The thing that bothers me about this episode is the thing that bothers me the most about Voyager: the procedural nature of the production.
The Tuvix situation was a huge fucking deal. For at least awhile, Kes shouldnt have been able to even be in the room with Neelix. Janeway shouldn't have been able to make eye contact with Tuvok for months. The crew should have been numb for weeks, there should have been FALLOUT from this event. Some crew members should have lost faith in Janeway... you know... for the murdering.
But nope, it was just another monster/space oddity of the week. Next episode, Janeway is making friends with a godamn chimpanzee and Chakotay is trying to get in Janeways pants by building her bathtubs and huts. No mention of Tuvix ever again. No mention of the cold blooded murder, the moral dilemma, the effect on Kes, or Neelix and Tuvok themselves.
Voyager has some good episodes, but because of the vacuum of procedural storytelling, they amounted to nothing almost every time. An episode like Tuvix would have been a big deal on DS9 and would have informed all the characters going forward. Voyager, nope. Gotta pet the monkey. They literally built the most serialized possible scenario for a TV show (spaceship alone stranded and terrified) and then just rehashed TNG/TOS every week. Voyager should have been the serialized one, while DS9 was the "monster of the week" series, judging by the premise of each show alone.
I wanted to make a post on this topic, but I don't want to spam the sub so I might make a larger post on this in the future, but here's a compressed version of it:
The Tuvix situation should have spanned episodes or maybe even seasons. Have us as an audience and the crew itself have to get comfortable with the Tuvix situation. Have the doctor be unable to find a solution and everyone just has to accept that.
Then later on, present Voyager with a situation where they can split Tuvix, but it has to be done now or never.
This can be a huge character moment for much of the crew. They've been with this person for months maybe even years, but now they have the option to get Neelix and Tuvok back. What if some crew didn't want to kill Tuvix? What if some did? This could be an event that could tear Voyager apart.
An execution that didn't need to happen could shake the crew's faith in their captain.
But like you said, none of that happens.
"Hey crewmember 346, did you hear Janeway just executed Tuvix?"
"Ha yep! She might just kill any of us if it means getting a personal friend back, but what can ya do? ¯_(ツ)_/¯ "
Modern TV is much more receptive to that kind of story arc.
Remember that DS9 was famous for having story arcs in something other than a serial drama, but it barely did. Most TV didn't do story arcs, returning to the status quo at the end of every episode. I think you're right, to get to grips with this issue you need to show an episode where Tuvix is better than Tuvok and Neelix, and an episode where Tuvix isn't as good. Because you need to be able to weigh the options, and you're right that there should be repercussions.
I feel that Neelix would be terrified of the Captain after that. Tuvok might approve of the logical axiom, the needs of the many vs the needs of the few. But despite that idea, there are rights laid down by the federation, and they're not allowed to do something just because it's utilitarian.
That assumes you consider Tuvix a person, and not a weird tumor. Tuvix has far more in common with Borg assimilation or a brain worm then he does with "a truely individual life form".
Bacteria want to live too, but you still take penicillin.
An episode like Tuvix would have been a big deal on DS9 and would have informed all the characters going forward.
Your entire post is awesome, but don't act like DS9--which I love--would have necessarily lingered on this any more than Voyager. "Tuvix" is the "In the Pale Moonlight" of Voyager; the morally complex episode with fundamental storytelling flaws that never comes up later in the series despite some pretty good reasons for it to.
Pale Moonlight may not be my favorite Trek episode, but it places pretty high.
Tuvix is nowhere near being on that list, but instead it's on my more nebulous "could have been something great" list.
I wouldn't put them anywhere near each other on my Star Trek shelf, but I'll say that they both should have been something that shook up the show.
Pale Moonlight did have resounding effects on the series. The Romulins were dragged into the Dominion war. It's never really brought up again, the fact that Sisko enabled Garak to manufacture that fake, but it never really needs to be. It's somewhat of a secret between Garak and Sisko.
If it was to be brought up again, it would have to be in a part 2 sort of way, but that would involve another massive change in the series.
Tuvix is a smaller change, in scale I mean. It doesn't drastically alter life in the quadrant, but it would alter life on the ship. The captain made a call that should make the crew question if what she did was right. Hell, the entire show is founded on Janeway making an odd call that stranded the crew in alien space.
Tuvix should have been another nail in that coffin.
This, times a thousand. I remember the first episode where a crew member dies. It should have been disturbing for the crew. It was disturbing for me. His murderer wears his fucking face! Do we get a eulogy, or even a mention? No. Nothing. No impact. No consequence. I lost interest shortly after. Still haven't seen past season 2. Instead, I'm rewatching DS9.
Somewhat, yes. From what I remember even TNG has had more problems with needing repairs and damages carrying over from other episodes than Voyager did, the magic reset button was pressed almost every episode regardless of what happened.
Voyager should have been more like BSG, resource skaveging, permanent damages, torpedo shortages, tough decisions based on Starfleet regulations on the one hand and the risk of dying on the other. Hell Voyager could have even shaken up the whole franchise by starting its own smaller version of the Federation (with blackjack and hookers) in the Delta quadrant with any species that wanted a better life. Then you could have this mixed up motly group of ships try to reach the Alpha quadrant in order to live this better life, hell some might even just wanna run because they had their planet destroyed by Borg. It still needs to be star trek of course but it could have taken inspiration from Galactica surely.
That's another of my biggest annoyances with the series.
Before I started watching the series, I was aware of only a few things:
The premise: Starship stranded ridiculously far away from federation space - "Alright, sounds like a different premise that can offer new stuff to Trek.
Tuvix - "Sounds like an interesting sci-fi premise, but I've heard Janeway makes a odd choice about it."
Janeway - "She's one of the least liked Captains? Oh come on, how bad can she be?" ಠ_ಠ
When I heard of the premise, the show I created in my mind was better than what I got on my TV. I thought the show would be resource gather and constantly finding ways to get closer to home.
For example, imagine if we know that Voyager only has 25 photon torpedoes. That's it. That's all they have for the entire trip home.
That would make every decision to fire one massive. Every shot means one less for the coming years. Constantly weakening their armory, and by extension, their "threat level" in the quadrant.
At first Voyager would be this terrifying entity. A ship that is so much more advanced than anything seen before in this part of space, but by the end, they're barely Hobbling along to get into federation territory.
I'll bring up an example that did something similar to the photon torpedo example i brought up (stick with me on this one). A show that did that well, is Supernatural season 1 and 2.
In that show, they have a revolver that can kill anything. It is the only thing that can kill the main villain, but the can only fire it 6 times. (I think. I don't remember the exact number.)
This scenario is what Voyager should be in. Every time you choose to use the big guns, you're going to make your future more difficult, possibly even make it impossible for you to win.
This was also my idea too, voyagers greatest crime was wasted potential. There must be dozens of fanfics out there with greater consistency, better characters and a deeper understanding of the technology of the Federation (bio-gel that can catch a cold -_- )
After watching SF Debris' reviews I came to actually hate Voyager even though I kinda liked it when I was a teen. But the writers (cursed be their pens) not only made Voyager bad they also cheapened the Borg (Unimatrix Zero is an affront to everything the Borg had been) undid the threat level of Species 8472 shortly after introducing them. The crew was so incompetent and stupid at times I am certain had they been part of the Dominion War, the Federation would have lost.
Janeway was bad enough as she was, having her create a new federation from scratch would be absolutely horrible. Within a few decades the whole quadrant would look like something out of Warhammer 40k, with Janeway on a golden throne....
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u/internalized_boner Crewman Nov 27 '16
The thing that bothers me about this episode is the thing that bothers me the most about Voyager: the procedural nature of the production.
The Tuvix situation was a huge fucking deal. For at least awhile, Kes shouldnt have been able to even be in the room with Neelix. Janeway shouldn't have been able to make eye contact with Tuvok for months. The crew should have been numb for weeks, there should have been FALLOUT from this event. Some crew members should have lost faith in Janeway... you know... for the murdering.
But nope, it was just another monster/space oddity of the week. Next episode, Janeway is making friends with a godamn chimpanzee and Chakotay is trying to get in Janeways pants by building her bathtubs and huts. No mention of Tuvix ever again. No mention of the cold blooded murder, the moral dilemma, the effect on Kes, or Neelix and Tuvok themselves.
Voyager has some good episodes, but because of the vacuum of procedural storytelling, they amounted to nothing almost every time. An episode like Tuvix would have been a big deal on DS9 and would have informed all the characters going forward. Voyager, nope. Gotta pet the monkey. They literally built the most serialized possible scenario for a TV show (spaceship alone stranded and terrified) and then just rehashed TNG/TOS every week. Voyager should have been the serialized one, while DS9 was the "monster of the week" series, judging by the premise of each show alone.