Well, I will certainly concede that Tuvix was a real person. He could have continued to function as a crewmember had he been allowed to live. But his right to continued existence couldn’t trump that of the two people of which he was an involuntary amalgam.
That is not a reasonable conclusion. People have a right not to be murdered. That right does not vanish just because your death could save the lives of others, not even if their existence predates yours.
Extracting someone’s organs to save the life of others might be without malice, and might not in your mind be for an evil purpose, but it’s still murder. As for Janeway’s lawful authority, the flaws in how the Federation defines moral behaviour negate the Federation’s moral authority, not the other way around.
I guess we’re just going to have to agree to disagree, then.
I’m lukewarmly on the other side (that Tuvok and Neelix deserved to live again) but recognize that that’s only because I “knew” Tuvok and Neelix longer than Tuvix and that it’s just a fictional show. However, your quoted sentence makes me think of an interesting contrast for this situation.
For those who think destroying Tuvix to allow Tuvok and Neelix to live again was the right thing to do, how do you feel about the Vidiians? They were devastated by the Phage and had basically created an entire civilization revolving around stealing the organs of strangers without their consent in order to survive. Given that Neelix lost his lungs to the Vidiians at one point, is their culture of organ theft the right thing to do?
It’s the “right” thing for them, but for their victims… not so much. Their victims are also not obliged to accept the Vidiians’ claim, and are entitled to resist with deadly force, if necessary (cultural relativity goes only so far). Tuvix, as either a civilian aboard Voyager or a Starfleet officer, was obliged to accept Janeway’s decision, even under protest, as there was no higher lawful authority capable of being appealed to.
But turn it around. Tuvok and Neelix existed before Tuvix. To all intents and purposes, he destroyed them by coming into existence. Their claims to sentient existence predated his. “First in time, first in right” is an ancient doctrine. Restoring them to separate existence was simply restoring the status quo, which he - blamelessly and inadvertently, to be sure - supplanted.
I’m gonna have to watch the episode again. Season 2, ep. 24, I see…
The situation with Tuvix isn’t really the same as with organ donors. No one can reasonably expect to have rights to my organs as I’m not responsible for their well being, but that wouldn’t be the case if I somehow accidentally gotten their organs for myself and they’re dying because of it. Either way Janeway chooses someone is condemned to death, it’s her duty to resolve the situation with the least amount of casualties. In this unique case the rights of two lives trump the rights of one.
No, he is not. No matter what God complex Janeway has, Tuvix has no obligation to roll over and die just because she wills it.
No he did not. A transporter accident destroyed them. He is no more responsible for their destruction than the child of a rape is for the circumstances of their creation.
I would instead argue that Tuvix’s right to not have his life destroyed trumps their “right” to have their lives saved.
Anywho, arguing about Tuvix aside…
Two of my fave episodes were:
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The one where everyone starts encountering medical problems and Seven uncovers invisible aliens experimenting on them. Even in the future there are conspiracies about aliens secretly experimenting on us!
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The episode set on an alien planet that is teaching history about Voyager but in their books the Federation is a warmongering evil race and Janeway a cruel and mercenary force for hire (cue a depiction of what that looks like, it was awesome!). One of the school’s teachers accidentally activates a piece of Voyager technology which has a copy of the Doctor in it and he tries to argue that they’ve formed an incorrect picture of Voyager, that their history books are wrong. A fun episode for the whole completely inverted depiction of how Voyager normally is, and of course a good parable about history always being open to (incorrect) interpretation.
Course: Oblivion, where the crew finds out that they are actually copies from the ‘Demon class’ planet in…er…Demon. They start to disintegrate, forcing them to 180 and head back to the Demon planet ASAP. Notable among Voyager eps for SPOILER being one of the few episodes with a downer ending - their ‘message capsule’ to mark their existence malfunctions and is destroyed, and the whole ship is destroyed before they can make it back - leaving the real Janeway to mark a weird grey blob in the vicinity, before moving on.
This also means that the alien grey-goop copy of Janeway was doing a better job than the real one…
For further discussion of Janeway’s decision in “Tuvix” and to end this hijack: The ethics of ST:VGR "Tuvix" - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
I liked the one with the alternate history too. Nice twist, having the Doctor explain what happened from the crews viewpoint.
I liked that episode, but I found it kind of disturbing that the original Harry died during that episode, was replaced by his parallel universe clone, and nobody ever brought it up again. :smack:
I think it was once in a throw-away line about Harry dying more than anyone else on the ship. It’s true, he’s died so many times I lost count - he must have some kind of permadeath resistance.
One more I would like to add to the “best” list is In the Blink of an Eye, where Voyager is trapped in the orbit of a planet with dense gravity and time passed way faster on the planet than in orbit. They are able to observe the growth of an alien civilization from stone age to warp capable in just a few days.
He also gets to bed more alien women than anyone since Cmdr. Riker, maybe that’s his payback. Although he also seems to get more alien STDs, which frequently seem to lead to his violent and painful death.
I seem to recall him serving with Captain Riker after they got home- I always kind of assumed that Riker secretly hired him on reputation alone, so he could test new and interesting alien species for dangerous compatibility issues before Riker himself beamed down.
Not according to the Memory Alpha page for Deadlock (the episode in question)…excluding the Silver Blood, MA claims that Deadlock is the second of only two times Harry ‘died’ (the first in Emanations) - but the first of ‘many times’ for Janeway.
Sadly, they don’t actually enumerate Janeway’s deaths, and I’m completely blanking on any except Deadlock and Year of Hell (which is listed as the 5th time, again, presumably, excluding the Silver Blood duplicate). OK, and Before and After, the first episode of the Year of Hell arc, while I’m there.
[Edit - slight correction to the above - whoever edited the Deadlock page apparently made a mistake…apparently the episode Timeless marks Harry’s third death - and Janeway’s sixth.]
Well, thanks for counting - but Harry has still died two more times than a person is supposed to in life. 
Ooo, yes, that was cool. Voyager’s reflection in orbit, observed from the surface, actually inspires a renaissance among the alien race. Later an alien astronaut comes aboard Voyager and finds everyone motionless, because through some technobabble the astronaut is able to maintain his own very fast passage of time.
I’ve been trying to remember. Was there a mirror universe episode of Voyager?
The mirror universe thing started with the Original series. Spock in a beard. A parallel existence where the Federation is evil. We recently talked about in in the Uhra thread.
They followed up in Ds9 withe several mirror universe episodes. The first being one where O’Brian is a slave and Sisko is a smuggler/lover of the space station’s female ruler.
I don’t think Voyager or TNG had a mirror episode. Maybe someone has a better memory.
No, TOS, DS9 and ENT are the only series that did mirror universe episodes. (Outside the comic books, in which there is at least one mirror universe story involving Picard (though that’s pre-TNG era, when he was still an [del]Ensign[/del]Lieutenant…at least at the start of the story).)
Mirror Tuvok appeared in the second DS9 mirror episode. I don’t think any of the other Voyager characters’ mirror counterparts showed up.
Voyager’s premise, and the canon status quo of the mirror universe by the time of the series, made them rather hard to mesh - though it would be interesting, given that the Cardassians are one of the oppressors of the former Empire, and the anti-Cardassian Maquis are a major element of Voyager.