@dgw >quote Unlike @FinFan, I don't think this finished her as a character. Rather, it illustrates exactly the kind of person she is, and what lengths she'll go to when the people she cares about are threatened.
And I could have accepted that, had she at least shown an ounce of remorse. But she leaves sickbay, stops for not even a second, and moves on. Only the Doctor did the right thing. Agreed, Voyagers episodic nature of story telling made it impossible to come back to her decision.
But isn't her mandate also to "discover new life" ? What if it had been months befor they found a sollution ? It's all theoretical and something none of us can really grasp. But what disturbes me the most is that she made the decision on her own.
It's a bit different but when Data's status, and life, was threatened, Picard stepped up and brought this to a hearing. Something like that should have happened here.
But, I concede that a lot of my argumentation stems from the fact that I'm not a huge fan of either Janeway, Tuvok and Neelix. So, there is that.
Their uniforms were merged during the transporter accident, but he never wore that uniform again. Instead he has his standard uniform on for the rest of the episode, including when he's separated. So the treknobabble explanation is probably something along the lines of "the uniform went through the pattern buffer and was replicated" or something. The real-world explanation is no one wants to see Neelix naked. And you're absolutely right. The uniform should not have merged if the accident was biological in nature.
Review by dgwVIP 10BlockedParent2018-04-18T04:56:18Z
Um, Tom, why wait until "morning"? If the weather on the planet gets nasty at night, just take the shuttle down to the day side. Unless this orchid species is specific to one region, that is (which wasn't mentioned on screen).
Looks like there's some kind of tape mark on the biobed that Janeway asks Tuvix to sit on. The camera panning makes it hard to tell (motion, especially horizontal motion, tends to blur in TV-sourced video because of interlacing, and DVD encoding doesn't make it any better) but there's something orange on that bed and it isn't present on the other two. Perhaps it's a spacing marker for where Tom Wright should sit so the following effects shot (in which he disappears and is replaced by Ethan Phillips and Tim Russ) will work.
I'd also like to know why Neelix came out of the separation procedure wearing a Starfleet uniform, when he went in wearing one of his trademark patterned jackets. I won't go as far as to call it a goof, because the writers most likely had a reason for not putting him back in his original clothing. But one must wonder why the clothing was merged in the first place, if the orchid's symbiogenetic properties worked on a genetic level. Starfleet uniforms have no DNA, so far as we know, and ditto for Neelix's clothes.
Most people who watch this episode probably have a similar reaction: The premise is creepy, but the ethical dilemma that it creates is interesting. I find myself agreeing with @LeftHandedGuitarist once more regarding the actor chosen to play Tuvix: Tom Wright didn't feel like the best possible fit for the role, somehow, despite solid acting work that he clearly put in time with both Tim Russ and Ethan Phillips to develop around some of their characters' mannerisms.
As much as I disliked the setup, I'm honestly not sure how it could have been done better, except for maybe changing which two crew members were fused. No doubt Tuvok and Neelix were chosen because the show has spent two seasons up to this point building on how much Neelix annoys Tuvok, but they didn't make use of any of that. Tuvix is perfectly happy as the fusion of two men who didn't exactly get along. Janeway can't be fused, unless we want to give the moral dilemma to Chakotay (boring), but that still leaves over a dozen other possibilities to consider. I really don't know which of them would have been better, but I suspect the writers also really liked having that girls' chat between Kes and Janeway.
Ultimately I can't be too hard on this episode. It might have been interesting only in the latter half, but I think this was a defining episode for Janeway. Unlike @FinFan, I don't think this finished her as a character. Rather, it illustrates exactly the kind of person she is, and what lengths she'll go to when the people she cares about are threatened.