SO = significant other
No, life isn't a numbers game. It's not legal, nor moral, to take a life to save another. If you can save 2 or three or 10, it's still not legal nor moral. And Janeway never made that argument.
We also don't put a value on a human life by killing someone less "useful" to save someone else we think more useful to society as a whole.
But Tuvix was a smarmy, irritating git. It was a win win situation getting rid of him.
And Janeway's wrong there. Life isn't a numbers game.
Of course she made the right decision. The other two were on contract for the whole season.
there was no "right" decision here. Tuvix, through no fault of his own, was denying Tuvok and Neelix there right to life, but Tuvix had his right to be there as well. Many "dilemmas" in Trek are fake and poorly handled(see "dear doctor"), but this was not one of them. They created a situation where there really was no right answer.
I personally think Janeway did the right thing, and I totally agree with Guy's numbers thing here. But the best reasoning I have heard (and I believe it was from Christopher Bennett) was that Janeway had to save Tuvok and Neelix because to sacrifice them for Tuvix would have been a betrayal to the rest of the crew. They had to feel that her loyalty was to them and not someone that was a transporter accident. Would you have gone on an away mission for her if you knew in the back of your mind that she might not choose you? It wasn't only a choice to save two friends, it was a choice to keep her crew's loyalty. To any effective captain, the crew's safety has to come first, before right and wrong even.
Well that's racism at work there.
Of course it is, but that still doesn't make her decision wrong, when in fact it was the only decision she could have made.
You know the funny part, you guys that don't understand how we can believe that Janeway was right, should understand that we don't see why you want to heap so much hate on her in the first place. And that is a prejudiced position no matter which side you are on.
The judgment of Janeway's action here depends entirely on a gut reaction. It is a moral dilemma, there is no right answer for everyone and everyone's opinion is completely based in the individual's prejudice. You can tell the pro-choice from the anti-choice here, you can tell the pro feminists from the anti feminist. It all colors the individual's opinion. And no one will ever agree.
IMHO, every thread that starts with the word Tuvix or Equinox, should be locked, no good comes from them.
I'm afraid I'm with teya, R. Star, and BruntFCA on this one. Janeway forced someone to kill himself. Against his will. It was for the good of the ship, but it was still murder. I like Janeway, but this decision has always, always disturbed me.
And I don't think the Doctor should be attacked for what he said. The fact that it was his programming that decided it was wrong is irrelevant. If he had been a flesh-and-blood physician, his decision would have been the same. Doctors don't kill people against their will.
It wasn't for the good of the ship. The ship would have been fine with either decision. Janeway was even siding with Tuvix, until a tearful Kes begged to have her Neelix back who she loved more than any other...
But out on the frontier and out of contact with Starfleet, she has a duty to the other 140-plus people under her command to do her job to the best of her ability. In order to do that, she needs the people she trusts and that is Tuvok and to a lesser degree Neelix.
I'd agree with that argument if it wasn't that she said exactly the opposite thing in her log. She found Tuvix to be a wise counselor who used humor to get his point across. We saw that Tuvix used intuition to solve a problem that would have stymied Tuvok.
Tuvix had proven himself as an officer.
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