He was icky, poor thing. I wonder if he had been a hybrid of human and something debatable as sentient what the reaction would be? Like when the Doctor inhabited Seven? Say he decided not to get out of her.. yeah. SO would it be an issue for B'Ellana and co to then extricate his program from Seven, the human Borg hybrid? In fact what of the Borg? Is it appropriate for Borg components to be removed from their 'host'? Is that not destroying a different composition of life too? Do Borg life forms own their life? I don't want ask these questions.. make it stop.
If you want to ask a harder question, you could ask what if it was impossible to extricate The Doctor in any way that would keep his program in any sort of recognizable state. Though honestly, The Doctor refusing to leave Seven or be deleted is hard to imagine...at that point it could probably be argued that he'd become parasitical and surrendered his right to live his life in peace. Though, what if Seven and The Doctor were both perfectly fine with this arrangement? I don't think Borg components are individually sentient, so I have a hard time arguing against their removal...though I think if a person had chosen to be assimilated or actively wished to remain so (perhaps hard to ascertain), then forcing them to leave the Borg might constitute a criminal act.
Imagine Seven squeezing into her skin tight onesie after the Doctor had indulged his appetites? When someone is a Borg are they not a sentient drone? Maybe drones are not sentient, just life forms. However, much like Tuvix who had a collective of two - Neelix and Tuvok in his head, a drone has a collective of many. Restoring a drone to their previous species is in a way changing their life.. yeah?? It is changing the actual drone and removing their link and contribution to the collective. Not sure if that actually supports my lack of consideration for Tuvix.. Still Tuvix was icky, that's good enough ..
I consider the Borg a collective consciousness...take one drone away and you detract from that consciousness to a degree proportionate to the total number of drones in the Collective...but given even the number of drones just on a single ship, to remove one probably is no different than a human losing a single brain cell. Also, if we assume that the Collective downloads an assimilated individual's life experiences when they're assimilated, then it might be argued that while the Collective would lose some processing power if they lost that particular drone, it wouldn't be any different than a single hard drive at Google going down...which I believe is happening constantly.
The moral of this story is "Writers: do not paint yourself into a corner where you force a main character to make a decision that will make a good chunk of your audience hate them." It may have made for an interesting story, but you have to consider the consequences of how the audience will view the character in the dozens of stories that come afterward. Enterprise's "Dear Doctor" is another example of this mistake.
It's a mistake to create a moral dilemma in your show that actually divides your audience regarding their views on a character? I think not.
I doubt either side on this debate will change their mind. But at least we can say this of the episode it certainly generated some debate abouth the ethics/morality of her decision.
No. Moral dilemmas are interesting, and this was an interesting episode. If this was a movie, or if Janeway was a one shot character, this wouldn't be an issue. The problem is that it is a major character defining moment. You can't forget Janeway's actions. You have made your lead character unsympathetic to a (large?) portion of your audience, and you have to produce another 150 episodes where it may be essential that the audience likes or empathizes with this character. It's like having an episode of the Andy Griffith show where Barney gets trapped in a cell and is forced to eat Otis to survive. You may have written a great piece of drama, but you've pretty much killed the series as a comedy. When you have fans speculating that Janeway is bipolar as a way of ignoring some of the characters less savory actions, you know that the writers have made a mistake. p.s. In reviews over at jammer's site, I've read some people's comments to the effect that "well, we're still talking about it, so the writers must have done their job." That's like saying "Bill Buckner must have made a great play because we're still talking about the 1986 World Series" or "The captain of the Titanic must have done a helluva job, because they made a movie about it." Writing a story where the audience can debate a characters actions = good Writing a story which a chunk of your audience will use as an example of why "this show sucks!!" for the next two decades = bad.
I've never heard anyone say the show sucks over Tuvix. Janeway clearly was disturbed by what she had to do. It's not like she says 'I can live with it." She saved the lives of two crewman, one of which had a family back home. In Similitude, Archer got the easy way out by not having to make the choice.
Tuvix is a thought provoking example of Voyager, just check out this whole thread. I liked Janeway more after this episode. She saved two of my other favorites - Tuvok and Neelix from the horrors of being replaced by Tuvix.
Admiral Janeway might have considered saving Tuvix when she was trying to figure out how to get her crew home. Pickup Tuvix, and then go back in time another couple months to before Tuvix was "born" so that every one can go home.
To be fair to Janeway, there's not a choice obviously more 'ethical' in this conundrum that Janeway could have taken. Get Tuvok and Neelix back - and in the act end Tuvix' life. Or keep Tuvix - and in the act choose to not save Tuvok's and Neelix'lifes. Damned if she does. Damned if she doesn't. On the side of her choice are numbers - 2>1 -, the fact that Tuvok had relatives in the Alpha quadrant, and the fact that she and her crewmates had known these two men for a lot longer than they had known Tuvix. It was definitely one of Voyagers better episodes, even though I'm not sure I would side with Janeway on this one. I would have liked it more I think if she would still have been shown struggling with it over the course of the next few episodes. But of course, Tuvix is never, ever, mentioned again by anyone.
The very second that Kes dumped Neelix, a few weeks later, that should have brought the argument to reassemble Tuvix front and centre... Unless Kes' passion for her boyfriend, and teary speeches didn't actually add any weight whatsoever to the disassemblement argument.
Too bad the Vidiians didn't show up at the end and harvest the organs of every single member of the Voyager crew. Many>Few.
^That's an interesting point you make. Janeway condemns the Vidians, but does basically the same herself. But as I said earlier, there's no ethical action to get out of this one.
Random, slightly off topic opinion - the show might have been better with Tuvix instead of both Tuvok and Neelix. How many great Tuvok or Neelix episodes were there post season two? Now, how many of those episodes couldn't have been done if they featured Tuvix? The writers struggled to write interesting stories for many of the Voyager crew, especially after 7 of 9 showed up. Neelix became comic relief. Tuvok, Harry, and Chakotay all took a couple of steps back out of the spotlight. Tuvix, on the other hand, could fill the roles of both original actors and create a lot of new story ideas thanks to his bizarre origin and nature. And you would only have had to pay one actor instead of two. Heck, squeeze him into a catsuit and you may not even have needed to added Jeri Ryan to the cast.
It's the sort of moral conundrum that works really well in a show like The Outer Limits, not so much in a series where ongoing characters have to be clear cut heroes by the next week. I'm not saying that approach to a series can't be pulled off (see: M*A*S*H,) but I think VOY writers were lacking the inclination and ambition to even try it by that point. So the whole situation ends up... unsatisfying.
Comparing Janeway to the Vidiians is nonsense. Depending on which episode/series you get the explanation from, Everytime the transporter is used, an individual dies, and is recreated. Janeway simply reversed a transporter accident, setting these two people back to their natural order. To the person who said that the Tuvix incident was "never, ever mentioned again by anyone" It was mentioned at least one more time in season 7, but I could imagine other times. To the person who said Neelix became comic relief after season 2, and that the Neelix/Tuvok episodes could have just been Tuvix: I'm totally confounded by this. I can think of "rise" in season 3 and "riddles." There's simply no way that Tuvix could have done these episodes. Also, Neelix becomes less and less a comic relief character after season 2. Just try watching Neelix' hyperventilating News/Cooking show during the Seska arc, or when he makes a joke of incinerating Jonas immediately after a long struggle to the death. Then watch an episode like Riddles. What is unsatisfying? Tuvix?! That's your opinion. Do you have a comparable example from Trek that is satisfactory, and examples of why?