By "kill" I mean pies.
About Tuvix:
- Thread starter Kobayshi Maru
- Start date
teacake, just thought I'd mention, I haven't seen you on the Janeway thread in a while...
All threads are the Janeway thread.
That's why I'm not welcome in the TNG forum anymore.
That's why I'm not welcome in the TNG forum anymore.
Now teacake, we must accept that not everyone wants to hear about Janeway, crazy as that seems...
Everything I have ever posted has subtext about Janeway in it. If people are too dense to find that subtext there's not a lot I can do.
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4-spBDcJyk[/yt]
Pies coming from off screen were usually thrown by Moe due to his good aim.
If doesn't embed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4-spBDcJyk
Y'all have some nice pies there Melakon.
"That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to throw pies today!"
This Tuvix thread is as good an opportunity as any I've yet encountered to talk about something which occurred to me during a very recent Voyager rewatch: fake morality.
Before I go further, I want to say that I really enjoyed the Tuvix episode because it covered something that is very rarely touched upon and that is the no-win scenario. There simply was no right answer there so Janeway chose to do the right thing for two people and do a terrible thing to one person. I suppose Kirk might have downloaded Tuvix's personality into a holo program before murdering him, but anyway...
There were a handful of episodes in Voyager where it was very obvious that the writers and producers wanted you (the viewer) to believe that a certain action or inaction was the "right" thing to do, but in my mind, it simply wasn't. I don't know what to call this except fake morality - trends and suggestions - popular thinking - that step in front of what is actually the right thing.
One is Death Wish, where (the original) Q tells Janeway that he will actually use his powers to send their ship home provided Janeway overrules the other Q's wish to commit suicide... Now, I understand Janeway wanting to grant Q the right to die if life no longer offers "him" any peace or satisfaction - and I absolutely understand how dirty I would feel if I took a deal like that and allowed my desires to dictate the way I decided after being made the judge... However, I think the actual right thing to do would have been to balance one individual's suicidal wishes against the lives and well-being of her entire crew! Janeway would have been the only one that would have had to carry that guilt. It would have been her soul-stain alone - and I think a more righteous person should have been willing to carry that shame that stemmed from taking Q's deal in order to instantly get her crew back home. Janeway had to know that the actual chances of her current crew all getting back to earth alive were not very good at all. So I say, take the pain and save your crew. The only cost is forcing one suicidal being to stay alive and taking a bribe.
The other incident which immediately comes to mind is from Nothing Human, where The Doctor makes the decision to wipe the computer's records clean of information pertaining to saving lives because it was attained through torture. The Doctor's logic was obviously that if this information was used, it would, in effect, endorse the very torture that was used to gather said information... Who says? I just don't get it. Are humans, even this far into the future, just too stupid to separate information from the means through which it was acquired? We are a linear people - we cannot go backwards, only forward. If everything else about a civilization abhors torture and illegal experimentation, I don't see how any of this is actually compromised by using information derived from a civilization that does not hold to these ideals.
If we learned how to treat people with radiation sickness because someone dropped an atomic bomb, would we be wrong to use it? Here in the United States, we no longer engage in slavery or slave-labor, but should we have gone around the country and demolished our infrastructure because much of it was built by slaves?
I would even say that if I were kidnapped and someone stole my kidneys, killing me in the process, in order to save the life of their child... if that child was executed as a way of making a statement about the wrongness of my abduction and murder, it would actually negate the one positive byproduct of my death.
Anyway, there were a fair amount of episodes in Star Trek where it was very clear how you were supposed to feel about something - and they often got that wrong. What I liked about Tuvix is that nothing Janeway decided would have made everyone feel good - and that's often how real life turns out.
Before I go further, I want to say that I really enjoyed the Tuvix episode because it covered something that is very rarely touched upon and that is the no-win scenario. There simply was no right answer there so Janeway chose to do the right thing for two people and do a terrible thing to one person. I suppose Kirk might have downloaded Tuvix's personality into a holo program before murdering him, but anyway...
There were a handful of episodes in Voyager where it was very obvious that the writers and producers wanted you (the viewer) to believe that a certain action or inaction was the "right" thing to do, but in my mind, it simply wasn't. I don't know what to call this except fake morality - trends and suggestions - popular thinking - that step in front of what is actually the right thing.
One is Death Wish, where (the original) Q tells Janeway that he will actually use his powers to send their ship home provided Janeway overrules the other Q's wish to commit suicide... Now, I understand Janeway wanting to grant Q the right to die if life no longer offers "him" any peace or satisfaction - and I absolutely understand how dirty I would feel if I took a deal like that and allowed my desires to dictate the way I decided after being made the judge... However, I think the actual right thing to do would have been to balance one individual's suicidal wishes against the lives and well-being of her entire crew! Janeway would have been the only one that would have had to carry that guilt. It would have been her soul-stain alone - and I think a more righteous person should have been willing to carry that shame that stemmed from taking Q's deal in order to instantly get her crew back home. Janeway had to know that the actual chances of her current crew all getting back to earth alive were not very good at all. So I say, take the pain and save your crew. The only cost is forcing one suicidal being to stay alive and taking a bribe.
The other incident which immediately comes to mind is from Nothing Human, where The Doctor makes the decision to wipe the computer's records clean of information pertaining to saving lives because it was attained through torture. The Doctor's logic was obviously that if this information was used, it would, in effect, endorse the very torture that was used to gather said information... Who says? I just don't get it. Are humans, even this far into the future, just too stupid to separate information from the means through which it was acquired? We are a linear people - we cannot go backwards, only forward. If everything else about a civilization abhors torture and illegal experimentation, I don't see how any of this is actually compromised by using information derived from a civilization that does not hold to these ideals.
If we learned how to treat people with radiation sickness because someone dropped an atomic bomb, would we be wrong to use it? Here in the United States, we no longer engage in slavery or slave-labor, but should we have gone around the country and demolished our infrastructure because much of it was built by slaves?
I would even say that if I were kidnapped and someone stole my kidneys, killing me in the process, in order to save the life of their child... if that child was executed as a way of making a statement about the wrongness of my abduction and murder, it would actually negate the one positive byproduct of my death.
Anyway, there were a fair amount of episodes in Star Trek where it was very clear how you were supposed to feel about something - and they often got that wrong. What I liked about Tuvix is that nothing Janeway decided would have made everyone feel good - and that's often how real life turns out.
All of Trek is full of this. Roddenberry's brave new world was a series of morality plays. Sometimes written rather badly..
Would she have refused to overrule the suicide if it wasn't an immortal angst driven Q but, say, B'Elanna having her super bad day in Extreme Risk? NO. She would have stopped that quick and if she could get the ship home AND stop B'Elanna from offing herself all the better. She is beguiled by Q epic drama, the tale of WILL, everything written larger than life and soaking in sturm and drang on a Qagnerian stage. She has been seduced by the morality play.
That is an utterly stupid conclusion of the doctors and you will find few if any who agree with him. A good example of morality play fail as unlike Tuvix there is nothing to toss back and forth. Yes, "fake" morality in this case.
"I think Qagner is Q posing as Richard Wagner"
Yes, indeed, and google even actually helped me figure that out, as well.
Sturm und Drang: "Storm and Drive", "Storm and Urge", though conventionally translated as "Storm and Stress") is a proto-Romantic movement in German literature and music taking place from the late 1760s to the early 1780s, in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free expression in reaction to the perceived constraints of rationalism imposed by the Enlightenment and associated aesthetic movements.
Very nice reference.
All I can say is, Gunter glieben glauten globen.
Yes, indeed, and google even actually helped me figure that out, as well.
Sturm und Drang: "Storm and Drive", "Storm and Urge", though conventionally translated as "Storm and Stress") is a proto-Romantic movement in German literature and music taking place from the late 1760s to the early 1780s, in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free expression in reaction to the perceived constraints of rationalism imposed by the Enlightenment and associated aesthetic movements.
Very nice reference.
All I can say is, Gunter glieben glauten globen.
I'd argue there is a potential 'feel good' ending to Tuvix though. All I have to ask myself is, what would Picard do? He would convince Tuvix to volunteer with a really good speech, but wouldn't force him against his will.
Janeway just saying screw it and dragging him off is cool but it's totally inconsistent, because it doesn't match up with the rest of the episodes where Janeway is putting her morals over the safety of the crew. The Janeway that orders Tuvix to his death should also comply with Q to get them home, or traded blackmarket technology, or would just have used the caretaker to get home. Maybe she just cares about Tuvok a lot more than Neelix (since she wouldn't get his lungs for him).
Janeway just saying screw it and dragging him off is cool but it's totally inconsistent, because it doesn't match up with the rest of the episodes where Janeway is putting her morals over the safety of the crew. The Janeway that orders Tuvix to his death should also comply with Q to get them home, or traded blackmarket technology, or would just have used the caretaker to get home. Maybe she just cares about Tuvok a lot more than Neelix (since she wouldn't get his lungs for him).
IMHO, you seem a little too sure of what the right thing to do is, in each instance. I for one, am not so sure.
There's the right way, the wrong way, the Starfleet way, and the Janeway. Meryl should play Janeway's Academy roommate in the holosuit scene where Janeway discusses the Tuvix issue with her old roomie the way they used to over rum in bed.
