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http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/v814.php

On rewatching this review, I had a subject I thought I should address. Specifically, the subject of the surgeon being able to split people, and this being a potential source of infinite organs.

I don't think this would be a viable solution to the Vidians' organ crisis for two reasons. One, this struck me as a highly experimental procedure. We know the Vidians have medical research going on everywhere. They have a lot of highly experimental stuff, and this base was hidden. Most of their bases seem hidden. Neelix didn't even seem to know about the species the first time they encountered them. Hardly definitive proof of how effective their efforts to be hidden are I know, but Neelix did tend to at least know the names of most major powers of that region of space. So I think this split people in two procedure was something developed in that base, in secret, but this scientist as he searched for a cure. I don't think it likely other labs could do this. Though in time, the knowledge of how to do it likely would have spread.

But even if it did, my second point comes up, the procedure is obviously flawed. Look at human Torres in the episode. She can barely walk most of the time. And as it turned out, she was dying and needed that Klingon DNA put back. And while she may have been fairing better due to hardier than human Klingon physiology, I think Klingon Torres would have had the same problem creep up on her before long. She still only had half a normal person's genetic structure.

Most of this is of course just my speculation, but unlike a lot of early Voyager episodes, I do think this one deserves a bit of extra thought thrown in. It really showed the Vidians as an interesting enemy in ways most of the rest of the series failed at.

That's a fair point. There also could be some other limiting factor that prevents it from being viable on a large scale, like maybe it takes up so much power or raw organic feed matter that it would be more efficient to just kidnap more people than splitting them. Maybe it's only successful with one out of a hundred thousand cross-species hybrids. We don't know what specifics go in to the splitting.

By the same token, this doesn't free up the writers from the obligation of giving some hint or line of dialogue to address "why can't we solve the organ shortage this way?" I'd have to rewatch the episode to decide if the implications are clear enough.

I would theorize that, this tech is obviously not a vat clone. Each Torres has her memories and experiences and loyalties. So you're working off the original template, so if you tried to do it on a Vidian, the split organs would be infected anyway, or perhaps the test subject would be so exposed that even aliens become infected after a time, which is why they are so interested in Klingons and their possible immunity.

Likely, I'd say the tech might work as some sort of genetic Siamese twin, where the doctor must choose one healthy twin to survive over the weaker twin when hard choices must be made regarding reconstructing their DNA. So a person could be split, but only one (or, as mentioned above, possibly none) of the copies provide a long term solution, the second might be sheer luck and the carbon-copy tech of Trek cloning might come into play, you cannot split a split again. So you still end up with one, or fewer, persons to harvest even after expending all this effort.

SuccubusYuri wrote:I would theorize that, this tech is obviously not a vat clone. Each Torres has her memories and experiences and loyalties. So you're working off the original template, so if you tried to do it on a Vidian, the split organs would be infected anyway, or perhaps the test subject would be so exposed that even aliens become infected after a time, which is why they are so interested in Klingons and their possible immunity.

Likely, I'd say the tech might work as some sort of genetic Siamese twin, where the doctor must choose one healthy twin to survive over the weaker twin when hard choices must be made regarding reconstructing their DNA. So a person could be split, but only one (or, as mentioned above, possibly none) of the copies provide a long term solution, the second might be sheer luck and the carbon-copy tech of Trek cloning might come into play, you cannot split a split again. So you still end up with one, or fewer, persons to harvest even after expending all this effort.

I still have to wonder if this process, the capability to completely split two bodies, is somehow less complicated than cloning organs. This is a process we're on the cusp of achieving today. Even if, for some reason, Vidian organs were unacceptable, wouldn't it make sense to just appeal to the humanitarian nature of other species? "Hey, do you mind if we get some cellular samples so we can grow cloned organs to save countless lives?" I'm sure 90% of the Voyager crew would happily consent to that and it'd be a lot less trouble than trying to murder the crew and steal their organs.