Star Trek
Oh, let’s stray a little bit from my normal UFO rant and talk Trek. I love Star Trek. I actually love when scientist discuss Star Trek. There are scientific books on the physics of Star Trek. Just pure fun. And so, what a delight from the deluge of bad news, even on Youtube, to find a Sabine Hossenfelder video all about transporters! The idea behind teleportation has been around for a while, hasn’t it? The Fly was 1958? Star Trek was 1968? Star Fleet had worked out most the kinks since that terrible tragedy, but they still have problems. Just ask Tuvix!
Star Trek: Voyager, Tuvix episode is one of my favorites. There was some drama here. And moral ambiguity. Yes, the accident that resulted in the entity known as Tuvix was the direct result of the combination of Tuvok and Nelix. Tuvok and Nelix had to die in order for Tuvix to be. To get them back, Tuvix had to die. So much for the needs of the one outweighing the needs of the many.
Yes, Tuvix wanted to live. He was sentient. In many ways, he was superior to Tuvok and Nelix in separation. And he had a legitimate point, yeah, you had mistake that resulted in me, but killing me to correct that mistake isn’t right. How do you argue with that? I mean, let’s do a parallel analogy- you’re a time traveler and you messed something up- like Edith Keeler doesn’t die and so Hitler wins the war and the entire galactic history changes- like no Federation, no Kirk or Spock… There would be people that existed in that universe- four hundred years worth of alternate family histories- should they all die to fix that one mistake?
Quite frankly, Edith Keeler was so far advance, per the script, had Kirk and Spock simply explain the matter- she might have not entered politics and history would be just as good as if she had died. Or, they could have taken her back with her! Hello! Being gone is as good as dead, historically speaking?
The thing is, from my perspective, there was a solution set to save Tuvix. In my fan fiction, I simply made a transporter clone of him. This has been done before. Kirk was cloned, badly. Good Kirk Bad Kirk episode, Star Trek: TOS, the Enemy Within. With less hand wringing drama, so was William Riker. Star Trek: TNG, Second Chances we discover a weird transporter accident created a transporter clone. Still some…
