r/TuvixInstitute

(Probably speaks volumes I found this subreddit immediately after watching the episode lol.)

I say without an ounce of insincerity that for the first time in watching Star Trek I feel betrayed by the crew.

We’ve had so many occurrences of duplicates being created, whether by transporter or by some temporal anomaly, and every time they chose to side on that being’s right to exist independently of its original source.

While Tom Riker is the obvious one, it doesn’t feel like the best analogue for this scenario. Instead, I am drawing from the Deep Space Nine episode “Time’s Orphan” Season 6, Episode 24. In it, Miles and Keiko O’Brien’s daughter Molly is sucked through a time anomaly, and when they retrieve her she is a decade older, and extremely emotionally disturbed from having to survive on a barren planet from such a young age without help. While the easy option for everyone involved would have been to send her back, with that option being given at the start of the quandary, Miles and Keiko immediately accept this Molly both as their own daughter and as a independent entity with the right to life.

They try to rehabilitate her and bring her back into the civilian lifestyle to no avail, and even at that point when they have no hope left of having this Molly become their daughter, they still don’t choose to end the life of the older Molly and trade her in for the young Molly. They break Starfleet protocol, steal a runabout, and return the older Molly to the time anomaly to return to the life she had gotten used to. Luckily for them the plot seen it fit to allow both Mollys to coexist, as the young Molly was returned to them with the aid of the older Molly, but still, the resolution was ultimately that the older Molly had more of a right to live as an individual than the O’Brien’s did to their daughter.

What happened to Tuvix doesn’t just break ethics and morality in our own world, but even in the precedence set by the show. There was more consideration given for repair bots (TNG S6 E09) than there was for a living, breathing, sapient humanoid in a show that up until now chose to believe in the right to exist no matter the circumstances. I genuinely feel complicit in a murder. I am heartbroken.

Justice for Tuvix.

Remember that Tuvix was made from the blending of Neelix, Tuvok, and the weird alien orchid.
The biggest debate is whether or not it was justifiable to murder Tuvix to get back two crew members. Did anyone think what the orchid wanted? Where did the orchid go after Tuvix was murdered and Tuvok and Neelix came back?

It's basically the same situation but a bit worse.

So I've recently started rewatching Enterprise. I forgot how good it was. I also forgot how much of it I don't remember. And recently one episode was basically a parallel of Voyager’s Tuvix. A brief recap for those who don’t remember (spoilers) - In the Enterprise episode Simlitude, Tripp gets badly injured after trying to push the ship’s engines to maintain Warp 5 smoothly ; an explosion in engineering sends him flying and as a result he gets put into a coma. Dr. Phlox tells Captain Archer that not much can be done and that they should prepare for the worst. That is until Phlox presents a plan that’s ethically wild: among his many creatures in Sickbay, is an organism that, when given the DNA of a species, can create an identical genetic clone. The downside? The clone only lives for 15 days. Phlox says that they can do this and harvest the clone’s neural tissue for Tripp so that he can survive. 

Archer gives the go-ahead, and Phlox proceeds to inject the organism with Tripps DNA. A couple of days later, there’s a baby Tripp on board. Within a few days, he looks to be about 10-12 years old. As he gets older, they soon realize that the clone also has Tripp’s memories. But you can see the ethical dilemma. They eventually harvest the neural tissue for Tripp and the clone dies, but you get the idea. It was an ethical mess. 

There’s parallels here with Voyager and the whole Tuvix debacle. And honestly, the Tripp clone situation is way worse and almost highlights a double standard when it comes to how much flax Janeway gets for her handling of the situation. Think about it: Tuvix was a literal transporter accident. A sentient being yes, but still an accident. Janeway gets called a “murderer” (in some circles) for “sacrificing” Tuvix” - against their will - to bring back Tuvok and Neelix, two people who a lot of people forget didn’t have a choice in the matter had Janeway gone and kept Tuvix around. But the situation on Enterprise was much worse.

Archer basically gave the go ahead to create a clone for the sole purpose of tissue harvesting. What’s worse is that it seems that the stress from trying to find the Xindi threat in the Expanse made him have this attitude of not giving a fuck. For instance, the Tripp clone eventually has feelings of wanting to live - just as Tuvix did - and discovers that there’s an enzyme that could potentially let him live normally. Even though the chance is slim, he wants to take it and confronts Archer about this. Archer disagrees, saying that Phlox says that there’s almost no chance the enzyme would work; the Tripp clone counters, saying that his life is at stake. But Archer basically says the cost is too high as it would take another day to synthesize the enzyme and by that time, it would be too late to harvest the neural tissue from him to save Tripp and he would die. Archer says he can’t let that happen, that he needs to complete the mission and that he needs Tripp.

Archer then gets dark, which to me shows his mental state. The Tripp clone asks him if he’ll have him dragged down to Sickbay at gunpoint, to which Archer says that if he really has all of Tripp’s memories, he should know the answer to that. Archer then says he’ll take “whatever steps necessary” to save Tripp to which the clone says “even if that means killing me” to which Archer basically says yes. The clone calls Archer’s bluff, saying he’s not a murderer to which Archer says “don’t make me one.” It was probably the darkest I had ever seen Archer. Eventually the Tripp clone comes around and accepts his fate. But to me the whole situation just highlights the double standard regarding the similar situations on Enterprise and Voyager. Yes, Enterprise was in a unique situation, but it’s still strange to me how often Janeway gets called out over Tuvix while Archer doesn’t get called out for this Tripp clone debacle.