Daystrom Institute
Welcome to Daystrom Institute!
Serious, in-depth discussion about Star Trek from both in-universe and real world perspectives.
Read more about how to comment at Daystrom.
Rules
1. Explain your reasoning
All threads and comments submitted to the Daystrom Institute must contain an explanation of the reasoning put forth.
2. No whinging, jokes, memes, and other shallow content.
This entire community has a “serious tag” on it. Shitposts are encouraged in Risa.
3. Be diplomatic.
Participate in a courteous, objective, and open-minded fashion. Be nice to other posters and the people who make Star Trek. Disagree respectfully and don’t gatekeep.
4. Assume good faith.
Assume good faith. Give other posters the benefit of the doubt, but report them if you genuinely believe they are trolling. Don’t whine about “politics.”
5. Tag spoilers.
Historically Daystrom has not had a spoiler policy, so you may encounter untagged spoilers here. Ultimately, avoiding online discussion until you are caught up is the only certain way to avoid spoilers.
6. Stay on-topic.
Threads must discuss Star Trek. Comments must discuss the topic raised in the original post.
Episode Guides
The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:
- Kraetos’ guide to Star Trek (the original series)
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Animated Series
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- Darth_Rasputin32898’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- OpticalData’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
- petrus4’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
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Isn’t the main difference that neither could survive if they remained separated? They would both eventually die unless they were reintegrated.
Whereas in Tuvix’s case, the merged being was in no danger of death and could have lived a long healthy life.
That is true and to @ValueSubtracted's point, speaks to the fundamental difference between the morality tale that each episode is setting up for our consideration. "The Enemy Within" aims to make the viewer uncomfortable by suggesting that Kirk's decisiveness is derived from his "evil" half and isn't offering any commentary on the personhood of the "evil" half. So much so that they short circuit that possibility by slapping an expiration date on EvilKirk.
Best I can give you is that it's still technically murder if you kill a condemned man.
Killing two people who are both destined to die in the very near future to save one who will live for a considerably longer period and save a greater number of lives would be the right thing to do from a utilitarian standpoint. Tuvix, meanwhile, is a healthy being who was competent to discharge his duties and posed no threat.
Consequently, while there is an argument to be made that killing one person to revive two others is a net benefit, the burden of suffering on that one person is extreme, and whether or not it is outweighed by the positive nature of the two others returning to live is very much a matter of individual outlook.
It is also worth noting that Tuvok and Neelix as they existed before could be considered "already dead" as a result of their combination into a single entity. Thus you could argue that what actually happened is that Tuvix "died" so that clones of the deceased Tuvok and Neelix could be created from him. Admittedly this is a shaky argument given the whole "do transporters actually kill people in-universe" thing.