And how the fuck is killing Tuvix best for the crew? And don't give me the its good for morale bullshit. You don't just murder someone becuase people don't like them its immoral and makes the crew of Voyager look like monsters.
Just because we disagree doesn't mean either of us is right. The episode by design poses an unanswerable question. It's a no-win situation. R. Star wins the thread by invoking Godwin's Law.
This sums up my view. Isn't it pretty much accepted as canon that mid-transport accidents result in the victim being held in a sort of stasis? We've seen more transporter mishaps in all the series than I care to count. The reaction of the crew is never "Whoops, lost another one. Oh well, fuck it, guess he's gone now. Nothing we can do about it at this point." The crew works overtime to get their people back and they're usually successful. We've seen too many weird transporter accidents result (eventually) in happy endings to assume that in this one particular case, the victims should automatically be assumed dead.
Yes but how many transporter accidents result in the creation of a new lifeform? One of starfleet. To quote Picard Starfleet was founded to seek out new life. Well, there he sits, your honour, waiting on our decision. You have a chance to make law. Well, let's make a good one. Let us be wise.
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibBTZyQpVAA[/yt] Does that look like stasis to you? Becuase that sure as hell looks like horrible death to me.
At the end of the day, setting 70,000 light-years from the Alpha Quadrant, it's a simple numbers game. Unless we're going to make Tuvix work sixteen hours a day in both security and in the kitchen, two people are simply better to help Voyager attain its goal of getting home. In the AQ, it's a different ballgame.
Considering Neelix left the ship and they didn't have a problem finding a new guy to take over I call bullshit on this. Starfleet ships don't fall apart becuase two people died they have people to take over positions in that case in fact that was show by the freaking early episodes already.
Sorry, but playing god with people's lives is not "simple numbers game" or a game at all, and it's either right or wrong. Where they are is inconsequential.
If it's really just a numbers "game", then it's ironic that Janeway, who pushed so hard to uphold Starfleet ideals (most of the time), would be so willing to look the other way at a time when executing a sentient being was involved. Though it would have been hilarious if she threw this in the faces of those who encouraged her to show more flexibility.
Decisions are driven everyday by the circumstance in which an individual exists. It's dishonest to say life-and-death decisions aren't driven by numbers and by circumstance. The whole point of Troi's command test was that she may have to pick someone to die so others can live. Everyday doctors have to pick candidates that qualify for liver transplants leaving others to die. You don't think circumstance drives those decisions?
Indeed, it's certainly easier to go along with Janeway's decision if you assume that Tuvix was little more than a parasite, as opposed to a fully sentient being with the right to self-determination. Data was a collection of parts, the EMH was a trick of the light.
Troi's command test was bollocks anyhow. "In order to win, you must sentence this holographic recreation of your actual friend to death!" I would have been a lot more impressed if they'd rigged it so that she didn't know it was a simulation and had been bothered by her choice after the fact.
Yeah... watching the Phage when Janeway gives that long winded speech about how evolved humanity is and they're beyond even considering something so barbaric when confronted with the possibility of killing the Viidian to get Neelix's lungs back is amusing when you consider this episode.
"I picked up a few tricks from our Vidiian friends. Now submit to the procedure. Resistance is futile. ...oops, wrong hostile race!"
I've never been a parent either, however I do come from a long line of people who were viewed as less than human and which was used to justify their extermination. This rationale has been used to justify genocide through the centuries.
^^Indeed. "It's for the greater good" is insufficient when we're talking about killing a sentient being.
If everyone is simply a copy of a past self when they step off the transporter pad, then it clearly is a numbers game.