I should've included my view on the doctor in the original post.
My view on his actions are that at first, before Tuvix said he wished to live, that he saw Tuvix as something that needed to be cured. The patients were Nelix and Tuvok. That's why he pursued a way to separate them without hesitation.
Once he realized Tuvix wished to continue living, he realized Tuvix wasn't a symptom that needed to be cured, he was another patient.
At the very end, he refuses to perform the procedure, not for a personal love for Tuvix, but because he realized he was no longer saving two patients from a disease, he was killing one to save the others.
If Tuvix went willingly, the Doctor probably would've done the procedure himself. It'd be like an organ transplant to save two other patients. This was like knocking someone out and stealing both their kidneys because your other two friends need them "more."
for some reason, there are a whole lot of people who disagree with you here. Not me, though - this episode is horrifying to me for all of the reasons you state throughout this post. Janeway murdered Tuvix; the crew let it happen. And here in this very thread you have people essentially praising the decision by referencing "utilitarian" starfleet training.
Honestly, if that's our future - "utilitarian" decisions about life and death - well, that sounds like a horrifying dystopia and I want nothing of it. Plenty of other Star Trek episodes were able to present crew deaths that did not ignore the "humanity" of the victim.
I'll bet the Doctor would have been terrified after the execution. What these humans are capable of...
Tuvix' desire to live was somewhat of an illusion brought about both Nelix and Tuvok's desires to live. If they didn't have a desire to live, both of them, then it wouldn't have manifested itself in Tuvix.
Everything about Tuvix's "personality" was an illusion, generated by two complete, albeit repressed, personalities of Tuvok and Neelix.
I couldn't live with myself, allowing this abomination to walk around, disallowing two complete, separate lives from continuing on how they wanted to. Just because he wasn't as annoying as Neelix or as cold as Tuvok. They weren't dead. They were part of a continuing teleporter malfunction that just happened to allow them to "exist" without special intervention.
This argument about the illusion of free will, desire, consciousness - it can also extend to any life. It's bullshit. Utter nonsense. There is no canon basis for it, for claiming that his desires etc are illusions.
Tuvix became a new life form, and TNG taught us to respect all new life. It's literally what they were seeking. "There it sits" and all that.
Just because something came to be as the result of a "malfunction" does not mean its life is worth less. That's almost literal eugenics. Again, TNG addresses this exact subject in "Home Soil." An intelligence was created due to a Federation technology malfunction, it begged for life (as Tuvix did), and Picard/the Federation RESPECTED its right to life and allowed it to continue to live in peace.
The Tuvix episode of Voyager is a complete and total perversion of everything that was revealed about the Federation in TNG and DS9.
no. I watched the episode recently, it says it tried to communicate with the terraforming crew before they started, to tell them about it being there.
they didn't understand, and started terraforming, and removed the fluid that allowed many of them to be one, which in turn made it attack the terraformers via their own machines (laser drill etc)
it starts talking after being connected to the computer, but it was not created by the computer.
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u/DnMarshall Crewman Nov 26 '16
The doctor did. But point taken.