was forced by that need. But I’m not as outraged by Janeway’s choice as many people have always been. Either choice she made would mean that someone effectively died. There was no truly “right” answer, just the lesser of two evils. But it always seemed to me that Tuvix lost the crew’s sympathy in the final bridge scene when he panicked and begged for his life. He was basically asking them to sacrifice the lives of two of their friends and crewmates so he could live, and I think that was asking too much of them. Would they have been able to trust him after that? What might he do if it came down to a choice between their lives or his on an away team? So I think Janeway decided it would endanger crew morale and integrity too much to let Tuvix remain. A cruel choice, certainly, but the only one she could make with the long-term unity of her crew in mind, when that crew would be stuck with each other for decades to come.
I do agree that the failure to include a denouement scene addressing how Tuvok and Neelix feel in the wake of all this is a serious drawback. For years after this, there was no way of knowing if either of them even remembered being Tuvix. So the abrupt ending does undermine the episode, but I don’t think it hurts it nearly as badly as Keith does.
By the way, this episode was originally going to be titled “Symbiogenesis,” and it was referred to that way in the TV listings up until very shortly before it aired. I remember being quite surprised to see it titled “Tuvix” instead.
@krad I think you’re spot-on with your assessment about where the separation needed to happen. One of the problems I’ve always had with Voyager was that it often confused a climax for a conclusion. This episode is a perfect example of that.
Why should Tuvix have to die to get Tuvok and Neelix back? We’ve established the transporter has the ability to create matter by making duplicates haven’t we?
Credit to the writers for not taking the easy way out and making the Tuvix melding unstable the way they did for the B’elanna and Torres. I would have expected the show to make it so Tuvix was dying to justify restoring the two series regulars.
I think part of the issue with this episode is that it relies heavily on Kes’ desire to have her boyfriend back. Which would normally be extremely compelling, except that her boyfriend is Neelix, and getting him back is not something that the audience is exactly scrambling for. Honestly, they probably would have been better off focusing more on how they wanted/needed Tuvok back- since he is a character people actually like, and (unlike Neelix), actually serves a vital purpose on the ship.
I watched this episode shortly after I had re-watched “Measure of a Man,” and Picard’s line about how they are supposed to seek out new life, and have done just that, stuck out to me. Tuvix (god, that name is bad. It sounds like it’s part of the female Vulcan reproductive system or something) is the very definition of “new life,” and they….kill him at the first opportunity. I do admire, as KRAD pointed out, that the episode didn’t take the easy way out, but it some ways that makes the ending even more cruel. Tuvix is happy to exist, and since he is the only person who can even kind of tell us if Neelix and Tuvok are happy about the situation, I don’t know why his opinion isn’t weighed more heavily. And seriously- NO ONE on the ship is willing to help him, as he stands there begging for his life? No one is even willing to try to talk the Captain out of it? I guess Janeway really did get to handpick her crew for this mission, and it looks like she picked people who are just as soulless as her. It would have been nice to see, say, Chakotay *really* go to bat for Tuvix, argue that he was a person who deserved life, even if it was an accident. It could have added a nice bit of tension to the Chakotay-Janeway relationship, without having to get into the Maquis stuff the show was so determined to avoid.
The point about T’Pel is one I am glad they raised, but both she and Tuvok are Vulcans, and the Voyager has been declared lost. Even if he hopes she might be waiting for him if they get home, I don’t think Tuvok expects that she will.
The very least the show could have done was do a follow up to this- it would have been nice to see a later episode that showed that this experience had profoundly impacted both Neelix and Tuvok. Honestly, if nothing else it would have been a good excuse to tone some of Neelix’s annoying behavior down a little bit. Or, more interestingly, have them be upset by Janeway’s decision. Have them realize that they were both better versions of themselves when they were combined- that they, and maybe even the ship, were better off with someone who was a mix of their best qualities. Have them work through that for an episode- maybe have it damage Janeway and Tuvok’s relationship a little, or change how Neelix views the allegedly benevolent Federation. Instead we get the usual slam of the reset button.
And it’s a small thing- but it always bothered me that when they separate them out at the end, the flower isn’t *also* separated out. So I guess from now on one or both of them is just part flower.
I find myself able to easily forgive the ending on Janeway’s part as the abruptness of it just leaves her looking cold. Harder to forgive in that it doesn’t show much in Tuvok and Neelix dealing with everything afterwards, but again I don’t think it needs to highlight the consequences of the decision when it works well enough presenting us with an impossible decision and resolving it.
Though it would be nice, I don’t need to see these three characters dealing with the ramifications of Janeway’s action at the end. I think it would be a disservice to do so. Not giving us the characters’ reactions more firmly places the onus on us, the viewer, to contemplate how we feel about it. Any commentary from Janeway, Tuvok, or Neelix after the fact would affect any thoughts I have on the moral implications of the episode. That this specific episode is so divisive among fans is an indicator to me that they did it right. The last thing I want is for the show to suggest any further if separating the two was the right or wrong decision.
I appreciate that this was a serious episode. From the premise alone, I assumed it would be a silly episode. It should be a silly episode. But the fact that they instead used such a silly premise to explore a moral quandary like this made it one of my favorite Trek episodes, in a show I don’t much care for.
I also appreciate the show for giving us an uneasy resolution. How many times have we seen this before? Characters are presented with an intense moral quandary and spend the episode debating what is right, only for the situation to resolve itself at the very end. I would much prefer the ending we got rather than an indecisive Janeway, unable to decide if she could go through with the order, having the decision made for her because “The ion field is making Tuvix’s DNA unstable and we need to separate them now before they all die!” followed by Chakotay asking her if she could have done it and the inevitable indecisive response as the camera fades to black.
@20/roxana: “Why should Tuvix have to die to get Tuvok and Neelix back? We’ve established the transporter has the ability to create matter by making duplicates haven’t we?”
Only in exceptional, non-replicable freak conditions, not as a general rule. After all, the implications if anyone could be duplicated at will would be so disruptive as to make storytelling impossible. Nobody would have to risk their lives because you could just make a duplicate and send them into danger. Naturally the creators of the show made a point of establishing that it couldn’t happen except as a one-in-a-billion fluke. Or, as in the case of “The Enemy Within,” that it would soon kill both duplicates unless the effect were reversed.
@22/wildfyrewarning: “Tuvixs is happy to exist, and since he is the only person who can even kind of tell us if Neelix and Tuvok are happy about the situation, I don’t know why his opinion isn’t weighed more heavily.”
Can his perception of that really be trusted, though? In DS9: “Invasive Procedures,” when Verad forcibly joined with the Dax symbiont, Verad Dax claimed that Dax was content with the merger, but can we really trust that’s true? I’m sure the Borg Queen would’ve insisted that all the drones the Collective assimilated were happy as drones, but that doesn’t mean they would’ve volunteered for it as individuals.
Part of the point of the episode, after all, was that Tuvix was a distinct person from either Tuvok or Neelix. He didn’t think or act the way either of them would act, because the whole was not merely the sum of its parts, but a new synergy.
Even without sci-fi personality mergers, consent can’t be assumed with an altered mental state. A person suffering from clinical depression may believe they’re perfectly willing to commit suicide, but if they survive and recover their healthy neurochemical balance, they’ll feel completely differently and would never consent to end their life the way they could have when they were depressed. Similarly, someone can be drugged or brainwashed into believing they’re okay with something they would oppose in their right mind. Of course, the Tuvix merger was accident rather than predation, but it resulted in a mental state altered from either individual’s mental state, and thus Tuvix cannot be presumed to speak for either of his constituents.
@23/Perene: “Not giving us the characters’ reactions more firmly places the onus on us, the viewer, to contemplate how we feel about it. Any commentary from Janeway, Tuvok, or Neelix after the fact would affect any thoughts I have on the moral implications of the episode.”
That’s a good point, but my objection to the ending is simpler: They should’ve at least made it clear whether Tuvok or Neelix remembered being Tuvix. What I felt was missing was not a comment on the morality of Janeway’s decision, but just some exploration of how those two people were affected by their transformation, whether they learned to appreciate each other more or something like that.
@@@@@ CLB, my issues aren’t really with the choice, but that there were no consequences after the whole thing was said and done. In addition to the killing of a distinct, sentient being, this had to be a traumatic experience for Neelix and Tuvok all around and that is never ever addressed. All we get is Kes having her happy embrace and Janeway showing some anguish about her decision in the hallway. Neelix & Tuvok become almost irrelevant at the end despite them being the reason Tuvix dies.
@25/treebee72: Yes, and I agree with all of that. I thought I said as much.
@@@@@ CLB – I’m semi-slacking off at work, so might have misread your original comment. :)
@24, I mean, I take your point, but what happened with Dax was a clear act of aggression on the part of one party, whose word could obviously not be trusted even before he was joined. What happened to Tuvok and Neelix was 100% an accident, with no one being the “bad guy” (except maybe whoever tests the safety parameters for the transporters). To compare it to another transporter accident, no one suggests they should kill Thomas Riker, and if I remember right there is never any discussion of combining the two Rikers back into one person- even though Will has made expressly clear before that he does not want there to be more than one of him. As soon as the accident happened, Will and Thomas where both people with rights, and where treated as such. And while Tuvix is obviously biased (as a sentient, living person who doesn’t want to undergo what is essentially a summery execution), we also never see any sign that he is not an honest person, and the fact that he wants to live is basically treated as being besides the point. I’m not saying that one or the other is *right* answer, but there was definitely nowhere near the amount of soul searching, discussion, and analysis that should have happened before the decision was made. Kes wants her annoying boyfriend back, Janeway wants her friend back- and all it costs her is 2 seconds of looking sad after she killed a sentient being, against his wishes, and against medical (and god knows how many other types of) ethics.
It’s been a loooong time since I watched this one, but I recall being shocked when the (then 22-ish) me watched Janeway coldly decide to (in my eyes) kill a blameless living creature who – through no fault of his own – came into being.
I was a Janeway fan, but I hated her for this act. Moreso, in fact, because the doctor refused point-blank to be a part of it and I hoped, right up to the end, that she’d find a way to allow all 3 to exist. She was Janeway, after all; every inch a captain but with that nerdy scientific core.
It seemed to me to be an object lesson in the difference between rationality and reason. The crew missed their crew members. Kes did. So did Janeway. It was reasonable to search for, and then instigate, a cure. Was it rational? Christ no, they killed a living being who did nothing to deserve it beyond not being who they wanted it to be. Still, I imagine that in deep space, sitting on the fence and crying solves nothing. Janeway picked a side and took it to its logical conclusion, which at least made for a talking point. Except that bit when they then never mention it again.
@28/wildfyrewarning: I already addressed that. It’s not about the aggression, it’s about the altered mental state and the lack of consent. Nobody forced Tuvok and Neelix together, nobody is to blame, but that’s irrelevant to the point. The point is that it happened without their consent and they were subsequently in an altered mental state that cannot reasonably or ethically be presumed to represent either individual’s state of mind. So Tuvix cannot competently be presumed to speak on Tuvok’s or Neelix’s behalf on the question of consent. Again, a key part of the episode’s premise is that he was a distinct person from either of them. If he hadn’t been, if he’d just been Tuvok and Neelix in one convenient package, then the ethical dilemma wouldn’t have existed.
That is not to say he had no right to exist. He had every right to speak on his own behalf. He just couldn’t be presumed to speak on Tuvok’s or Neelix’s behalf, because he was a distinct entity from either of them.
This is the episode that made me quit Voyager, over 20 years ago. It took decades for me to reevaluate the show and give it a second chance with the following seasons (I didn’t really start season 3 until last year). Like Deadlock, Tuvix is a fascinating episode ruined apart by its ending. But Deadlock mostly holds together. Tuvix is definitely the worst offender, as the lack of consequences for Janeway’s action is appalling (on Deadlock, at least I can imagine some unusually friendly starbase visit between episodes to justify the ship’s repairs).
I can understand Kes’s desire to have Neelix back. I can understand Janeway and the crew’s desire to have Tuvok back. I can even stand by an episode that will go through with the merging procedure, as long as we deal with the long term consequences of what they just did. But by avoiding the consequences, Kenneth Biller and the writers have pretty much endorsed a unilateral return to status quo, Tuvix’s existence be damned. No one mourns him, aside from that left-field mention of him by Naomi, years down the line.
I lost a lot of respect for Janeway as a character and as a captain that day, and I’d argue she never quite won me back. But even more so than her decision, I deplore the crew’s complete silence and omission as Tuvix runs for his life, pleading his case. Only the EMH maintains any semblance of integrity by refusing to act. But where’s Chakotay’s objection? Shouldn’t the first officer have a say on the welfare of a crewmember he’s learned to trust and respect? Janeway terminated an innocent person’s existence and the crew just stood by. As far as I know, this makes them no better than the Equinox’s crew. Needless to say, I was pissed the first time I watched this.
It could all have been solved, if the show had the balls to show the aftermath, both in this episode and the following ones.
It’s a real shame, because up until that point, Tuvix is a brilliant episode, a superb character study, with a fantastic guest star driving it, and maintaining much of Tuvok and Neelix in the process.
@24/Christopher: I have to disagree. Tuvix had been an active crewmember for weeks at that point, gaining wisdom and experience. His state of mind was pretty much stable and setted after all that time. And then to be confronted with a procedure that will erase him? He had every right to panic and beg for his existence. And the crew is guilty of not only endorsing Janeway, but also of looking at Tuvix with contempt for begging for his life.
@29/MonktonGaz: It’s interesting to me that the thing people condemn the episode for is the same thing they praise it for: The fact that it forced Janeway to make a cruel choice rather than giving her an easy way out. Yes, she chose to end Tuvix’s life, but her only other option was to end both Tuvok’s and Neelix’s life. If there had been a third, nicer option, it wouldn’t have been as powerful and compelling a story. So no matter which choice Janeway made, someone would’ve died from it. If, by some impossible twist of circumstances, they’d fired Tim Russ and Ethan Philipps and made Tom Wright a regular, people would hate her just as much for killing Tuvok and Neelix (okay, maybe not so much Neelix). Of course they wouldn’t have done that, but either way, Janeway had no good option, and that’s what made it compelling and daring to tell this story.
@32/ChristoperLBennett I agree, and as much as I hated the choice she made, at least she made one and took responsibility, as I say in the final paragraph. Mind you, as I also say in my final paragraph, it would have been nice had this event been referenced even once in the next couple of episodes, perhaps. Maybe the key agitators in the decision could confront their actions, or the Doctor could chide Janeway for what she did. Something – anything – would have been good. Who knows, it could have been used as a threat to an aggressive species at some point in the future: “Don’t push her. You won’t believe what she once did to her own crew member!”
@31/Eduardo Jencarelli: “But by avoiding the consequences, Kenneth Biller and the writers have pretty much endorsed a unilateral return to status quo”
But that’s the norm for the entire series, as dictated by UPN and Rick Berman. How is this episode specifically to blame for it, then? It was obvious from the beginning that the status quo would be restored at the end. It would’ve been naive to think otherwise. What matters in a formulaic series is how good a story a writer manages to tell within the confines of the formula, and this was a hell of a good story despite the restrictions it labored under.
“He had every right to panic and beg for his existence.”
I’m not saying he didn’t. I’m not saying Janeway made the “right” choice, because the whole thing that makes this episode so bold and powerful and tragic is that there is no right choice, only a choice between wrongs. Since both outcomes were equally bad, Janeway had to resort to pragmatism to make her choice, and the impression those last couple of scenes gave me was that the deciding factor for her was the long-term morale of the crew, whether they could trust Tuvix going forward, or resent him for begging for his life over Tuvok’s and Neelix’s. I want to make it crystal clear that I am not saying I agree with or endorse this view. Discussing other people’s beliefs or opinions does not equate to sharing them. I am merely saying that I felt that was the reason behind Janeway’s choice. She couldn’t think only about Tuvix. She had to think about 150-some other people and what was best for them over the years or decades ahead, stuck with each other, where anything that undermined trust or morale could fester and grow into something fatal.
@31 – To Chakotay’s credit, he did look very uncomfortable and on the verge of saying something. But the crew’s silence during that scene is one of the things that really made me uncomfortable.
I could see this case being a revamped Kobiyashi Maru scenario for future cadets. There really is no good option here, but I suppose “needs of the many” still applies when the many is just one more in number.
Yeah, not a fun one, this episode. Could you bring back the Clown?
CLB@@@@@24 said: He didn’t think or act the way either of them would act, because the whole was not merely the sum of its parts, but a new synergy.
I think it was Janeway who said something like ‘It’s an old saying that the whole does not equal the sum of its parts” as if the whole is somehow less than expected from the sum. This surprised me, because it seemed like an inversion of what I *thought* was the old saying: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
Also @@@@@ CLB or Krad: Do we know whether Garrett Wang actually plays clarinet? In the eps that show him with the instrument, it looks to me as if he does, but I’m a strings player not a woodwind instrumentalist. (Am I also repeating myself? Sorry!)
@37/srEDIT: In this case, the whole was neither greater nor lesser than the sum of its parts, just different. In the same way that table salt has different properties from either sodium or chlorine, or water has different properties from hydrogen or oxygen.
@34/Christopher: It’s not a problem that the status quo was going to be restored. It’s that the show bailed out on showing us the emotional and psychological consequences of Janeway’s actions. I don’t care how episodic Voyager is, they can’t just ignore what happened in this particular case. Not once we get a scene of Janeway coping with what she did.
To give an example: the following episode, Resolutions, has Janeway contracting a virus, forcing her to be stranded on an uninhabited planet, and she transfers command to Tuvok, She could have had a private comm chat with him, as she confesses her deepest fears and worries, and ponders aloud whether the universe is punishing her for what she did to Tuvix (Tuvok would likely provide a logical reply, easing her consciousness). She would also apologize to him at that point, and Tuvok would defend her saying as Captain she had prerrogative.
Tuvix is the kind of story that would likely work better on DS9. Say, merging Quark and Odo. Now that experience would leave a lasting impact on all parties involved: Kira, Dax, Sisko, Rom, Nog, and so on.
The biggest issue I have in this whole thing is that Janeway made a decision that forces someone under her command to undergo a medical procedure against their will. This is not a small thing — in fact, it’s so horrific a thing that the EMH won’t do it. And it sets a horrible precedent.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@39, in fact, this episode reminded me a little of when Curzon and Odo got merged together! Both were happy with what they got out of the situation (Odo getting to experience things like eating and drinking, and Curzon basically getting to be alive again). It even had the interesting addition of Jadzia not being whole anymore without her previous hosts. I thought they did a better job of showing all the moral ambiguities that went into it, and not once did someone decide they were God and could giveth and taketh life away with one order.
@40 – That’s what bothers you? And not the actual killing? I mean, she was saving the life of Tuvok and Neelix. It’s not like she was forcing a vaccine on someone or a face lift or something trivial like that. And it’s not even really a medical procedure. It’s a transport, technically.
I’m glad to see that I was not the only one that felt uncomfortable watching this episode a 2nd time. Many times I skimmed by it as I was looking for an episode to watch. I always thought it was a very good episode but couldn’t understand why I never wanted to re-watch it. I eventually did about several weeks ago. Not sure if I will ever watch it a third time. And yes, Watson did an excellent job as Tuvix.
I thought Janeway made the right choice. She is the Captain and Captains look out for their crew members. What message would that send to the crew if she went the other way. Would she desert me in a crisis?
That’s Tom Wright not Tom Watson.
Now that the precedent is set, Janeway can order the EMH to dissect Kim if it’s necessary to save (say) Torres and Paris.
@40/krad: “And it sets a horrible precedent.”
Yes, but isn’t that the sort of thing that we should have expected from a situation like this, a crew stranded far from home, alone and struggling to survive? Isn’t exploring the difficult choices forced on a crew in that situation something that Voyager too often failed to do, except with guest stars like the Equinox crew years down the road?
I mean, this captain and crew are under restrictions that other Starfleet crews wouldn’t normally face. They can’t transfer personnel, they can’t turn to Starfleet for help — they’re in a survival situation, and sometimes that means facing awful choices. This is one of the few times the show was bold enough to face that rather than finding a way to cop out. That doesn’t make Janeway’s choice right, but it makes the writers’ choice a lot more interesting. (What kind of precedent did “In the Pale Moonlight” set for Sisko?)
@42/Austin: There’s nothing trivial about vaccination. Before vaccines were developed, pandemics like the one we’re in now were a frequent occurrence. It’s not an optional personal choice, it’s a necessity for public health.
@45 Well, probably not- the Doctor’s pretty clear he wants to part of such a thing. She’d have to wield the scalpel (or whatever the high tech equivalent is- Dermal Decoupler?) herself!
One imagines that Janeway’s actions in the Delta Quadrant probably came under review by Starfleet upon Voyager’s return to the Federation. Showing us this, in practice, probably would have amounted to a clip show (Stargate SG-1 did this a couple of times, IIRC) and would have been an odd bit of pacing after the finale of the series, but I wouldn’t mind reading about Starfleet Command hashing out whether to commend or condemn Janeway’s various actions.
In any case, apparently none of her ‘hard calls’ bothered anyone at Starfleet enough to prevent her promotion to Vice-Admiral.
@45 – Except for the small detail that it involves an unrelated third party. The procedure in discussion does not force something on an outside party. Even in the real world, the law protects life saving procedures if consent is not possible, such as responding to an accident and keeping the person alive. In this case, neither Tuvox or Neelix can provide consent on the life saving procedure. It’s more of an ethical question, IMO, rather than one of law.
@46 – Vaccines are still voluntary.
@48/Austin: The word you used was “trivial.” That, as you can clearly see in my above post, is the word I took issue with.
Several commenters have mentioned the morale of the crew being a determinant factor of Janeway making the tough decision to separate Tuvix into Neelix and Tuvok. But who’s to say if Tuvix had stuck around a little longer that he wouldn’t have contributed in some way to ship morale, and that by that point, forcing him to undergo the procedure would have in itself damaged morale? It goes back to my earlier point about how long does Tuvix have to be in existence before forcing him to undergo the procedure? Say in 5 years after the accident, Tuvix is still a competent chief security and promoted officer, a very popular and accomplished chef, and has married one of the Delaney sisters and they have a child. The EMH discovers how to get Neelix and Tuvok back but at the expense of Tuvix. I don’t think for a second Janeway would be like, “Tuvix, please report to sickbay.” And if she did, the crew would be in uprising.
As it is in the episode, I think it just hasn’t been long enough for the crew to really feel like Tuvix has integrated among the crew yet. So I feel the impossibility of the situation and their discomfort (silence) when Tuvix is ordered to sickbay and he pleads for his life. It still would have been nice though if at least one officer spoke up and said, “Captain, I don’t think this is right.”
@40 “The biggest issue I have in this whole thing is that Janeway made a decision that forces someone under her command to undergo a medical procedure against their will. This is not a small thing — in fact, it’s so horrific a thing that the EMH won’t do it.”
Not sure I would put my faith in the doctor as a beacon of Morality though. Twice that I know of the Doctor made life and death decisions. The most egregious was when the doctor threatened to kill an alien to get what he wanted in “Critical Care,” Season 7. Sometimes I would think if I were a crew member on Voyager, who would I trust the most? Didn’t come up with a person but the least trustworthy would have been the Doctor. He’s endangered or let the crew down a few times to serve his own needs. In this episode he played the Hippocratic Oath card. “I am to do no harm.” Which he’s violated that in other episodes. And yes, killing Tuvok and Neelix is not a small thing either. So it’s a lose-lose situation. If I was on original crew member I would want my Captain to have my back.
@46
Yes, but isn’t that the sort of thing that we should have expected from a situation like this, a crew stranded far from home, alone and struggling to survive? Isn’t exploring the difficult choices forced on a crew in that situation something that Voyager too often failed to do…
I think that’s one of the problems at the heart of this debate, as well as at the heart of Voyager in general. The premise of this show is at odds with the overall tone, due to various restrictions discussed here and other episodes. Based on the premise, choices like the one Janeway made here should have been more common, and stories should have been framed in the premise of being stranded, struggling, desperate. In many ways, BSG is what Voyager should have been, given the similar premise. Of course, BSG wasn’t a Star Trek series, so didn’t have the weight of the history/expectations that all Star Trek series have. DS9 did, however, and this is what makes DS9 a better series, IMHO, because the unique setting was allowed to be built and developed in the stories.
As long as we are talking about people who didn’t have a choice, let’s not forget Tuvok and Neelix. They did not ask or choose to be combined, and if there is way to separate them again, then they are not dead yet, either. They also did not have a voice after they were combined to be able to speak for themselves, so they had to rely on someone else to be their voice: Janeway. She was the only possible one who had the authority to speak for them, both as their captain and the ranking officer within 70,000 light years. She was their advocate, and it makes the moral dilemma even more difficult, because it isn’t simply a question of whether or not to “kill” Tuvix, but she has to make a choice for two people who were in absentia, and she cannot ask them what they themselves would have chosen. There are three lives in the balance here, not just one.
@53 that raises the interesting question of where Neelix and Tuvok *are* during this episode. If they are combined into Tuvix, and are aware of that, even if that combination makes them different (similar to the way that say, a Trill taking on a symbiant does) well, you’d think Tuvix could speak for them. After all, no one ever suggests that when Jadzia (or any other Trill) states that keeping the symbiont alive is more important than keeping her alive that they are somehow compromised or unable to make that decision because there is a combined consciousness within them.
And if that isn’t the case, if Tuvix is a completely new person made from the parts of Neelix and Tuvok, well, are they basically just dead then? Do they have memories of what happened to them as Tuvix, or is it a big blank spot in their memories, where they were helpless and had no say?
Bit of a fridge horror moment- for Tuvix’s existence to make any sort of sense, the transporter system has to be taking pretty broad liberties when rematerializing people. It’s at its most obvious when something goes drastically wrong, like here, but who’s to say that it doesn’t make minor adjustments that aren’t generally noticed or remarked upon? If the transporter can merge the personalities and experiences of Tuvok and Neelix, whose to say a transporter in say, the Romulan Star Empire, couldn’t be programmed to delete pesky memories or personality traits of those it beams up?
@54 – Tuvok and Neelix are nowhere. They only exist as DNA in the new person that is Tuvix. Honestly, though, trying to understand the science involved in this is not worth the headache.
This episode is the poster child for Advanced Directives…
@55 And yes, I know trying to draw larger worldbuilding implications from one-off “Scifi tech malfunctions” episodes is a fool’s errand, but, the way my brain works, it’s a pleasant sort of errand, like nipping down to the bookstore.
@56 if that is the case, then Janeway has basically decided that killing a sentient being to bring people back from the dead is an acceptable course of action, which to me is even more disturbing. Necromany isn’t usually the purview of the good guys.
@58 – Transporters can do whatever the writers need them to do. For me, there’s no fun in that.
@59 – Necromancy! Ha…actually, it kinda is necromancy. Huh.
@50/GarretH: “But who’s to say if Tuvix had stuck around a little longer that he wouldn’t have contributed in some way to ship morale, and that by that point, forcing him to undergo the procedure would have in itself damaged morale?”
A commander has to make decisions based on what they know in the present. You can paralyze yourself if you second-guess your decisions with “who’s to say” conjectures. Captains have to make choices and act on them, right or wrong.
Besides, the question has already been answered by the episode itself. Tuvix did contribute positively to ship morale for two weeks — until the decision came. Don’t forget that this was also about whether Tuvok and Neelix would be allowed to live.
@59/wildfyrewarning: No, Janeway did not decide that. Saying that implies there was another option she chose to ignore. The situation dictated that either Tuvix ceased to exist or Tuvok and Neelix ceased to exist. It was a triage situation, like when a doctor has to let one patient die to save another. The doctor didn’t choose to create that situation; the decision was forced by the circumstances.
@60. Well, and therein, for me, lies some of the appeal in asking “Okay, if transporters can do this, what does that mean for the world?”
@61 but that was the point of my previous question. If Tuvok and Neelix aren’t merely both present in Tuvix, but just supplied the raw material to make Tuvix, then they were *already* gone, and what she has done is killed one person to bring two back from the dead. If, however, they were both “present” in Tuvix, and she was merely re-seperating them, then that is a different thing, but it also raises the question of by what right is she making that decision by- it’s clearly not by medical ethics, as the Doctor states. And if they are both present (the way that Odo and Curzon were, or really any Trill) then it raises the question of why his (their) wishes should be so easily disregarded. Considering Neelix’s role on the ship can be filled by a replicator, and given how often people die without the ships operations seeming to function, it can’t be that the ship simply can’t run with one less person.
Frankly, I think this all could have been a little more palatable if she had just struggled with it more. It isn’t hard to imagine an episode like this done in the style of, say, “In The Pale Moonlight,” where the whole set up of the episode is designed to highlight was a tough choice this was, and how picking the thing that, by all measures is wrong, can be right. Instead, Janeway feels bad for all of 2 seconds, Neelix and Tuvok don’t seem to really have much of any reaction, and the whole crew is shown to be composed of people who don’t do much more than bat an eye at a man begging for his life.
@63/wildfyre: As I said before, the episode made it very clear that Tuvix was a distinct person from Tuvok and Neelix. That’s the core of the whole dilemma, that they aren’t there anymore.
” and the whole crew is shown to be composed of people who don’t do much more than bat an eye at a man begging for his life.”
And in doing so, he was also begging against Neelix’s and Tuvok’s lives. That’s what I think made the difference. It wasn’t just his life at stake.
@64 If that premise is true, then Tuvok and Neelix are *already dead*. That’s my point- they are gone, and a new person is there in their place. While I think it might be a moral grey area to separate out two people who were merged, it’s a totally different thing to kill someone to raise two people from the dead. If they had died in a transporter accident, and Janeway could sacrifice say, Harry Kim, to bring them back, I don’t think anyone would argue that she was right in doing so. Even in the future world of Star Trek, death means something- they weren’t braindead and able to be shocked back to life a few minutes later without hurting anyone else. They were gone, and Janeway decided, against medical ethics and the will of a living person, that she should perform some technobabble necromancy to bring them back. That’s goes beyond moral grey area and into the realm of cartoon supervillians.
Considering that, by current medical ethics, if someone is *dead* and did not consent to have their tissue used for transplants- even to save someone’s life, then it is wrong to go against their wishes, the idea that Janeway is justified in killing someone to supply the tissue to save Tuvok and Neelix is pretty far out there. If this was a better handled episode, maybe they could have explored that better, but this is Voyager, and they don’t tend to handle large moral questions well.
This is where the Ira Graves technique would’ve came in handy. Okay, so Tuvix has to die so Tuvok and Neelix may live. First, let’s download Tuvix to a computer or an android body first.
@61/CLB: I do realize that Tuvix had already made a contribution two weeks into his existence. The point I was trying to make is at what length of time aboard ship does Janeway no longer even make it a consideration to have Tuvix undergo the transporter procedure once the “cure” is discovered? She doesn’t really hesitate and neither does her crew because Tuvix only two weeks in hasn’t integrated and endeared himself to the crew yet. Time was not on his side.
Much as I loved Tom’s performance and the new character he created, I could not think of him as a new “person” with human rights as a new individual because from the beginning everyone on that ship understood that he was with them only until Kim and the EMH figured out how to get Tuvok and Neelix “back” again. If everyone (the command structure) had agreed at some point that they should give up those efforts, and go on with the new person of Tuvix, that would have been different. As it was, he himself should have been living only as a “dead man walking.”
@65/wildfyre: “If that premise is true, then Tuvok and Neelix are *already dead*.”
I think that’s oversimplifying. Whether Tuvix is psychologically a distinct individual is not the same question as whether Tuvok and Neelix are retrievable. They could be rescued, but they weren’t currently present, and would effectively be dead if they were never recovered.
I think that trying to reduce this to a pat, definite answer, or to draw analogies with simpler choices of life and death, is willfully missing the point. It’s supposed to be ambiguous and difficult. It’s supposed to defy any analogy because it’s an unprecedented situation. If there were a simple “right” answer, it wouldn’t be as compelling a story.
Janeway basically took the Vidiian way out, killing one to save two. And if Tuvix has the memories of Tuvok and Neelix, are they really considered dead? Are they still not present, just in one body instead of two? After Tuvix is killed, Tuvok and Neelix are still present, as they were in Tuvix so the only real casualty is Tuvix. The melded form gone yet in Tuvix, elements of all three are present.
And since when can the Captain overrule the CMO in matter of medical? Does this mean that the CMO is no longer permitted to rule that the Captain is unfit for duty since the Captain can overrule him? Could Janeway order Torres to remove the EMH’s ethical subroutines if he refuses to perform a procedure? Or could she order him not to perform a procedure?
So many questions and basically no answers. Disappointing.
I think this one is a better episode than it really has a right to be. Because let’s face it, the ending is set in stone. Tim Russ and Ethan Phillips are on the main titles, so we have to have Tuvok and Neelix back. But in a way, the episode makes a virtue of that, since, at least once the Doctor comes up with a solution, it feels like there’s no doubt that that’s what’s going to happen. The story comes out of the price that has to be paid.
It’s interesting to watch everyone’s initial reaction to Tuvix. Kim pulls a phaser on him and considers him an intruder, only to be left wrongfooted when he calmly suggests to go to Sickbay. The Doctor just treats him like any other patient, right down to being irritated at having to spend any amount of time on him. Janeway is incredibly cold in their first meeting, treating him like an interloper she wants rid of as soon as possible and not showing any awareness that he’s someone that remembers her and considers her a friend, although she improves a bit thereafter. Kes is very uncomfortable around him, especially with his familiarity towards her, but her instinct to still treat him like a person, which came out in her early interaction with the Doctor, is present and correct: It’s telling that she’s the one who asks him what he wants to be called.
I remember I once read a review which basically pointed out that making Tuvok and Neelix the ones who are missing helped, because they’re probably the two most viewers would push out of the balloon if asked. (If we were missing Tom and Harry, I might be a bit more bothered.) Nowhere is that summed up better than in the opening titles, which I don’t think would have anyone wanting Neelix back. This seems to be continuing a trend previously seen in “Meld” and to a lesser extent “Faces” of portraying Neelix’s attitude towards Tuvok as unquestionably racist. Mocking Vulcan’s cultural traditions is a line that even McCoy wouldn’t have crossed. Watching Neelix treat Vulcan funeral dirges like campfire songs when Tuvok is clearly offended by it made for very uncomfortable viewing.
Tom Wright is superb as Tuvix, spending the first two thirds portraying him as someone who’s perfectly at home on Voyager and wants everyone else to treat him that way. And then the crew start sharpening the axe. Tuvix is a sympathetic and pitiable figure. It’s hard to question the logic or legality of Janeway’s decision: Ordering one crewmember to sacrifice himself to save two others is something captains are required to do on a regular basis. But here, the sacrifice involves murdering an innocent man. Tuvix’s breakdown on the bridge as he realises no-one is going to do anything to stop it is heart-rending. By the time they get to Sickbay, he’s basically relying on passive resistance. He does exactly what he’s told but he makes sure Janeway has to look him in the eye as she does it. That’s going to be a hard thing for her to forget.
It’s a nice touch that, when looking around for allies on the bridge, Tuvix doesn’t just address main titles characters Chakotay and Paris but Ayala as well. Ensign Swinn, glimpsed among the crewmembers commandeering the mess hall kitchen here, has a larger role in the following episode. (I think the fact “Resolutions” establishes her as an engineer escaped by mind, because I made her Voyager’s chief of security in an alternate timeline.) Chakotay and Paris are seen playing pool with Tuvix: Possibly we’ve seen similar interaction before, but coming on the back of the insubordination arc it feels like a significant moment that points the way to the easing of tension between them next season.
I’m afraid I have to disagree with krad: The ending comes at exactly the right time. I can assume Tuvok and Neelix are aware of what happened without it being spelt out, the sigh and then stoic walk sums Janeway’s attitude up perfectly (she doesn’t like that she had to do it but she’ll stand by the decision) and we definitely don’t need another act of everyone talking about their feelings. That would be like bolting another ten minutes on the end of “Duet” to have everyone chat about how they feel about an innocent Cardassian being murdered on their watch. I do however agree that we saw a dangerous precedent set here, and that precedent will be used to much lesser effect on Season 5. More on later.
I’m also afraid I disagree with CLB that Tuvix not wanting to die somehow loses him the crew’s sympathy and justifies (causes?) Janeway’s decision. Janeway obviously made her choice before that, ordering him to sickbay. I doubt that the crew’s morale was improved by seeing their friend almost dragged off the bridge to be killed. And I doubt it would be damaged by Janeway going “I’m sorry, Tuvix, you’re quite right, you’re a valued member of this crew and a good friend. Get back to your post.” I think the crew respect her decision but then I also think they knew what it was going to be and were prepared for it: Watch Chakotay and especially Paris’ attitude towards Tuvix in the preceding bridge scene, it’s as if they already know Tuvix’s days are numbered and have begun to detach themselves from him.
This episode is a less horrific version of the movie The Fly where a transporter (basically like one on Star Trek) accidentally combines a man and a housefly. The premise sounds like a comedy but what happens is truly horrifying. Great film and I’m referring to the 1986 version.
@71/cap-mjb: “I’m also afraid I disagree with CLB that Tuvix not wanting to die somehow loses him the crew’s sympathy and justifies (causes?) Janeway’s decision. Janeway obviously made her choice before that, ordering him to sickbay.”
I never said “justifies.” Come on, I made a point of emphatically, explicitly stating up front that I was not expressing my personal belief or making a moral judgment, merely describing my perception of what factors shaped Janeway’s decision. Nor am I claiming that it’s a certainty. It’s just the impression I got back in May ’96 when I watched the climactic scene and how the crew reacted. Maybe not that it was the sole reason for Janeway’s decision, but that it was the reason she wasn’t swayed to change her mind, and the reason the rest of the crew went along with it. I’m not defending the idea to the death — I just think it was an interesting possibility and I wanted to share it.
Agreed with the idea that Neelix and Tuvok are already, for all intents and purposes, dead.
Even if collecting plants is a relatively innocuous away mission, everyone on Voyager understands and accepts the risk that they face the potential of death when going on missions – anything can happen. Both Tuvok and Neelix would have accepted that risk as part of the mission.
In this case, the accident that caused their deaths also happened to create a new person, one who’s totally innocent of the situation, who is completely sapient and aware of what’s happening, and who has stated a very firm preference to not wanting to die. Tuvok and Neelix? They’re out of the picture. They’re dead. It happened. Tuvix is alive.
Some present Tuvix surviving as ‘killing two people so one person can live’, but that’s not the case, because Tuvok and Neelix are already dead. And the alternative isn’t ‘sacrifice one person to save two people’, it’s ‘murder a living being to bring back two people from the dead’, and that’s… not acceptable, it’s not something I think either Tuvok or Neelix would have agreed with, and I do think Janeway was in the wrong to do it.
(Although I absolutely recognise that it was in character for her to do so, for what she believed to be the greater good and that she saw it as saving both Tuvok and Neelix, and I can understand how conflicted she must have felt, and honestly, Janeway is my favourite character in Voyager. But it was still absolutely the wrong decision.)
But the biggest flaw in this episode is that it has no consequence. There’s just no fallout after – no change to Tuvok and Neelix’ relationship, no change in their relationship with Janeway or Kes, the crew never brings up that one time that their captain dragged out a living person to be killed to bring back two people from the dead and the fact that the entire bridge crew just stood by and watched.
There’s two problems here, and both could have been fixed if the episode had been better written. The first is, in terms of writing, there’s no fallout; the other is the in-universe moral dilemma based around Tuvix’ existence. If the episode had actually turned it into a debate, if Chakotay or anyone else had gone in to bat for Tuvix, if the Doctor had been able to have more attention paid to his objections, then you’d still have the IC moral dilemma but the writing issue would have been much improved.
This should have been a two-parter, honestly – lead up to the decision in the first part, have Tuvix be murdered in the start of the second part, use the second episode to properly deal with Janeway’s guilt, the resentment and concern of the crew that their captain just ordered a sapient being to be dragged out and murdered, Tuvok and Neelix’s own, no doubt complicated views on the matter. Anything other than Status Quo Is God.
@74: I agree with you in that this storyline was profound and rich enough to spill over into a second part episode however real-world practicalities would have prevented that. Up to this point, there hadn’t been any two-parters on Voyager and just by precedent, previous two-parters on any Star Trek series were of the big-budget, high-stakes, Federation, or at least ship-in-peril type of stories. The closest counterpart to what you are suggesting is the episode Family on TNG which was basically an introspective and thoughtful tale as a postscript to events that were emotionally devastating for the protagonist in the preceding two-parter. However, while it is a critical favorite and I personally like it, a lot of Star Trek fandom didn’t take kindly to the episode because it lacked the usual adventure storyline, and the ratings were relatively bad compared to the numbers the series usually pulled. So I think that also set a precedent for the Trek writers and showrunners to shy away from doing those kind of stories again.
This is a great episode, regardless of how any one person feels about Janeway’s decision, and for proof one need look no further than the conversation going on in this thread…
The issues seem to be whether Tuvok and Neelix should be regarded as dead and, if so, to what degree Tuvix’ right to exist outweighs theirs. Another important issue is what Tuvok and Neelix would have wanted. Tuvix may have a claim to be the best one to know the answer, but the best answer for him is not the best answer for them. I wish the episode had spent more time looking at this ambiguity and that it had admitted there’s no clear answer–and maybe no good answer.
It’s safe to say the controversy that’s surrounded this episode since it aired is because some fans see Janeway’s dilemma as a complex moral quandary, while others see it as a cut and dried choice where Janeway made the morally indefensible decision. I’m among those who feel there’s no justification for killing someone, even it there’s a form of scientific necromancy that can bring people back from the dead. Therefore, I find Janeway’s actions utterly evil and repellent.
I have to say Tom Wright’ acting is simply amazing. Others here have noted that they thought Ethan Phillips was playing the role. Wright also had Tim Russ’s delivery down so perfectly I had actually assumed Russ played Tuvix. It really is a bravura performance.
This is the first time I’ve really ever disagreed viscerally with a Federation captain’s decision. Sure there have been bad choices and mistakes made in the past, but to my mind they were all justifiable to some degree. And I freaking LOVE that about this episode.
The Federation and Starfleet are often portrayed as unbelievably goody two-shoes organizations. Well, there’s no goody two-shoes answer here. Janeway makes a decision I found emotionally infuriating, one I couldn’t have made, but she’s really just being a hard-nosed captain who decides that the needs of the two to outweigh the needs of the one.
And having Tuvix plead with Kes for his life, only to have Kes go to Janeway and argue for the opposite is spot-on as well.
I don’t even know if I want to see how Neelix and Tuvok respond in this episode. The core of the episode is the trolley problem and how Janeway deals with it in real life. Adding on their reaction would have detracted from that question. I do agree that it should have come up in subsequent episodes. If nothing else it would have been great B plot fodder. I
@24 and elsewhere:
This also points out how much ST doesn’t pay attention to elements of its continuity across series. Transporter duplications are flukes, yes, but the possibility isn’t even addressed.
There is at least one instance of it that should be well documented in Voyager’s databases, Riker’s duplication in “Second Chances.” Granted, it was the result of a combination of conditions that could possibly not have been recreated, but not to even address it?
Or to store Tuvix’s transporter pattern in a buffer, to possibly be reconstructed at a later date?
The possibility of Neelix, Tuvok, AND Tuvix all surviving would have been interesting. Of course, at some point Tuvix would probably have had to leave the ship.
@73/CLB: Okay, fair enough. I’m never one to argue against raising an interesting thought but it’s a thought that never crossed my mind and personally I don’t think it played any part in the decision-making process. I think the crew’s reaction to Tuvix at that point is pity rather than mistrust, but not enough for them to be willing to go against Janeway and give up the chance to get Tuvok and Neelix back.
As others already stated, I think this is a great episode exactly because the answer is though and not clear. I tend to agree with the choice Janeway made (without saying it is totally unambiguously correct). First, she saved two people by sacrificing one. Second, I see this as an inversion of the typical dilemma that doctors or firefighters etc. face when choosing who to save: they usually choose the youngest person, because they have more of their life ahead of them. In this case, one can say that since Neelix and Tuvok have existed longer, they (and the people close to them, including e.g. Tuvok’s children) have more to lose by them ceasing to exist. But actually, I would say this is the trolley car dilemma: if she acts, Janeway saves two people, but kills one and if she doesn’t, it’s the other way around.
Another interesting thought I had while reading the comments: many commented that Janeway was the most ruthless of all captains, and I was wondering if writers avoided showing her being emotional to avoid the stereotype of the sentimental woman?
@80/Mark Volund: “Or to store Tuvix’s transporter pattern in a buffer, to possibly be reconstructed at a later date?”
Transporter patterns can’t be stored for more than 8 minutes without degrading too far to be reconstructed. The only reason Scotty was able to survive in the transporter in “Relics” was that he wasn’t just being stored — he was being continuously dematerialized and rematerialized, cycled through the buffer like water through a pipe rather than stored like water in a bucket, so there was no limit to its capacity. Voyager wouldn’t have the power available to devote a transporter to that kind of continuous cycling on an indefinite basis, and it would probably break down the next time the ship came under attack.
The creators always recognized the temptation for transporters to be an easy fix for any problem, and of course that would’ve been bad, lazy writing, so as a rule they tried to ensure that transporters could not be magic resurrection or cloning machines. They only made exceptions when it created a complication rather than resolving it (as in “Second Chances”), or when they wrote themselves into a corner they couldn’t get out of any other way (as in “Unnatural Selection” or “Rascals”).
And as I’ve said, what’s so admirable about “Tuvix” is that it refuses to go for any of the easy cop-outs. Of course it could have thrown in some handwave like “Oh, the orchid DNA makes it uniquely possible to store Tuvix’s pattern stably forever,” or some copout like “Tuvix will die if we don’t re-separate him” like “The Enemy Within” used, but the writers made the deliberate choice not to give Janeway an easy out. That just wasn’t the kind of story they were telling this time.
@82/salix: I think probably they did feel they had to show Janeway as steely and unflinching to counter gendered expectations, but as I’ve said, I think it’s fallacious to assume any other captain would have resolved this situation differently. The situation was overtly designed to leave the captain with no choice but to sacrifice somebody — and of course there was never any possibility that the guest star would win out over the two regulars, or that the decision would be postponed beyond the end of a single episode.
The only way it could’ve played out differently is if the writers had chosen to offer an easy cop-out of the sort I mentioned above, so Picard or Sisko or whoever wouldn’t have been forced to make the unthinkable choice. But then that would be a difference in the nature of the situation, not the nature of the captain. Put Picard or Sisko in the exact same situation depicted here, and they would’ve had no choice but to reach the same conclusion. So it’s really unfair to say this says anything about Janeway’s character as distinct from theirs.
@83/ChristopherLBennett, I also think that Picard or Sisko would’ve reached to the same conclusion, but my impressions from reading through the comments is that some commenters found an issue with the fact that there wasn’t a scene showing Janeway visibly torn and wondering what to do, or discussing with Chakotay all the implications. I personally love it that Janeway is so decisive and rarely shows weakness (at least so far, I’m a first time watcher and I’m currently on season 3). I just wondered if the authors felt the need to increase this aspect of her personality to counteract gender expectations.
@84 in this case I think they confused “not showing weakness” with “being heartless.” It’s not like she needed to be sobbing in front of the crew or anything- it’s a TV show, they could have easily shown her being torn in a way the audience sees and the other cast members don’t. It wouldn’t even be the only episode that addresses the fact that Janeway frequently puts on a brave face for the sake of the crew, regardless of how she is feeling. I don’t think anyone who has watched, say “In The Pale Moonlight” came out of it thinking Sisko was weak or indecisive- most people came out of it understanding that he was a man in a bad situation- with the moral right thing to do on one side and the lives of the whole Alpha quadrant on the other- who made a hard decision, one that he felt the consequences of deeply. Regardless of if you think Sisko was right or wrong to do what he did, there is at least the impression that he fully understood that what he was doing by attempting to trick the Romulans into the war wasn’t exactly the “right” thing to do, even if it was (from his perspective) the necessary thing to do.
In fairness, DS9 was a show that was deeply interested in the consequences of people’s actions- that actively worked against the idea that the things you do one week are ancient history the next, whereas Voyager was rigidly episodic and resisted multiple opportunities to have anything leave much of a mark on the ship or the crew, but still. I like Jennifer Lien, and she did a fine job in this episode, but a little less focusing on Kes wanting her boyfriend back and a little more focus on the moral quandary here would have made the episode better, IMHO.
I don’t know what Picard would do in this spot necessarily (I think, ultimately, he’d do what Janeway did), but Sisko personally was absolutely determined to erase the colony from existence in Children of Time in order to return him and his crew back to their lives in the alpha quadrant until the very end, I would bet in the Delta Quadrant, if he was faced with a similar situation with Quark’Brien or something he’d do the same thing Janeway did with maybe even less hesitation.
@86/SKO: If DS9 had done this, it would’ve merged Quark and Odo, surely. Or at least Bashir and O’Brien. If it were TOS, it would’ve been Spoccoy.
Hard to decide on a TNG combination, since everybody got along so well and there weren’t any real diametric opposites, except maybe Worf and Troi. (Trorf? Hey, “Tuvix” was the first shipper name!)
I think a good theoretical ripple to have introduced into the story is what if the procedure to separate Tuvix into Tuvok and Neelix was dangerous and had a significant probability of failure? Would Janeway be so willing to risk Tuvix’s life, who is perfectly healthy and already a valued member of the crew, for her two former crewmen when it’s very possible that all of them could be lost during the procedure?
@88/GarretH: That would’ve made it harder to justify the inevitable outcome that restored the original characters. If it were too risky, she probably would’ve favored Tuvix.
It would have been nice if Tuvix had felt some guilt over Tuvok and Neelix’s ‘deaths’ and been conflicted about whether he had a right to live at their expense. Especially as he witnesses Kes’ continuing grief for Neelix. Janeway could have given the choice to Tuvix and eventually he decides bringing back the original two is the right thing.
@90, Eh, I think that would have taken the “punch” out of the episode. The parts of it that are really good are good *because* there are only two options- either Neelix and Tuvok stay dead, or Tuvix is killed. I tend toward the former, but that is heavily influenced by the fact that I believe death is a natural part of life, and not something to try to squirm out of. I can’t say I would be super thrilled if I was suddenly pulled back from the dead after two weeks (especially to be brought back onto the ship of the damned, 70 years away from my loved ones), especially if I then had to live with the knowledge that an innocent person was straight-up murdered to bring me back. And if I was someone like Tuvok, who as a Vulcan is pretty accepting of the reality of death, and is also a man that believes strongly in the principles of the Federation, I’d be a mite peeved about it.
There are ways that the decision could have been presented better (which I think is most people’s issue with this episode), but the choice not to have a 3rd way out is a good one, IMHO.
I think this will be the first season 2 episode to hit 100 comments.
@90: I get what you’re saying about making Tuvix more sympathetic but I actually prefer it when characters aren’t 100% saintly. So Tuvix perhaps being selfish in a way makes him more “real” to me. Like I can interpret the scene at the end where he’s pleading to his shipmates for his life as not only just about his right to exist, but also in that he can’t recognize that it would be an honorable sacrifice in bringing back two loved/valued individuals.
If I had to make a choice and I were in Janeway’s shoes, I wouldn’t go through with the procedure. Tuvix is alive and he exists and his life matters. For all intents and purposes he’s healthy and contributing to the smooth operations of the crew. He’s not posing a danger to anyone and he did nothing wrong by coming into existence because it was an accident. Tuvok and Neelix are essentially already “dead.”
I would rate this episode a 7. I know Krad deducts a lot of points from the score because of the rushed ending, and while I agree it’s abrupt with no apparent consequences, it doesn’t ruin the compelling and riveting bulk of the episode that preceded it.
@93/GarretH: I still say it’s missing the intended ambiguity of the situation to reduce it to Tuvok and Neelix simply being “dead.” A better analogy would be that they’re MIA — they’re gone and you have no idea if they can ever come back, but you can’t rule it out for certain. If you learned that a missing person were still alive after all and could be rescued, but at the risk of the rescuers’ lives, it would be the worst kind of negligence to pretend they were dead just because it was simpler than facing the hard choice of whether to send the rescue mission.
Like many of the episodes, this one would have been more compelling with some consequences. It’s all very well to say that Janeway did this for the god of the crew and for the sake of their morale, but since we never see them have any real reaction to anything after any given episode, I never felt very invested in that. I
@87 I would have put the TNG equivalent in the second season and made a Pulaski / Data hybrid (“Pulasta” or “Dataski”).
Yeah, I think the major fail of this episode was brought on by the guidelines imposed on writing Janeway’s character. She had to be the prototypical Strong Independent Woman ™ at all times, so to show her breaking down would probably be utterly impossible to show. As a result, she was shown walking away, looking somewhat haunted, and they didn’t dare let her show any other vulnerability. At least at the time.
It’s weird, though, because I am fully behind Janeway’s decision here. I don’t get the idea that ‘oh she’s ordering an innocent person to his death!’ because otherwise she’s condemning two innocent parties to their functional deaths. I think it may be because to me Tuvix never got past the creepy stage, which is patently unfair of me, I admit. But I still stand by her intent; the needs of the many don’t always outweigh the needs of the few, but in this case even simple numbers could justify the action, being down to 145 and counting.
Though it’s hilarious that Kes just wants her boyfriend back, and next year they break up while she’s ‘not herself’ but they can’t be arsed to get back together at the end of that ep. It’s a little ironic.
@97/wizardofwoz: Even after Kes broke off her romantic involvement with Neelix, she still loved him as a dear friend. It’s not like she suddenly stopped caring if he died.
@97: Yes, I had the same thought regarding the irony of Kes wanting Neelix back and then they break-up a year later but hindsight is 20/20 and sometimes you just have to act on how you feel in the present moment. And like @98 says, she still loved him post-break-up, just in a different way.
Okay, people! One more comment and we break 100! Who’s it gonna be?!? Lol
I will take the hunny! Lol
@90: I think that would be a cop-out to a degree. I think it’s what Janeway wanted. When she and Tuvix have their chat alone in the briefing room, she wants him to agree to sacrifice himself to bring back Tuvok and Neelix but he refuses. The power of the ending comes from the fact that he doesn’t want to do it and she has to make it an order. (Thinking about it, a willing sacrifice is basically how the Enterprise episode “Similitude” ends, and that one kind of limps to a weak and unsatisfying conclusion.) You probably could make an emotional ending out of Tuvix making a willing sacrifice but it would be a lot less memorable and a lot more comfy.
I completely agree with Janeway’s decision. Neelix and Tuvok weren’t dead. They had their individuality taken away without their consent (similar to being assimilated). Janeway was correct when she said that she needs to speak for the two men who are unable to speak for themselves. Picard once said ( I think in the Ira Graves episode) that no one has the right to exist at the expense of someone else. Also I don’t think the crew was actually that attached to Tuvix. Otherwise they wouldn’t have continued to look for ways to bring back Neelix and Tuvok. They seemed ok with enjoying his company temporarily until Tuvok and Neelix could be brought back. The problem began when Tuvix refused to undergo the procedure. I think everyone expected him to willingly go through with it.
@102: But what if Tuvix had been aboard for a year, established friendships, married a fellow officer, had a child? The crew is for all intents and purposes attached to him and accepted the loss of Tuvok and Neelix and moved on. Then the Doctor discovers how to bring Tuvok and Neelix back but Tuvix respectfully declines. Would you still hold that Tuvix doesn’t have the right to exist at the expense of others? Janeway should still force him to undergo the procedure?
@92/Austin: I knew that would pretty much happen back when the rewatch first began. Tuvix has always been the controversial one. If there was a Voyager episode capable of generating this much debate, it was this one.
@103/GarretH: There’s a school of thought in dramatic writing which makes the case that concentrating your dramatic event in a single area and a single slice of time creates much more of an impact than spreading out that same story across a wider set of locations and scenes. In this case, Tuvix very much accomplishes what it sets out to do, which is to create a very strong reaction within those 45 minutes. And it works for many single story episodes, and it’s a reason why episodic storytelling still has its place even today.
Of course, one could argue it would have worked better had the character lasted more than one episode. I’m one willing to defend this approach. I’d argue Tuvix’s demise would have carried even more weight, had the character lasted at least until the Basics two parter. And it would have opened up the possibility of his demise being a sacrifice in the midst of the struggle against the Kazon (and then they could separate Tuvix in order to save both). A Tuvix gaining their trust and establishing relationships across several episodes would have worked far better than doing an artificial jump cut to two weeks later within the same 45 minute episode.
Again, I had no problem with Tuvix being reverted back to his former two selves against his will. It’s the lack of followthrough and consequences for Janeway and the crew afterwards that really set me off. Clearly by ending the episode right there, the intention was to leave the viewer with the same stunned reaction as the ending of the previous episode, The Thaw – which has that undeniably amazing final scene -, but the result was a complete disregard for the moral implications of her actions.
@105/EJ: I have no qualms about this particular story residing firmly in the rigid episodic structure. My main complaint, that others share apparently, is that the climax – that is, the separation procedure, was saved for the very last moments which robbed the story of, IMHO, a satisfying conclusion where Janeway, and perhaps Tuvok and Neelix, could address the ramifications of her actions. My previous poster comment was just a hypothetical if the other commenter’s feelings on the termination of Tuvix would differ if he had spent a more significant time aboard the ship with the crew.
@92, 104: I also knew that this particular episode was THE controversial one, not just for Voyager, but all of Star Trek because of the subject matter. But it’s a testament to the power and thoughtfulness of the story that it still elicits such a strong reaction all of these years later after first airing.
@103 but would the doctor still be looking for a way to bring them back after a year? By that point they would have stopped trying. The circumstances of the situation would be completely different and the factors of Tuvix having a wife and child wpuld completely change the parameters of the decision.
As far as Janeway sacrificing a living being to restore two other living beings, I don’t find that nearly as reprehensible as the times that Picard was willing to allow someone to die to uphold the prime directive.
Given his talent for talking computers into deactivating themselves and convincing mirror Spock to stage a revolution, Kirk probably would have been able to speechify Tuvix into actually wanting to submit to the procedure.
@107: Right, then that’s the mere point I’m trying to make: that it’s time that’s the crucial factor here. It’s not that Tuvix’s life is less important when weighed against the lives of the two others, it’s the strength of the particular person’s bonds with the rest of the crew that most matters and the determinant of that is time. So Tuvix has the odds of survival stacked against him because the crew only knew him for only a mere two weeks as opposed to a more significant amount of time like a year.
Yeah, in hindsight, I think there was more dramatic potential in taking a page out of Joss Whedon’s Angel and going the Illyria route with Tuvix for at least a few episodes. Even with transporter accidents being part and parcel of Starfleet life, it would’ve been justified in the intended format of VOY and every lost crew member being irreplaceable (something the show never seized on and which still frustrates me to this day).
@80 – Good point about Second Chances. Remember the scene in Up the Long Ladder where Riker and Pulaski discover their clones and and have no hesitation about phasering them into oblivion? Do you have the right to be duplicated without your permission? Should Tom Riker have been put to death? Should Will?
In UtLL they didn’t even bother to find out if there was a mind in the clone (Which, as stupid as it is, is often how Trek portrays cloning. Remember Shinzon? Apparently in the Trek universe, our memories and personality are encoded in DNA).
@94 – By Trek standards, you could say that anyone who has died in the Trek universe is MIA, considering all the various ways people have died and been brought back, McCoy was impaled by a lance, Scotty was zapped by Nomad, Spock was irradiate and left on a planet and somehow managed to not only come back to life but survive from an embryo to the exact age he was when he died, Picard was turned into an energy pattern, beamed into space and the somehow recovered and brought back, The list goes on. As McCoy says in TWoK “He’s not really dead, as long as we remember him”.
What would have made a really powerful ending would be if both Tuvok and Neelix told Janeway that Tuvix was right and Janeway was wrong, She based everything on her gut instinct being correct and it turns out she was totally wrong. No change in cast needed and you’ve just introduced some conflict into the characters. After all, if Tuvix and Tuvok and Neelix’s memories, wouldn’t they have his as well?
My only comment is bravo Tom Wright! He did such a great job as Tuvix that we are still debating about this episode 24 years later.
I’ve watched this episode before of coarse and didn’t really think much of it one way or the other. This watching was way different. Maybe I’m getting more refined in my old age or just paying better attention to “feelings” and such. At first, I was here’s that Tuvix character, but for some reason he really started growing on me (great acting as others have noted). I was starting to think what would have happened if Tuvix had been on the show from then on. I saw how people liked him on the ship, but that they were missing the ones that were gone. None more strongly then Kes. I felt for Tuvix when he was pleading for his life when alone with Janaway and later on the bridge. I could see how the decision was weighing on Janaway even though she was keeping a stoic face. I agreed with her decision, even as it tore me up inside as I could see it was doing to her. After the deed was done and she walks into the corridor and just pauses, that is when I lost it. I’m a 47 year old male and I just lost it. I was crying like I had lost a close friend. I couldn’t believe how this episode made me feel. I was in shock.
I agree with others that there should have been more reaction at the end of the episode with the other characters, but I thought Janaway in the last 5 minutes was just perfect. As others have said, she was the advocate for Tuvok and Neelix and she made the best of a terrible situation and it hurt her inside to do it, because Tuvix was becoming a valued member of the crew also.
So that’s how I feel about it. Just wanted to get that out. I don’t hardly comment at all, but enjoy these rewatches immensely and the discussion is fun to read too. Everyone be safe and have a pleasant day.
I wonder- if the teleporter had rematerialized some partial mangled corpses containing the bits that didn’t get merged, how does that change the equation of them as dead vs. MIA?
Weskan: Thanks for commenting at last, and thank you for the kind words. Glad you’re enjoying these rewatches!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@115, Well obviously they’re dead Jim. But Tuvix was alive, meaning that his components are also alive. I still think there should be something like survivor guilt there, especially as he apparently remembers being both Tuvok and Neelix.
BTW, given the Vulcan lifespan Tuvok has every reason to believe he will see T’Pel again in 70 years.
@117:
Tuvok can live 70 more years, but if the trip home really takes 70 years, Tuvok is not going to make it (because the ship itself and the other crew are not going to last that long, and Tuvok can’t get back by himself).
@118 – Not to mention that T’Pel almost assuredly moved on with her life. Tom Hanks was only on that island for 5 years and she didn’t wait for him! :D
@117 I agree there is a possibility of characters like Tuvok and Vorik (and the other Vulcans that are sometimes part of the crew and sometimes not), have a chance of making it home alive after 70 years, I just don’t think Tuvok expects T’Pel to be waiting for him, or for *him* as an individual to survive the trip. In many places in the U.S., 7 years is the amount of time someone who is “missing” can then be declared legally dead- and that’s just if they’ve vanished without a trace. The Federation would have reason to believe that the Voyager is destroyed- either by the Maquis, or by the conditions in the Badlands, or by whatever force (presumably) destroyed the Val Jean- and therefore might reasonably declare them all dead before that. In season 3 (“Blood Fever”) Vorik tells Torres that his fiance has likely already moved on and married someone else. In addition to the 70 year trip (and, as others have pointed out, they would either need to find other people to crew the ship, or find a way that the handful of long-lived crew members could do the jobs of 140 people, or find another ship willing to take them home), it is also a dangerous one, and as head of security, Tuvok is at a greater risk than most other people. While he might very much want to get home to T’Pel, I think he has probably accepted that it is both unlikely that he will do so, and also very likely that she won’t be waiting for him if he does.
@120/wildfyre: Not only that, but just because someone lives a long time, that doesn’t mean they experience the passage of a year any differently than the rest of us do, despite the fondness of fiction authors to pretend it does. The fact that their estimated date of death is much further in the future doesn’t change their need to live in the here and now, and nobody can reasonably expect someone to just sit around waiting for 70 years rather than getting on with their life.
@121/CLB: Unless Star Trek introduced some alien culture that believes that once you’re married, it’s for life and you can’t ever marry (or have a romantic relationship) with anyone else even if one of the partners dies or goes missing.
@114/Weskan: Nice comment! Feel free to add your opinions on future episodes, or at least those you feel strongly about.
Not sure if anyone else has brought this up already, but if the transporter was combining Neelix and Tuvok (and that pesky plant) into the resulting Tuvix, shouldn’t the latter individual have the combined mass of both of the component individuals? Namely, shouldn’t Tuvix appear as much bigger person than what we ended up seeing in the episode?
I’m late to the party, but I wanted to comment.
First, I think this was a great episode. One of the very best of Star Trek. Massive respect to the writers for not taking the easy way out. It would have been so easy to do so… but no, Tuvix did not turn out to be unstable, he did not volunteer for the procedure so that Tuvox and Neelix could be saved… The incredibly horrible decision got to Janeway and she made her decision and followed through with it. As I said, massive respect for the writers.
Now, about the decision. I disagree with those who say that Tuvox and Neelix were dead. Dead people have no rights because they can not be brought back. If they can be brought back then they are not dead, or at least the meaning of death changes completely. Tuvox and Neelix can be brought back and therefore they must have rights. If there were no Tuvix, just a senseless body, no one would doubt that Tuvox and Neelix have a right to be brought back.
Now Tuvix. If Tuvix weren’t a person, then there would be no dilemma. But there is a dilemma because he is a person. So is it correct to (directly) kill a person to (indirectly) save other two people? I would say no, and most people would agree. If Tuvox and Neelix were dying but could be saved by killing Kim and harvesting his organs, we would agree that it’s not ethical to do so, particularly if Kim does not volunteer. I get the feeling that most people stop here: killing a person to save other people is wrong, so Janeway’s decision is wrong. And if that were the whole picture they would be right. The moral dilemma would not be real, because it would have a correct solution and a wrong one, and Janeway’s was the wrong one…
But that’s not the whole picture either. Tuvix is not just a person. He also is a medical condition that Tuvox and Neelix are suffering. He is not a separate person from Tuvox and Neelix. He is them. An altered state of consciousness that they are suffering. But also, you know, he is his own person. Some other commenter mentioned that if this treatment had been discovered years later, it would have been harder to do away with Tuvix. And they are right. The longer Tuvix is around and makes his own life, the more like a person he looks, and the less like a medical condition. But he is both things, and that’s why the moral dilemma is so terrible and the episode is so good. Because there is no right decision. If you see Tuvix as a real person then Janeway is wrong. If you see him as a medical condition that Tuvok and Neelix are suffering then Janeway is right. But both of those are true. Janeway’s decision is right and wrong at the same time. It’s truly a dilemma without a right or wrong solution.
The episode is great, and because it’s so good and the decision so devastating, I agree that we should have seen the consequences in other episodes. I did not want a last act with everybody discussing their feelings. What would be the point, if there are not going to be consequences anyway? It’s what the Simpsons parodied in that episode where it was discovered that principal Skinner was an impostor, and everyone agreed at the end to go back to the status quo and not to mention it ever again. What I would have liked to know is how this affects Janeway’s relationship with the rest of the crew in the long run. Unfortunately, we don’t know, because we must go back to the status quo. In this case, the format of the TV show weakens this great episode. In other cases I’m grateful, like with that awful episode where Janeway and Paris mate and have lizard children, whom they abandon in a swampy planet. That should have had consequences too, but since the whole thing was so bad we are all grateful that no one will ever mention it again.
@122/GarretH: “Not sure if anyone else has brought this up already, but if the transporter was combining Neelix and Tuvok (and that pesky plant) into the resulting Tuvix, shouldn’t the latter individual have the combined mass of both of the component individuals? Namely, shouldn’t Tuvix appear as much bigger person than what we ended up seeing in the episode?”
By that logic, each of the Kirks in “The Enemy Within” should’ve had half the mass of the original. A lot about the transporter doesn’t hold up to detailed examination.
@124/CLB: Yes, yes, but in your example you’re dealing with the star of the show so it’s impractical not to use him or make him go on some crash diet. For “Tuvix” you can cast whoever you want for the role including some big guy. But Tom Wright was amazing so all turned out well. Just nitpicking. ;-)
I pretty much agree with Krad’s assessment of this episode. It started off looking as if it was going to be a goofy comedy episode with the two sides of Tuvok and Neelix being stuck with each other, but then developed into something much more interesting and meaningful. I especially liked the ramifications of Tuvix retaining the love for Kes, and how difficult that would be for both of them. That’s the kind of plot we could do with seeing more of, and makes me regret that Trill are established as being forbidden from engaging in this kind of relationship.
But yeah, that ending is terrible. Janeway gives up any claim to being morally superior to the Vidiians. They’ve both demonstrated they’re willing to kill one person to preserve another’s life. If I was one of the Voyager crew, I’d be getting very nervous and hoping no-one needs an organ transplant, as the logic used by Janeway would allow her to kill and harvest the organs of one crew member if it would keep two or more alive.
It’s going to make it harder to watch the rest of the show, knowing the “good guys” and one of the main antagonists are on the same moral level.
@118 -“Even at maximum speeds, it would take seventy five years to reach the Federation, but I’m not willing to settle for that. There’s another entity like the Caretaker out there somewhere who has the ability to get us there a lot faster. We’ll be looking for her, and we’ll be looking for wormholes, spatial rifts, or new technologies to help us. Somewhere along this journey, we’ll find a way back.”
– Captain Kathryn Janeway, Caretaker
And that’s exactly what happened.
@126/Geekpride: As Daniel expressed so eloquently in #123, it’s not so simple as “killing one person to save others,” because they both are and are not separate people at the same time. That is what makes it such a unique situation, so impossible to resolve by normal moral reasoning.
Part of the problem is that they never established whether Tuvok and Neelix retained Tuvix’s memories as he retained theirs. If they did, then one could argue that separating Tuvix was no more an execution than separating Curzon from Odo at the end of DS9: “Facets.” It was just returning a joined pair back to an unjoined state. In that case, Tuvix would still live on in Tuvok and Neelix just as much as they lived on in him, or as Jadzia lives on in Ezri Dax. If his memories were completely lost, then you could argue that he was “killed” — but why would his memories be lost, when their memories were not lost when combined into him?
Despite Keith’s warp factor rating, I would actually call this episode successful for one simple reason: we’re still talking about it. Shakespeare didn’t write his plays for high school students to debate 400 years down the road, he wrote them as entertainment. This episode was never intended to be picked apart by fans for nearly 25 years (and we’ll keep going), it was a single piece in a program that didn’t do arcs. Yes, the authors knew about fandom, but it wasn’t written for us, it was written to be a TV show. We’re the obsessive nerds who will nitpick it, analyzing the ethics for eons. And that makes it a success – it’s memorable. We’re still talking about it.
@128, I thought of that too. But assuming Tuvok and Neelix have Tuvix’s memories should have led to some character development and an odd kind of friendship as each now understands the other on an intimate level. Or more interestingly a high level of discomfort and mutual avoidance that has to be gotten over.
@128 – So, if the two situations are so similar, didn’t Janeway simply execute someone she didn’t know in order to save her two friends for no reason other than that? Is that the criteria, how much she knows and likes someone as to whether they deserve to live or die?
@130/roxana: Yes, exactly. That’s the great frustration about this episode, the fact that it had no aftermath. It’s not like the show was completely devoid of continuity at this point; they had that whole story arc with the Kazon and Jonas, they brought back Danara Pel, they dropped the Neelix-Paris rivalry after “Parturition,” and so on. Some things were allowed to carry forward, and character relationships were allowed to change. So the lack of any impact on Tuvok and Neelix going forward was a shame.
At the risk of repeating something others have said (sorry, the thread’s a bit lengthy at this point), I always felt it would have been a bit of poetic justice if the procedure had failed and all three of them had died.
I agree with those who say that if Tuvix was never going to have the rights of an individual then it would have been better to keep him in stasis or such, rather than leading him to believe he might have the right to exist.
As much as the episode compromised my opinion of Janeway, I thought it was a marvelous touch to have the EMH refuse to perform the procedure.
The lack of ‘what happens next’ is unfortunate.
@133: I had the same thought as you (comment #88) about all three people (Tuvix and thus Tuvok and Neelix) being lost in the procedure and so knowing this would be a possible risk would Janeway still force the procedure? One would hope not. But if so, and they all died, then yes, it would be poetic justice if that happened. Of course that would never occur on this show.
This is one of those episode where it divides the fans. That ending was powerful and though provoking – something Star Trek does best.
krad: I think you rated this episode way too low… you have to take it in its entirety. 90% of the episode was great. The ending was very rushed but the final 5 minutes of the episode do not diminish the excellent writing that happened prior. I actually think the ending of the episode worked well. It showed that Janeway does not dwell on decisions like this she can move on from such matters easily. I do not believe a bad few minutes of an episode ruin everything else in it.
@136: I agree with you that the majority of this episode was great and thus should have a higher rating in this rewatch review than what it was given. However, I have to disagree with you where you think it shows that Janeway doesn’t dwell on decisions like this. I think the ending happens way too quick without us knowing definitively how she feels one way or the other, but I’m suspecting by her pause in the corridor that it does weigh on her mind. Personally, I would find it deeply disturbing if she didn’t dwell on a decision of such magnitude and simply moved on.
As I’ve said many times, the warp factor rating is the least important part of any rewatch entry. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’m glad they decided against Ethan Phillips in brownface or blackface.
This was indeed a thorny situation, and I can see Janeways dilemma… I wish it hadn’t been resolved in a single episode. This should have been a season long plot; with Neelix and Tuvok showing up in memories or a mindscape or whatnot, so the actors still had jobs. A season, and beyond, because as krad says, Janeway, Tuvok, and Neelix should have to deal with this for a long time.
@3 – Lauren: Gee, thanks for the answer, Kate!
@12 – GarretH: Nah, ENT’s “Dear Doctor” probably takes the cake.
@18 – Chris: That is a good analysis.
@29 – MonktonGaz: This is one of the instances where you can’t really blame the character, when the writers/producers didn’t give her the chance to actually think this through. If they hadn’t ended this within a 40 minute episode, and there had been time to develop the story over a season or so, and Janeway still made that decision… well, I could see blaming her.
Additionally, blaming a character writen by dozens of different people for specific acts instead of their overall behavior and history is not fair either.
@31 – Eduardo: If one episode made you stop watching the show for 20 years, then you weren’t very interested in the show to begin with. It wasn’t this episode.
@48 – Austin: Vaccines are mandatory in many places of the world, they are a matter of public health, protecting those that cannot be vaccinated for valid medical reasons.
@129 – MeredithP: You can say that about TOS episodes, but as an episode on the fourth Star Trek series, long after fans have been discussing the franchise (even before the internet), I don’t think that holds up for this. You have to know that every single Trek episode will be a matter of discussion for decades to come. I know you said the authors knew about fandom, but to me, that’s besides the ppint.
Plus, if they didn’t want ethics to be argued, they wouldn’t have written an episode with this kind of choices. They would have written something simpler.
@138 – krad: Shush, Keith. We will still discuss them.
MaGnUs: I didn’t say we shouldn’t discuss it, just that it’s the least important part. :)
Also to RMS81: the warp factor rating isn’t math (despite it being numerical), it’s gut reaction. Just because 90% of the episode is good doesn’t matter if that other 10% ruins the rest of it. It did for me. :shrug:
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
First off. Let’s be glad for the more serious re-write, if for no other reason that it sounds like it may have spared us from Ethan Philips in blackface for a significant part of the episode — CRINGE.
One of the other commenters mentioned this needing to be a two-parter. I’ll go one step further. If this episode had come after DS9 broke the “serialized storytelling” taboo, this plot easily could have been a runner through the remainder of season 2. What if they discover something in Basics that unlocks the secret to separating Tuvok and Neelix (or the knowledge gained from Danara in the next episode, for that matter). Also, imagine “Resolutions” with the B-plot being whether or not Tuvix could be trusted to lead the crew home, rather than the bland, “inflexible Vulcan” subplot that we ended up with. To me, Tuvix ranks high (maybe #1) on the list of biggest Trek missed opportunities, if the creators had wanted to take more risks. The change still need not have been permanent, but I would have loved to see Tom Wright explore Tuvix in a few more episodes.
@141/Briggadoon: “If this episode had come after DS9 broke the “serialized storytelling” taboo, this plot easily could have been a runner through the remainder of season 2.”
It didn’t work that way, since DS9 was syndicated and VGR was on UPN, with different bosses who preferred an episodic show. Also because Rick Berman preferred an episodic show, and VGR was his baby, whereas he left DS9 mainly in Ira Steven Behr’s hands.
Also, as I’ve pointed out before, too many people today gloss over the difference between serialization and continuity. Even when DS9 embraced a stronger continuity, it only rarely did actual serial plots where a single storyline was stretched out across multiple consecutive episodes. Major events in the characters’ lives still usually got resolved in a single hour, even though they had consequences down the road. DS9 did many plots that might be serialized today but were still dealt with in a single episode, like O’Brien’s recovery from imprisonment in “Hard Time” or Kurn’s short stint on DS9’s security staff in “The Sons of Mogh.” TV didn’t switch from TOS-style episodic storytelling to modern full-on serialization overnight; it was a gradual evolution and DS9 was somewhere in the middle of it.
@142/CLB
yep. honestly I like Star Trek to be mostly episodic, it is good for most episodes to do new things, introduce new planets, peoples, concepts. I liked Picard, but it felt weaker for tying every episode into the same over arching mystery box plot. What DS9 did that Voyager mostly didn’t do, is acknowledge what happened in past episodes and build on it. DS9 introduces Nog as a pickpocket and slowly shows him developing into an excellent Starfleet ensign. Voyager leaves Harry an ensign for seven years because Rick Berman was terrified someone would tune into an episode with “Lieutenant Kim” and furiously abandon the entire series bc they missed the episode where he got promoted. It’s a real failure to credit an audience with an imagination.
@143/SKO: I don’t think it was a lack of serialization that kept Berman from having Harry Kim promoted during the series, after all, we saw Tuvok being promoted. Rather, Garrett Wang badmouthed the show, and Berman did not like that nor him, and so Wang and essentially his character was “punished.”
I think Janeway was completely warranted in what she did.
Tuvix goes into the transport buffer. At that point, he didn’t really exist. Neither did Tuvok, neither did Neelix. Merely their patterns do, none of which exist in any real sense more than any other, and you have a choice. Press this button and one person materialises, press that button and two do. Which do you press? At that point Janeway was fully justified in treating it as a purely utilitarian problem.
As well as her choice saving an extra person, it was also the best choice for the wellbeing of her crew, and for those on the ship, those back home, and those elsewhere who would grieve the loss of Tuvok and Neelix in a deep and meaningful way. Tuvix meanwhile isn’t “dead”, the components of his pattern are merely where they were meant to be.
And Krad I also don’t think this qualifies as giving someone a medical procedure without their consent, certainly not in Star Trek as we’ve seen it. Being beamed into a transport buffer isn’t considered a medical procedure, and consent is not required before you do that to someone. Indeed we’ve seen many, many occasions where someone has been transported specifically against their will. We’ve also seen many, many instances where people will have been transported without being aware they’re subject to a bio-filter to remove harmful bacteria and viruses. If they were treated for those same microbes with a hypospray then consent would be needed. Whilst they’re just a pattern? It seems not.
It would have been gut-wrenching for those involved, and for us viewers seeing it through their eyes, but that doesn’t make Janeway’s brave decision less correct.
A great episode, though I agree about the lack of denouement (though it’s far from the only episode you could say that about).
@145/jmwhite: So you think a stored pattern of data is not a person with rights? Does that mean it’s okay to erase the Doctor as long as he’s not running at the time?
If anything, “Realm of Fear” showed that the pattern is the person — that the data stream encoded into the transporter beam is sentient and conscious even while the physical particles of the person are disassembled. Which reinforces The Wrath of Khan where Saavik was able to think and talk while partially dematerialized, and “Lonely Among Us” where Picard’s consciousness could survive in his transporter pattern beamed into a cosmic cloud without a material substrate. Indeed, this tracks with the theory behind quantum teleportation; the state information that describes an object effectively is the object, more so than the material substrate it’s encoded in, since without that information, any two particles of a given type are indistinguishable and interchangeable.
I’m sure the Federation has laws protecting the rights and personhood of transporter users during the time that they’re disassembled, as a matter of legal liability and preventing abuse of the technology.
I think those on-screen depictions of being transported have to be combined with what we saw in Relics, and together they strongly imply that there is some consciousness whilst someone is in the process of dematerialisation and/or rematerialisation, but not whilst held in the buffer. Scotty wasn’t aware of the passage of time he’d missed.
I’m not saying someone in the buffer has no rights, I’m saying that at that point Tuvix’s rights don’t have precedence over the rights of Neelix and Tuvok – all their rights are equally important at that point because all their patterns are equally viable. So at that point it comes down to utilitarianism, and therefore Janeway’s decision is completely justified.
If Scotty was aware of the passage of time, he should have been insane when he rematerialized.
@147/jmwhite: “I’m not saying someone in the buffer has no rights, I’m saying that at that point Tuvix’s rights don’t have precedence over the rights of Neelix and Tuvok – all their rights are equally important at that point because all their patterns are equally viable. So at that point it comes down to utilitarianism, and therefore Janeway’s decision is completely justified.”
I’d say “all their rights are equally important” is a given in any case, so the transporter has no bearing on it.
Would Picard be right if he ordered Will and Tom Riker to be re-integrated?
kkozoriz: The Rikers isn’t an equivalent situation even remotely, except insofar as they’re both transporter issues.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
One was combining two into One. One was creating two out of one. Does Will (or Tom) have the right to not have an unauthorized clone wandering around? We saw what Will thought of that idea in Up The Long Ladder. If someone could come up with a way of duplicating what happened with Riker on demand, would it be OK to create as many duplicates as you like, regardless of the feelings of the person being duplicated?
Tuvix didn’t want to be split into two beings. Neither did Riker.
@149/CLB: Except this thread (and other places this episode is discussed) is full of people who believe that Tuvix’s right to life has precedence over that of Tuvok and Neelix’s combined, presumably because during the episode he was sentient and they were individually not. My point is that that deontological argument doesn’t hold once he/they are all in the buffer. At that moment none of them is more “alive” than the other, and it’s a conscious choice who gets rematerialised. A choice that’s far more subject to utilitarian reasoning.
@153/jmwhite: And I’m not one of the people arguing that. I don’t accept their argument any more than I accept yours, because I don’t buy the premise that the morality of a situation is dependent entirely on, and therefore mutable with, the current status quo.
I do agree that Janeway made the utilitarian choice. I don’t agree that it was because of anything to do with the transporter. It was because of what was best for the crew and the mission in the long term. That’s the utilitarian consideration that actually matters — the permanent situation, not the ephemeral one.
I think it’s specious to argue that someone’s status as a person is suspended or changed during the process of transport, and it’s a belief that would be incredibly dangerous in a society where transporters existed. I’ve explained why I think there would certainly be laws and ethical standards declaring unambiguously that a dematerialized person in transit retains their full personhood and rights, and those laws and standards would render your argument invalid in the eyes of any Federation jurist or ethicist.
I gotta jump on the Tom Wright bandwagon, he is exceptional to say the least! Captain Sisko is my personal favorite Star Trek regular of all-time and I love Avery Brooks to death, but if Tom Wright had won the Sisko role, I doubt I’d be complaining.
Apologies if this has been mentioned because I haven’t read all the comments (there is a awful lot of them, haha). The point has been made how during the time Tuvix had been around the crew, he had made made quite a positive impression. As the audience, It’s easy to sympathize with him in the end. However, if he had been a total jerk and everyone hated him, would our sympathy still be there? I’m not accusing anyone of callousness, it’s mostly a rhetorical question and I’m just throwing it out there.
jmwhite: Arguing that Tuvix doesn’t exist while he’s in the pattern buffer so Janeway doesn’t need his consent overlooks the fact that Janeway put him in the pattern buffer, for no other reason than to separate Tuvok and Neelix. She also gives him a hypospray injection without consent before dematerialising him, in order to identify the separate patterns, which could be considered a medical procedure.
I have a slightly different take on this episode than most of the discussion and comments above While I do think that it has a very good and classic sci-fi premise at its base, I don’t think the actual story and its execution was exceptional even before the ending.
I think it mostly comes down to personal tastes. I thought they leaned too heavily into the Neelix/Kes relationship, which I’ve never found interesting or intriguing and the resultant Tuvix/Kes conversations. I also think the show would have been better going forward with the Tuvix character than with Neelix and Tuvok, but that of course was not going to happen.
For me, the lack of any kind of due process in the episode is jarring. I mean, the Q who wanted to kill himself was entitled to a hearing. I don’t see how Tuvix wasn’t. It might not be a request for “asylum” per se (since Tuvix was apparently granted a commission as a member of the crew so I don’t know if you can be granted asylum from your own organization), but surely there must be some form of request for process that a person who has been sentenced to death can invoke, and surely someone with the memories and knowledge of a long serving starfleet officer would know how to invoke it.
This would have also allowed both sides of the issue to be explored more thoroughly. Whoever was in charge of the “separate” position could have brought out testimony of how Tuvok talked about his children and wife (Innocents did a pretty good job exploring this), Even the Neelix and Tes love could have been brought out. On Tuvix’s side, testimony and precedent about the rights of sentient beings could have been brought out for consideration. A lot of the reflection people wish had happened after the decision could have been done BEFORE the decision was actually made.
As far as the actual decision – there are obviously different opinions which is fine. Personally, if I had to make that call, I think I would have considered the status quo that as of the moment the decision was being made Tuvix existed and Tuvok and Neelix did not. Janeway would not have been allowing Tuvok and Neelix to die if she had chosen not to force the procedure. She had to take proactive actions to bring them back to existence and end the existence of Tuvix. She literally administered the hypo spray to him and subjected him to the transporter function. I would not have crossed that line myself.
@143 – SKO: Not your point, but I highly doubt Picard would have even existed if it wasn’t for serialization. They would’t have gotten Sir Patrick to play JLP again if it was an episodic show.
@158/MaGnUs: I think that’s missing the point. Stewart didn’t come back because of a technical point like whether the plots were serialized. He came back because the show gave him the opportunity to explore and develop Picard’s character in a new way. It’s entirely possible to give a character rich development in an episodic show, as TNG itself did when it made Picard such a rich and layered character in the first place.
What people persist in getting wrong about episodic and serial storytelling is the insistence on reducing them to a binary choice, in defiance of abundant evidence to the contrary. A show can have episodic plots yet serialized character development, with the events of each individual plot having a lasting impact on the characters and changing their situation and their outlook. That’s how TNG and DS9 did it, how Babylon 5 largely did it, how countless other shows have done it. It’s how the Pike-centric Strange New Worlds show is reportedly going to do it. You don’t need a single serialized plot in order to have meaningful character development. I don’t know why so many people have forgotten that.
Quoth MaGnUs: “@143 – SKO: Not your point, but I highly doubt Picard would have even existed if it wasn’t for serialization. They would’t have gotten Sir Patrick to play JLP again if it was an episodic show.”
From what I’ve been led to understand, the format of the plot structure had precisely zero to do with why Sir Patrick decided to come back.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Finally watched this one. Wow.
First of all, that moment at the end of the episode should have been its own act, agreed. But my god does Kate Mulgrew act the hell out of it. She runs through the gamut at warp speed, takes that obvious pain, and internalizes it, and you can see it happening.
This was an impossible decision; a true Kobayashi Maru, as others have stated. There is no right answer, only a choice that must be made. All that’s left after that are the arguments. Hence the last 24 years of discourse about it. It definitely makes the viewer feel a little dirty watching it. It’s different than Sisko’s In The Pale Moonlight moment, and I’m not sure why.
Speaks to the power of the episode. This is fine Trek right here.
Is there a right answer? I think emotionally there definitely wasn’t a right answer, but logically, I personally think that there was only one decision. Tuvix didn’t ask to be created, but he was. He was a living breathing lifeform who had rights the second he materialized on that transporter platform, and he didn’t want to die. It was tragic that Tuvok and Neelix effectively died, but that’s all part of existence. However, it wasn’t a logical decision for Janeway, it was an emotional one, and in that sense, we’re back to it being an impossible decision that had to be made one way or another. For the record, I do think she was wrong, but I understand the dilemma.
There is currently a twitter thread about the episode. Participants include AOC and Kate Mulgrew
Tuvix is the second episode in a row where we have a life form made up of composites who wishes to continue to exist but in the end, the decision is taken out of they’re hands and they’re both lost by episode’s end. At least they made an effort to humanise Tuvix rather than make things too easy on themselves. The ending is shocking, stunning, offensive or disappointing depending on each person, but I was expecting more than a 4/10. What does barium taste like, Krad? Everyone comes to Mr. Vulcan’s – nice amalgam, Krad. The Doctor also has an irritating sense of intellectual superiority.
21: Torres might have sided with Tuvix after her experience in Faces. 37: Chakotay said that, not Janeway and no, I don’t believe Garrett Wang plays the clarinet. 43: Seven asked Janeway that same question in Latent Image. 47: Was Janeway promoted to Admiral or Vice Admiral? 50: One officer did – the Doctor. 61: The Doctor is forced to face the consequences of that very decision in Latent Image. 75: Trek should embrace low-key more often but the powers that be like to focus on what brings in the bigger numbers. 76: Tuvix has always been one of Trek’s most divisive episodes. 87: It’s amusing to think they came up with the episode by shipping together characters’ names and settled on the one that made the best combination (Chakoway?). 105: Could they restore Tuvok and Neelix if Tuvix were dead? 108: Picard’s adherence to the Prime Directive is very inconsistent, take Pen Pals and Homeward, for example.
123: Have you seen the S6 episode Ashes to Ashes, where a crew member is brought back to life as an alien. And I’ll never forget that line, “Under penalty of torture!” 124: If you watch The Orville, that ship doesn’t have transporters, so they obviously don’t put much stock in that idea. 126: The Vidiians won’t be antagonists for much longer. 157: It might have been interesting to have Tuvix (the episode) as something along the lines of TNG’s The Measure of a Man, but with Janeway as the judge, it would hardly be impartial. 159: Picard became more layered over time, rather than the way he was back in the early days. 161: Maybe because the whole crew of Voyager sided against Tuvix while Sisko had to carry the burden alone. 162: Sacrificing one to save two – I’m sure Tuvok would see that as highly logical (since he is one of the two involved). 163: Who or what is AOC?
@164/David Sim: I wouldn’t characterize the fear clown in “The Thaw” as a life form, more as a computer glitch. It was basically an external manifestation of the sleepers’ own fear holding them hostage.
AOC is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
@164/David Sim:
But technically they were already dead, that muddies the waters significantly. Also, aside from the fact Tuvok isn’t around to offer an opinion, he would hardly be objective in the decision.
@166/Thierafhal: This has been argued endlessly in the thread already, but Neelix and Tuvok were not dead, any more than Jadzia and Dax were dead when they were joined. They just didn’t exist separately anymore.
@167/CLB: I disagree. I believe Tuvok and Neelix as separate individuals were dead. Yes Tuvix was a combination of them both, but as individuals, how can we know they still had a voice? If Tuvok and Neelix could have been shown to definitively say, “yes, here we are, we’re still alive!” Than I would agree that they were. Reconstituted with the transporter into their seprate beings does not prove they were. All it proved was that they could be resurrected at the expense and unwilling sacrifice of Tuvix’s life. That is fundamentally my point of view.
@168/Thierafhal: They were absent as separate individuals. That does not mean they were dead, because that is not the only way to be absent. The psychological traits, memories, emotions, and other defining aspects of Tuvok and Neelix survived in Tuvix. Again, it is functionally identical to Trill joining, two consciousnesses merged wholly into one. That is not death, it is communal life. You are equating individual existence with existence period, and that is overly simplistic in a universe where consciousnesses can be blended in any number of ways. Were Spock and Kollos dead when they were melded into a single mind in “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” Was Picard or Seven of Nine dead while assimilated into the Borg’s collective consciousness? For that matter, was Picard dead when he was joined with the alien entity in “Lonely Among Us,” or when he shared his mind with Sarek? Coexistence is not nonexistence. Losing individuality is a transformation, not a cessation.
As I said in an earlier comment, the whole point of the story was that the situation was unique and had no precedent, no simple way of defining Tuvix’s nature. If they were just dead, there would have been no conflict. The conflict arose from the fact that it was more ambiguous than that.
@169/CLB: Look, I get what you’re saying. I have an open mind and I believe in all those possibilities. I never said dead meant nonexistence. People have been declared dead in the real world and been resuscitated. Obviously their existence was not terminated. However, just because their existence wasn’t over, does not mean Tuvix’s life is forfeit. You said: “The conflict arose from the fact that it was more ambiguous than that.” Exactly! As I said in my comment @162: “He was a living breathing lifeform who had rights the second he materialized on that transporter platform.” You also said: “the situation was unique and had no precedent, no simple way of defining Tuvix’s nature.” Does that invalide that he is a living being? I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, I’m just asking you the question because I am basically advocating for the value of Tuvix’s life. His fear of death was real and Janeway forced it upon him against his will and I think that was wrong.
@170/Thierafhal: I’m not saying anything about Tuvix vs. the other two. That’s my whole point, that trying to dumb it down to a simplistic binary is willfully retreating from the intentional ambiguity that makes the story so compelling. There is no right answer. There is no legitimate way to choose which ones “deserve” to live, because they all do, equally. It’s not about one person’s right over another’s. That’s missing the whole damn point, that the rights completely cancel out and it’s impossible to resolve the question on any moral or ethical grounds. Both decisions are equally right. Both decisions are equally wrong. Either way, you save someone and sacrifice someone. Neither choice is better than the other. But the choice still has to be made. That’s what makes it so wrenching.
@171/CLB: Look, what I am saying is that if I was in Janeway’s position (thankfully I’m not), I would not murder Tuvix to restore Tuvok and Neelix. Because the issue is so ambiguous, it’s not a fair decision for anyone to have to make, but as you said (and I said in my original comment for this episode @162), it had to be made. Ambiguity can be a wonderful thing, but also a terrifying thing if a life and death decision with no right answer, has to be made. Just because I think Janeway was wrong, doesn’t mean she was wrong, that’s simply my opinion.
@172/Thierafhal: But that’s a distinct issue from the specific question of whether Tuvok and Neelix were “dead.” I think that is a facile and completely false oversimplification. There is no clear right or wrong answer to who should have been saved; that’s a question of abstract philosophy. But I insist that it is unambiguously wrong as a matter of objective fact to claim that Tuvok and Neelix were dead. They both lived, with their memories and personal characteristics intact in the amalgamated form of Tuvix. They simply were not separate anymore. As Tuvix was the combination of the two of them, then if they had been dead, he would have been dead too.
Everyone wants to pretend Tuvix is a completely separate person from his constituents, but that’s missing the point. He’s distinct from them, but in the way that a banana-strawberry smoothie is distinct from a banana or a strawberry, rather than the way that an orange is distinct from a banana or a strawberry. Or the way that water is distinct from hydrogen and oxygen, rather than the way fluorine is distinct from them. You can’t validly treat the identity of one as something apart from the identity of the others; they are the same pair of entities, only differing in state, combined vs. separate. It’s a meaningful distinction, yes, but it is not the same distinction as that among any ordinary three people.
@173/CLB:
You’ve used the word “oversimplification” many times with my arguments, but I think what you just said is oversimplification in its own way. Tuvix was a mixture of Tuvok and Neelix at the moment he materialized on the transporter pad, true. However, as soon as the clock started ticking on Tuvix’s life, he started becoming a distinct being making decisions that were for him, not for Tuvok and Neelix. And that’s the essence of the problem I have with Janeway’s decision.
As I’ve said and agreed with you, repeatedly, the decision Janeway faced was ambiguous, yet I disagreed with the decision that she did make. Nothing is going to change my stance on that.
@174/Thierafhal: Yes, of course Tuvix was distinct. I literally used that exact word to describe him. And then I went on to explain why the blending of two things that still exist is distinct from those two things as separate entities, which is why Tuvok and Neelix could be changed into something different yet still not actually be dead in the conventional sense. And it’s that desire to force a conventional label onto something unique and unprecedented that I object to. It’s a willful refusal to open one’s mind to the novelty of the phenomenon.
@175/CLB: Okay, I get you now. You’re advocating that whatever decision was made, it should not be looked at by our conventional labels of what life is or what death is.
Since I am only human, though, if I was Janeway, I still could not end Tuvix’s life as it was in its current form and just say: “hey, you know what, he does still exist!” I’d be happy to see Tuvok and Neelix again as I knew them, but I’d feel the pain and regret of carrying out the ending of Tuvix’s life no matter how it could be justified, or not.
@176: Yes, that’s all I’ve been saying. Not a moral debate, just a definition of terms. Transformed is not dead.
I hope I’m not going to have to separate you two as well.
I think the main review is the one I have most fully agreed with in any of the rewatches I’ve done up to this point, I remember watching it first time around loving it right up to the ending.. and then feeling very flat that it just.. well..ended.. it was such sudden ending I felt sure that on this occasion they must reference it at bit in the following weeks episode, surely at least a conversation at least between Tuvok and Neelix? But nah not Voyager.. nothing, one of the frustrations I had and have with this show even now. One further point I think this is Jennifer Lien’s best episode and best performance as Kes
180: I think that’s a tough toss up between Warlord and Before and After.
I wonder how many lungs Tuvix had.
whereistony: That is a truly fascinating question. My guess is one and a half…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I think what hurt most was that this would’ve been a completely different episode if Tuvix had one friend willing to fight for him, to stand up for him beyond the Doctor’s objections. Can you imagine if someone screamed that he was being killed? Caused havoc? Had to be subdued? The reason Tuvix died was because he didn’t have enough friends. He didn’t have enough people that loved him. They didn’t hate him. They just didn’t like him enough. He was an outsider. We as a society seem to value only those lives that receive love. And the unloved are expendable… and easily forgotten.
Cannot disagree strongly enough with all the views that contend that this was a tough moral dilemma with no right answer.
Pro tip: When someone is standing in front of you begging you not to kill them, the correct moral action tends to be not killing them. I’ve followed this rule my entire life and it’s never once led me astray.
The objections I’ve read that try to justify Janeway’s actions anyway really seem to boil down to two things:
1) Tuvok and Neelix deserve to live. This is not wrong of course, but they aren’t entitled to have someone else killed to allow them to live. I don’t think that is really all that controversial which is why this point tends to lead to the next one.
2) Tuvix was not a normal person entitled to full rights to exist because he only came into existence as result of a transporter accident. My only response to this one is that when someone is begging to be treated like a person, it means they are a full person entitled to the same rights as anyone else. There are no exceptions to that rule and there never will be, not even for outlandish scenarios in fictional TV shows.
@184/PatS: “Tuvok and Neelix deserve to live. This is not wrong of course, but they aren’t entitled to have someone else killed to allow them to live.”
But neither is Tuvix entitled to have Tuvok and Neelix condemned to death to allow him to live. That’s the whole problem — they all deserved to live. That goes without saying. But it was impossible for all three of them to live; a choice had to be made. That’s why there is no simple right answer. It’s the trolley problem.
Tuvok and Neelix are already gone, CLB. Killing Tuvix to resurrect them is murder. Letting them stay gone while Tuvix lives, is just letting life proceed as normal. Would you kill someone to resurrect your dead grandparents? I loved my grandparents so much, but I wouldn’t murder anyone to bring them back. And if I did then my grandmother would clip me around the ear for it, because that price would be too much for her.
Now to try and see if the captcha will take less than ten minutes worth of clicking through misaligned and miscoded pictures to find a solution the algorithm approves of. Edit: taken that already, one of the captcha pictures was a single traffic light in one square, against a blue sky, clicked it, and the captcha software rejected it. The captcha software is broken, are you not going to do something about his mods?
@186/kayom: As I’ve said earlier in the discussion, I think it’s completely missing the point of the episode to reduce Tuvok and Neelix’s status to simply “gone.” That’s a willful refusal to engage with the unique ambiguity that the story intended to convey.
@186 – Tuvok and Neelix aren’t dead; they just exist in another form. Everything that incorporates their being, down to the molecule, still exists. There is no degradation of tissue or any other biological process of death. The biological matter has simply been reorganized into something else (though none of the science behind this makes a lick of sense; where the matter comes from to separate them into two beings at the end, including clothing, is a matter left to the viewer).
@186 – Thanks for bringing this to our attention! I’ve passed it on to our IT folks. Meanwhile, the captcha hassle can be avoided altogether by registering here.
@187 @188 – You both are arguing semantics. If you don’t want to call Neelix and Tuvok “dead” or “gone” because they could technically be brought back, that’s fine. The point is that they were not currently alive. They weren’t experiencing anything. And they weren’t upset or distraught about that fact because they weren’t around to know.
But ultimately that’s beside the point because even if you make them fully alive and conscious, it’d still be wrong to kill Tuvix against his will to save them. Don’t tell me it’s justified based on a pure numbers game. In the real world we’d never condone killing people to harvest their organs, even in hypothetical scenarios where doing so could save several lives at the cost of just one.
So why are people so comfortable with the idea in Tuvix’s case? Deep down I actually think it’s just that people don’t want to admit that the good guys murdered a man. Which is a reasonable thing to refuse to admit. Personally in my head-canon I just exclude this episode and treat it as sadistic fan fiction because of how out of character the ending is.
But to actually try to justify killing Tuvix, there aren’t many options left. It’s not because they need Tuvok back for the security of the ship either. The episode is very deliberate about taking away that excuse, in fact they actually make it clear that Tuvix is a little better at his job than Tuvok was.
The only true justification for killing Tuvix is if he didn’t have the same inherent right to exist that Tuvok and Neelix had. But he did have the same inherent right to exist because he was a person just like them. A person that had done nothing wrong besides ask to be allowed to keep living. The idea that one individual can have less of a right to exist for reasons of their birth is wrong.
To be clear I don’t think people arguing the anti-Tuvix position actually believe that some people have less of a right to exist than others, but I do think that that contradiction is why this episode is always so hotly debated.
Let’s imagine that this episode didn’t end the way it actually did: the Doctor wasn’t able to come up with a way to separate Tuvix into Tuvok and Neelix…not until he has a breakthrough, five years later. Tuvik is a popular and well-respected member of the crew having saved fellow officers including Janeway countless times. He and one of the Delaney sisters have fallen in love and gotten married and had a daughter that is best friends with Naomi Wildman. Kes is still aboard Voyager in this alternate timeline and has never gotten over losing Neelix and sobs to Janeway how she misses him. This convinces Janeway to go forward with the procedure. But Tuvix and his wife and daughter escape in the Delta Flyer as Janeway pursues them across the Delta Quadrant, determined as ever to separate Tuvix into his two former beings. Tuvix and family comes across a benevolent alien society of whom he requests asylum because there is a starship with a captain who he claims is out to murder him so these aliens accept him and his family in. Janeway finds them and demands that the aliens return Tuvix to her. Perhaps this scenario better crystallizes how Janeway trying to force Tuvix to “die” isn’t quite a good look for her.
@190 – Would you still have an issue if, immediately upon the creation of Tuvix, he was put into a coma until the Doctor could figure out how to reverse what happened?
@190/PatS: “You both are arguing semantics.”
No, it’s far deeper than that. People keep trying to force this story into some familiar set of rules about how life and death works so that they can assign a pat, unambiguous answer to the problem, but that is utterly missing the point, and the power of the story.
What I love about this story is that it’s pure science fiction — it’s a story that would be absolutely impossible to tell without its science fiction conceit, because it’s a situation that could never possibly arise in any other circumstance. So there is no analogy to the problem the characters are faced with here, no way to apply some glib, pat answer based on conventional assumptions about life and death. It’s a unique situation that renders our conventional expectations irrelevant, and just going “I refuse to accept that, I’m just going to force it to fit my conventional expectations and pretend there’s a clear answer” is failing to participate in the actual debate the episode poses.
Good stories challenge us to look beyond our preconceptions, to question what we thought we knew and believed, to consider possibilities that never occurred to us before. That’s not about “semantics.” That’s about the fundamental purpose and power of fiction.
@192 – If Tuvix had agreed to be immediately put into a coma, with the full understanding that he wouldn’t be conscious again as Tuvix, I wouldn’t have an issue with that. But if he hypothetically had refused I would have the exact same issue, even if it was only minutes after the initial accident.
@193 – The fact that the story is purely fictional and could never happen in reality is precisely why an analogy is so useful for analyzing it in my view. If I understand you correctly you don’t agree that it’s as simple as calling Tuvok and Neelix “dead” or “not alive”, because they are still living in Tuvix or through Tuvix to some unquantifiable degree. Fair enough.
But we don’t need to treat Tuvok and Neelix as dead to determine that killing Tuvix is wrong. That’s where the forced organ donation analogy I brought up before comes in. In my view the argument for killing Tuvix to save Tuvok and Neelix is strictly weaker than an argument that it’d be justified to kill one man if his organs could be used to save several people, because at least Tuvok and Neelix will continue living on through Tuvix to that unquantifiable degree.
One objection might be that the analogy doesn’t hold because splitting Tuvix isn’t the same as killing him for his organs, because he also might still live on in some sense through Tuvok and Neelix. My response is: No one could possibly know that better than Tuvix himself. He has memories from existing as Tuvok and from existing as Neelix, and he sure as hell makes it clear that he thinks splitting him up amounts to killing him.
But even if you still don’t accept the analogy (and I’m guessing you don’t), I stand by the conviction that there is a clear and unambiguous answer. You do not kill the man who is begging you not to kill him. No analogy needed.
That’s what really gets me about the idea that there is no answer. If you think all the rights to exist cancel out and there is no right or wrong answer, then the tie goes to the person standing there begging to live. I know it’s just a TV show but damn that scene is tough to watch. The anguish he would have felt as no one speaks up for him and he realizes he’s going to die is hard to imagine. That suffering should factor into your answer.
@194/PatS: Of course killing Tuvix is wrong. Of course killing Neelix and Tuvok is wrong. That is the whole point — both options are equally wrong! That’s what makes it so painful a choice. There is no right choice. There is no moral argument you can make to pick either choice as a “good” or desirable outcome. It’s a choice between two absolute and obvious evils, but the choice still has to be made. That’s what’s so compelling about the story, and why any attempt to reduce it to a “right/wrong” choice is massively, staggeringly missing the point.
“You do not kill the man who is begging you not to kill him. No analogy needed.”
If it were as simple as that, no. But if that man is saying “please kill these two other people instead,” doesn’t that pretty massively complicate the question? How is it moral to ignore the rights of the people who aren’t right in front of you, who don’t have a voice? You have to consider both sides, not just the one that’s convenient to acknowledge.
@195/CLB: Tuvix isn’t asking anyone to take a proactive action by saying “please kill these two other people instead” as you put it. And Tuvix didn’t come into being through any action on his own and it wasn’t a deliberate action by anyone else so he is completely faultless here. But the action by Janeway to separate him back into two beings is a deliberate purposeful action that will kill Tuvix, an action he is pleading against in no uncertain terms.
@196/garreth: For the five millionth time, I have NEVER said that Janeway was right to kill Tuvix. It is missing the point to think this is about right versus wrong. It is about wrong versus wrong. The question is, how do you choose when both options are terrible and undesirable?
Janeway didn’t make her choice because it was right. A captain doesn’t always have that luxury. Sometimes they have to make the wrong choice because there is no right one, like when Kirk armed Tyree’s people or Sisko tricked the Romulans to get them into the war. That’s what makes it so hard — even with no good choice, they still have to make the choice, and try to live with it.
@197/CLB: The point I was making that you didn’t respond to was that you were putting words in Tuvix’s mouth saying “please kill these two other people instead” when he said no such thing nor was implying such an action non-verbally. At this point his existence is the status quo, and only a proactive action on the part of Janeway would upset that status quo. In a manner of speaking, Tuvok and Neelix are already “dead” through no one’s fault.
@195/CLB: Five millionth? Isn’t that over-estimating a bit? Isn’t it more like the fifteenth time, or the twentieth time?
@198/garreth: And I’ve made it clear that I think it’s missing the point of the situation to simplify it to Tuvok and Neelix being “dead.” If they were dead, there would be no question to ask, so obviously that is not a valid way to define it. It’s rejecting the entire premise of the debate rather than participating in it.
@200/CLB: And again, my primary point, whatever the current state of Neelix and Tuvok (and they are continuing on in some manner), it is without question that Tuvix exists in the here and now as flesh and blood. Separating him is a deliberate action to end his life for good.
I can easily imagine in the last scene where Janeway brings Tuvix down to sickbay for the procedure that instead of Tuvix acquiescing, he physically resists causing Janeway to order security to “hold him down!” while she administers the hypospray to his neck. It sounds brutally ugly but it would just drive home the point even further to the audience that Tuvix doesn’t want his life to come to an end.
There really is no debate though. Tuvok and Neelix are gone, they are not in existence, they have run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible, they are an ex-chef and security chief. They have departed this mortal veil in puff and shimmer of a busted transporter. They died. That is what makes this episode so problematic. There is no getting around that.
The debate, in so far as it exists, is asking us whether it is right to kill a person to raise them from the grave. There might be a case there if the need of them was great enough, and the abilities of Tuvix was small enough. But the ship goes on well enough without them, and Tuvix is kinda better than them in every level, so there isn’t even that thread to cling to. Tuvok and Neelix were killed by transporter accident and then resurrected by human[for want of a better word] sacrifice.
Now Tuvok and Neelix coming to terms with the murder of another person in exchange for their resurrection from the grave, that would have made a better episode. The last few minutes of this episode could have been the cold open, then they could spend the entire episode trying to find out why they’ve been gone for so long since the planet of the week, why all their stuff has been moved, and why nobody will quite meet their eyes or tell them why. They finally find out the horror, listen to the hollow justifications which boil down to “I missed you”, and we close out with them sitting alone in each of their quarters trying work out how to feel about it.
That there was this whole other person who existed from each of them, and that that person was killed to bring them back. Are they glad to be alive, but now burdened by incredible survivors guilt? Does one of them agree that their life was worth it, and the other feel that Tuvix didn’t deserve what happened and that they should have remained dead. That would be the debate, and it would work by putting Neelix and Tuvok at the heart of it as active characters. Have them be the ones to ask “Is my life worth another’s death?”.
As it is, they died. Then the blood sacrifice was paid, and they live again. I get the writers didn’t intend that to be the episode, but I can only judge the episode they made and not the one they might have intended.
@195/ChristopherLBennett
First you vehemently push back on the idea that Tuvok and Neelix are dead. Now you claim that simply maintaining the status quo, letting Tuvix remain as he has been for weeks, is somehow killing them. You can’t have it both ways.
I really like this episode, and I am with CLB in thinking that the lack of an ending where Tuvok and Neelix reflect on what happened is unfortunate, but it doesn’t hurt the episode nearly as much for me as it does for Kieth.
I disagree with Janeway’s decision. I don’t think it is ever justified to kill one innocent person to save multiple lives. Someone choosing to give their life to save others is one thing, but forcing them to is quite another thing. I don’t really blame Tuvix for begging for his life, because he’s right. It is HIS life, and they’re choosing to take it away from him. I will say I don’t hate Janeway for her decision, as some comments claim to, because it was a hard choice, and in the end she is the one who had to make it.
@203/PatS: “First you vehemently push back on the idea that Tuvok and Neelix are dead. Now you claim that simply maintaining the status quo, letting Tuvix remain as he has been for weeks, is somehow killing them. You can’t have it both ways.”
Not at all. What defines death is irreversibility. That’s the point. It’s wrong to say Tuvok and Neelix were already dead, because their absence was not irreversible. If it had been, there would have been no debate or dilemma in the first place. But Tuvix was pleading for them never to be brought back, which would be tantamount to killing them because then their absence would be permanent.
@205 – Good point. I hadn’t considered that before. By the time the Doctor knows he can reverse it, Tuvok and Neelix have been let out of Schrödinger’s box and they’re alive. Tuvix is essentially arguing for their deaths to spare his life.
@205/ChristopherLBennett: There are two distinct concepts we are conflating by using the word “death”:
1) The state of not being alive
2) The irreversibility of that state
Of course it normally isn’t a problem to conflate the two because in real life the state of not being alive is always irreversible. We can’t resurrect people. But as you’ve said before in these comments, the beauty of this episode is that it’s a pure science fiction story that introduces a dilemma that could never occur in real life. Tuvok and Neelix are not alive but they can be resurrected via sci-fi magic. That forces us to weigh how important the “not being alive” part is against how important the “irreversibility” part is.
And my answer is that the “not being alive” part is far more important. The difference between “alive” and “not alive” is essentially everything. The difference between “not alive (reversible if someone is sacrificed)” and “not alive (irreversible)” is almost nothing in comparison.
This wasn’t a case of right vs wrong or even wrong vs wrong. It was a case of wrong vs unfortunate.
@207/PatS: I reject the premise that they were not alive, though. They were every bit as alive as Jadzia and Dax were alive when joined into a single personality. Tuvix was not an unrelated being, he was the complete blending of both of them. Hydrogen and oxygen atoms don’t cease to exist when they’re combined into water. Fruit and yogurt don’t cease to exist when you blend them into a smoothie. They still exist, just merged.
That’s why it’s cheating to pretend this is analogous to a choice between three different people. Tuvix is behaviorally distinct from Tuvok and Neelix, but he is not separate from them. He is them, but at the same time he isn’t. That’s what makes it such an impossible choice.
@208/ChristopherLBennett: Ultimately I don’t see how that interpretation changes anything. If Tuvok and Neelix are still sort of alive(but not as separate consciousnesses) through Tuvix, then even more reason to keep Tuvix. Tuvok and Neelix can continue sort of existing through Tuvix. Tuvix cannot continue existing, even sort of, if he is separated into Tuvok and Neelix (the source for this assertion is Tuvix himself. He’s quite clear that separating him is killing him, and who could know better than him).
I will say that if you wanted to assume that Tuvok and Neelix are actually alive and distinctly conscious but suppressed in some sort of locked-in-syndrome-like state (for example like how Seven of Nine is conscious but suppressed while The Doctor in control of her body in the recently reviewed “Body and Soul” episode), then sure that could significantly change my evaluation of the dilemma. In that scenario we would be dealing with 3 completely alive people and I’d probably land on “Sorry Tuvix but we have to separate you”. But I also think that in that scenario Tuvix might be much more willing to sacrifice himself willingly anyway.
The only reason I’m not making that assumption is that I don’t think there is anything in the episode that points that direction.
@209/PatS: “Ultimately I don’t see how that interpretation changes anything.”
The difference is that people keep trying to redefine the terms in a way that produces a pat, simple answer, and I say that’s cheating at the trolley problem the episode poses. The whole reason it’s a compelling, wrenching story is because there is no right answer, no pat solution. There’s only a choice between two evils with no clear way to say one is lesser. So I reject any effort to handwave a way to a “conclusive” answer, a way to say “aha, this is the solution.” If it were soluble, it would’ve been a shallower drama. So trying to “solve” it at all is doing it an injustice.
@Christopher
@krad
Brought here by “Twovix.” I thought I’d share my thoughts on the moral dilemma in this episode.
I dunno, if we get the technology to eventually resurrect someone and it required someone else to die, then it gets thornier with the idea Neelix and Tuvok aren’t there anymore. The ethical dilemma is not that they’re not there anymore but they CAN be saved in the same way someone trapped in a pattern buffer or something would be.
I’m inclined to view this episode very differently from other show watchers, though, as I think the ethical dilemma here isn’t nearly as unprecedented or weird as people make it out to be. I think that TOS and DS9 (more than TNG) made it clear that it is BASIC expectation of a Starfleet officer that you have to make questionably ethical life and death choices all the time.
Kobatashi Maru, anyone?
One of the earliest tests to see if Wesley Crusher had the stones (or whatever the nongendered version of it is in the 24th century) was whether or not he could leave a man to die to save someone else. VOY and ENT tried to softpedal this sort of thing (at least until ENT Season 3) but part of the reason Redshirts exist is because sometimes you have to send someone to die. Deana Troi did it to get her promotion.
To save two of her crew, Janeway had to let a random alien die. It’s terrible but it’s something I expect every Starfleet officer to do in this situation unless there’s a greater good involved like the Prime Directive.
For me I’m the opposite. The main bulk of the story I find stodgy and dragging. But the ending for me is perfect. I don’t want to know what people are thinking after. I can guess. A terrible impossible decision has been made that people are going to have to deal with. Whatever they discuss with each other isn’t the point. It’s Jane way’s dark lonely work out of sickbay at the end that sums up why it works for me. It doesn’t matter what they discuss and any extra act devoted to that will just be histrionics and over egging the pudding. It’s what will live with her forever no matter how she justifies it externally. You can see it in her acting as she leaves. This is a scar on her psyche that she will have to contend with alone for the rest of her days. To carry on beyond that point would ruin the ending in my view
Quoth Justin: “This is a scar on her psyche that she will have to contend with alone for the rest of her days.”
Except she hasn’t and didn’t. As I said in the rewatch entry, the show’s aggressively standalone nature meant that the only consequences would be in this episode, and this episode robbed us of that by ending with the separation. And then it was never mentioned ever again except in passing by Naomi Wildman and as a gag in another TV show. The scar you reference doesn’t exist.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido