this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
39 points (97.6% liked)

Daystrom Institute

3453 readers
13 users here now

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:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I want to live!

- EvilKirk's last words

Whatever else you want to say about EvilKirk, it's pretty clear that he didn't want to be merged back into the single Kirk. Despite this, there is no shortage of reasons why it was a good idea to merge the Kirks: the Enterprise needed its CO back, GoodKirk wanted to do it, and it seems possible that the strain of remaining split would have eventually killed EvilKirk anyways. However, the fact remains that EvilKirk did not consent to the procedure which ended his existence.

Clearly the circumstances here are quite different and there's basically no argument to be made that allowing EvilKirk to continue to exist would benefit any involved party, EvilKirk included. But for the purposes of this comparison, the only fact that really matters is that EvilKirk was just as passionate about his desire to continue existing as Tuvix was.

Yet—and it's obvious where I'm going with this—"Spock murdered EvilKirk" is not a meme.

So what gives? Did Spock murder EvilKirk or not? If yes, why does he get a pass while Janeway is condemned?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] jrs100000@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I would say Neelix is a big part. Starfleet officers have already consented to the possibility that they might be ordered to their death for the good of their ship or the Federation. While their transformed versions may not have been exactly the same beings as the originals, there is still some ethical cover in that some version of them in the past had accepted these risks. Neelix, however, was not a Starfleet officer and had made it very clear that he did not consent to having his life sacrificed for the greater good of Voyager.

Just how much this ethical baggage from either side carried over to a new being is unclear; it certainly would have been less unclear if it had been two officers merged together and not a civilian passenger.

[–] Shift_@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Yes, finally, some common sense. Neelix did not consent to die for Starfleet. Tuvok did not consent to die to become Tuvix. Neither consented to staying as Tuvix, because Tuvix was his own person and could not make decisions for them.

Nobody protests Tom and William Riker staying separate despite literally being the same person. Why not extend the same logic to Tuvok and Neelix? If a clone can be it's own person, then why is the well being of two individuals cast aside?