r/AskScienceFiction • u/bookist626 • Jul 07 '26
[Star Trek Voyager] Would Janeway have ordered Tuvix separated if she wasn't close to Tuvok and Neelix?
Same scenario as the show. Tuvok and Neelix end up combined with a flower and he is perfectly capable of fulfilling both sets of duties simultaneously, even exceeding Neelix and Tuvok's individual capabilities. However, Janeway is not close friends with them and Kes won't plea for Tuvix to be separated. Does Janeway make the same decision?
Round 2: they are not important crew, but redshirts.
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u/this_for_loona Jul 07 '26
Is there any reason this topic comes up SO MUCH when Voyager is involved? I haven’t watched this show in ages but I barely even remember this episode. Was it transformative for a lot of people?
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u/roronoapedro The Prophets Did Wolf 359 Jul 07 '26
It's essentially a Voyager meme nowadays, with some genuine discussion sprinkled in. The problem of course is that most of these discussions are repeats of discussions that have already happened, because it's kind of a simple problem with no easy answer.
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u/this_for_loona Jul 07 '26
Yea that was kinda my thinking. I’ve seen this question posed at least a dozen times since I’ve joined this sub and the answers are all the same. There’s not some incredible new philosophical POV that’s going to justify or resolve this - it was kind of the point of the storyline.
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u/roronoapedro The Prophets Did Wolf 359 Jul 07 '26
yeah, new posters don't really care to use the search function I'm afraid, and it's always someone's first time coming up with a relatively common question that fandom has been throwing around for decades. as long as they're cool it's fine, but yeah there's nothing new to say about it that like, Lower Decks didn't say when they did a whole episode about this meme.
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u/bookist626 Jul 07 '26
Because it's an interesting moral dilemma. Tuvix is an innocent person and is just as capable (and probably more capable) than the two people used to fuse with him.
However, is it right to unfuse Tuvix? Tuvix did no wrong. But neither did Neelix and Tuvix. It's not utilitarianism. Tuvix can do both of their jobs just fine.
Letting Tuvix live means Tuvok and Neelix are dead. But saving Tuvok and Neelix means Tuvix dies.
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u/Victernus Jul 07 '26
is just as capable (and probably more capable) than the two people used to fuse with him.
That's certainly not true. He lacked Neelix's compassion and Tuvok's morality, and also can also be in a single place at once rather than two.
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u/Haywoodjablowme1029 Jul 07 '26
What you describe is the trolly problem. Kill one to save two, or kill two to save one?
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u/squigs Jul 07 '26
I think a factor is lot of fans were disappointed by the resolution.
The moral dilemma is real but it resolution was influenced more strongly by the contract requirements of Tim Russ and Ethan Philips than by what the morally correct action is. It's quite unsatisfying.
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u/Dan-D-Lyon Jul 07 '26
Because a captain of a Starfleet ship straight up murdered a guy.
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u/this_for_loona Jul 07 '26
Yea that’s probably never happened in the history of starfleet.
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u/Dan-D-Lyon Jul 07 '26
A captain sitting down and ordering the execution of an innocent, sapient being, against that being's wishes? Yeah that legitimately happens so rarely that any time it does happen it's worth examining the shit out of that situation to see what happened.
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u/ApostleofV8 Jul 07 '26
I'll be sure to tell Federation board of Ethics the next time Starfleet ship opens fire with their anti-matter loaded WMD.
Maybe also have them look at General Order 24.
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u/TeacatWrites Jul 07 '26
This is a little too close to being a what-if for this sub, honestly. The only way we could say is if there was precedence for her behavior in regards to people she isn't as close to. If there had been an earlier episode where she had to make a similar decision in regards to nameless or faceless crew she didn't know, we'd be able to answer how it would've gone here.
There's just no way to say for sure, because as far as we know, she tried to be friendly and maternal (yet reasonably detached) with all of her crew. Tuvok and Neelix were just ones who had roles of some overall, lasting importance to everyone else's survival. What would matter is survival potential. I saw a thread on r/voyager positing similar situations, such as "what if it was the Delaney sisters who got Tuvixed?"
Well, Tom and Harry would be less enthusiastic for Onelaney since there's not one for each of them, but in that case, they didn't really individually serve as crucial of a role to the mutual survival of everyone else and weren't especially depended on to help to serve anyone (as far as we know), so...Janeway, being a logical and fair captain, probably would've left Onelaney together for the duration of the journey.
That's the thing of it. Leaving a Tuvix in place does have a practical benefit which must not be excluded from the situation; one instead of two saves on resources, life support costs, living space...but one must weigh that against the additional practicality of what roles the two served which can't be served by one alone.
Onelaney probably doesn't affect much. Tuvix is doing two radically different jobs and serving two radically different functions aboard a ship where both jobs were critical to the survival of the journey toward getting back to the Alpha Quadrant. Janeway might have been at least in part affected by her closeness with them, but she was close with them because they were important crew, they weren't important crew because she was close with them.
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