Areas where you'd respectfully disagree with Chuck

[Admiral X]

I respect that. I'm certainly not going to start an argument over a 25(?) year old TV show. But what you bring up really is the thing that bothers me the most, because I do not see how two dead people can come back to life again even with Star Trek magic science. It is my opinion that Tuvix had Neelix and Tuvok inside his head all along; alive but unable to communicate. Thus it is my belief that allowing the mistake to live would have been condemning two of her crewmembers to death and Janeway (Real Janeway, not Parody Janeway) had a moral duty to do what she did.

Neelix and Tuvok would hardly be the first characters in Star Trek to magically come back to life. Hell, Neelix was killed and brought back to life using Borg technology later on, and he was confirmed to be straight-up dead.

And as she ended up getting promoted, the Federation Council never brought any murder charges against her and thus logically she DID have the authority to do what she did. Riker and Pulaski when they shot their clones too for that matter.

This is actually a fairly famous continuity error, as later on Odo states that killing your own clone is still considered to be murder. It could be this is simply the case on Bajor, but even if that's the case, the example you're talking about had quite a bit of fans upset, too, and I'd argue that what they did was an immoral act, too.

[Deledrius]

But what you bring up really is the thing that bothers me the most, because I do not see how two dead people can come back to life again even with Star Trek magic science. It is my opinion that Tuvix had Neelix and Tuvok inside his head all along; alive but unable to communicate.

This highlights what I think is a fundamental flaw in the story's dilemma. Either they are dead, and the choice to bring them back succeeds through an astronomically-small chance fluke that just happened to work out (and were most likely going to end up killing Tuvix for nothing), or they were never dead and the choice isn't about sacrificing Tuvix to save them at all, just destroying him so they could regain their independence. The only way the former isn't an astronomically-unlikely happenstance is if the transporters can do this reverse-accident as a matter of course (and we have seen similar miracles), but if that's the case it opens up a huge can of worms on why it isn't used like this more, and in this instance means the dilemma didn't have any element of risk in sacrificing Tuvix, only a question of whether they would kill him. I'm pretty sure the episode wants all of these things to be simultaneously true in order to get the dilemma it presented.

[Madner Kami]

If you kill an innocent person to save two people, you are not a good person. With the same line of thinking you can justify forcibly removing the organs of one person to save several others who need those organs to survive. This is not a good thing, it is bad. Really bad. And Voyager knows this, as you cans ee at the Vidians. They kill to save themselves and they kill because they have no other choice and not out of malice. Them killing people is displayed as a terrible immoral thing. It is literally the same thing as what the Voyager-crew is doing to Tuvix. They are horrible people and there is no way to argue this away. They killed an innocent person intentionally.

[J!!]

Whether someone dies because you choose to pull a trigger, or because you choose not to pull a trigger, they are equally as dead. Whether by action or inaction, you are still choosing for them to die.

Janeway had a choice between one death by her action, or two deaths by her inaction.

[Madner Kami]

1) Tuvok and Neelix were already gone. She choose between murdering someone in order to let somebody else live or not killing an innocent being. She chose murder.

2) It can be argued, that neither Tuvok nor Neelix were dead, they were still around in the composite personality identifying as Tuvix.

3) If you choose to kill someone, you are a murderer. If you choose not to kill someone and that someone still dies, you are not responsible for his or her death.

It doesn't matter how you try to justify it, the fact remains: She killed Tuvix and the entire crew except the Doctor is complicit in that murder. They universally liked Tuvix and he was a useful crew-member. She pulled the trigger and they let her pull the trigger.

[clearspira]

If you kill an innocent person to save two people, you are not a good person. With the same line of thinking you can justify forcibly removing the organs of one person to save several others who need those organs to survive. This is not a good thing, it is bad. Really bad. And Voyager knows this, as you cans ee at the Vidians. They kill to save themselves and they kill because they have no other choice and not out of malice. Them killing people is displayed as a terrible immoral thing. It is literally the same thing as what the Voyager-crew is doing to Tuvix. They are horrible people and there is no way to argue this away. They killed an innocent person intentionally.

Oh, but here's the thing: I never claimed it makes you a good person, I claimed that it was the right thing to do. Real life does not operate by Silver Age comic book rules where good automatically equals right. Sometimes horrible actions have to be taken to prevent an even more horrible action. And in this case, that horrible action would have been letting two people die for the sake of one that never should have existed in the first place.

[Darth Wedgius]

She was hoping to get two Tuvoks and no Neelixes. It was probably worth a shot.

[AllanO]

This is actually a fairly famous continuity error, as later on Odo states that killing your own clone is still considered to be murder. It could be this is simply the case on Bajor, but even if that's the case, the example you're talking about had quite a bit of fans upset, too, and I'd argue that what they did was an immoral act, too.

Those two statements have to be taken in context, and since the two contexts are vastly different you have to do lots of leg work to really say they conflict.

Both statement just seem wrong and neither character meant them in a unconditional contextless sense. For example Riker clearly did not mean that say an identical twin killing another identical twin would not be murder (as the one twin is the clone of the other). Conversely Odo does not mean killing a being in any stage of the cloning process would be murder since every clone started out as a cell or two and they are forever killing small collections of cells by accident (hand washing etc.) or even on purpose like when Sisko needs to punch someone and don't worry it might be murder (the cells might have ended up as the basis of a clone if there life had not been tragically cut short, so all cells must have the same status, otherwise you could kill clone cells early in development by turning off the clonizer and say oh but they weren't actually going to become clones because I stopped the process). I mean there is a context where someone might make the statement "killing your own clone is murder" to mean killing any one cell of a human is murder, and in another context someone might make the statement "killing your own clone is not murder" to express that an identical twin killing his counterpart is a-okay, but in these contexts we just know that is not what was meant.

So what was the context, well Riker had just used a phaser on some pod bound organisms being grown up in some kind of magic smoke (looked cold enough to form water vapour but that may have been magic cloning liquid). Conversly Odo was arresting a guy for killing a guy who had been walking around autonomously and was sufficiently medically close to the original that he had fooled initial medical tests etc. so presumably had identical physical and mental stats to the original. So Riker's statement is that ending the clonevelopment of a partially developed but not yet fully autonomous functioning clone is the decision of the DNA donor. Whereas Odo's statement is that fully autonomous and functioning clones can indeed be murdered even by the donor. The two might conflict depending on how they think you should extend those statements, but it would make as much sense to extend them in a way where they do not conflict.

Chuck made the point in his review of Up the Long Ladder is the problem is less that you can't make an argument that the two cases are vastly different and more that Up the Long Ladder eschewed any such discussion or justification of what Riker did in favour of jokes about the Irish and raises the issue (the clone colonists call them murders) just to dismiss it. That's bad writing not a continuity error...

If you kill an innocent person to save two people, you are not a good person. With the same line of thinking you can justify forcibly removing the organs of one person to save several others who need those organs to survive.

We can easily create a moral dilemma where this is unconvincing. I mean the old trolley problem you are in control of a runaway trolley, hit the track left and hey presto you avoid four people who would get killed, but unfortunately you purposefully hit someone else killing them. Your saying your obligated to let those 4 people be run down to be a nice person? Or to make it a bit more realistic, you are in control of a crashing jumbo jet, in your last act you can either let it crash it to densely populated side of town it is currently aimed at killing dozens or hundreds or your swerve it to the less densely populated side of town, where it will still almost certainly kill a few people but certainly a lot less. Again by your logic you must to be a nice person keep that plane aimed at the densely populated areas this is probably not most people's take.

Edit: So organ legging is wrong, but I don't think the reason organ legging is wrong just because of the trading lives angle, there is more to it. How we understand the situation around Tuvix likewise gives reasons for one attitude or another about splitting him (in different situations the character of the act is different).

2) It can be argued, that neither Tuvok nor Neelix were dead, they were still around in the composite personality identifying as Tuvix.

Note this is not a good argument against splitting Tuvix, because it can be as easily (or as difficultly) be argued that Tuvix is still around in the prime personalities identifying as Tuvok and Neelix. Indeed with two bodies Tuvix is twice as alive after the splitting. I mean if we are defining still around as not having to require too much physical, mental etc. continuity and similarity etc. (50% give or take) why not?

[Madner Kami]

We can easily create a moral dilemma where this is unconvincing. I mean the old trolley problem you are in control of a runaway trolley, hit the track left and hey presto you avoid four people who would get killed, but unfortunately you purposefully hit someone else killing them. Your saying your obligated to let those 4 people be run down to be a nice person? Or to make it a bit more realistic, you are in control of a crashing jumbo jet, in your last act you can either let it crash it to densely populated side of town it is currently aimed at killing dozens or hundreds or your swerve it to the less densely populated side of town, where it will still almost certainly kill a few people but certainly a lot less. Again by your logic you must to be a nice person keep that plane aimed at the densely populated areas this is probably not most people's take.

Those are not analogous dilemmas. In our dilemma one set of people is already dead, in yours, both are alive. You propose a Schrödinger's Cat when we already well know that the cat is dead.

[Admiral X]

Those two statements have to be taken in context, and since the two contexts are vastly different you have to do lots of leg work to really say they conflict.

Actually, I'd say you do a lot more work to try to make your point than I did with mine.