When does a sci-fi accident become divine intervention? Thirty years ago, during the week of May 6, 1996, Star Trek: Voyager Season 2 dropped a story that would go down in history as one of the most-discussed episodes ever. But in a franchise full of bizarre sci-fi ethical dilemmas, why does “Tuvix” still prompt huge debates? The issue of whether Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) did the right thing is still hotly debated, but there’s a more interesting question. Why do fans get so worked up about this episode, and not similar episodes in which other hard decisions are made?
Here’s a possible answer: the performance from Tom Wright as Tuvix is very strong, and, in recent years, the Tuvix memes are just too intoxicating to ignore. But neither fact means that the actual dilemma in “Tuvix” makes any sense.
Voyager was still finding its way in 1996, at least tonally. This was a big year for Star Trek: it was the 30th anniversary of the franchise, and by the end of it, we’d get one of the franchise’s best feature films with First Contact, as well as the delightful DS9 nostalgia-fest “Trials and Tribble-ations.” But those highlights overlook the larger reality that 1996 also contained half of Voyager Season 2, the beginning of Voyager Season 3, the back half of Deep Space Nine Season 4, and the start of DS9 Season 5. This was literally a Trek golden age, with over 50 hours of bold new adventures, a feat matched only by years like 2022 and 2023, when Lower Decks, Picard, Strange New Worlds, and Discovery all overlapped.
Why do those numbers matter? Well, because with so many episodes to sift through, why do certain installments stick out more than others? There are many great but overlooked Deep Space Nine and Voyager episodes buried in those early seasons, while other episodes are elevated to iconic status, even if their structure is a little wonky upon a contemporary rewatch.
“Tuvix” falls somewhere in the middle, because the major ethical dilemma that everyone’s obsessed with doesn’t really get introduced until about 15 minutes before the show is over. Tuvok (Tim Russ) and Neelix (Ethan Phillips) are foraging for some specific flowers on a random planet, because Star Trek loves plots involving hyperspecific items found only on a single planet. Tuvok and Neelix are bickering in a classic Spock and Bones way, but Neelix is more like if Bones were a member of a child-oriented Friends.
Phillips is a great actor (see Inside Llewyn Davis), but there are times when Neelix feels like the Jar Jar Binks of Voyager, in that he’s saddled with being the clown. And despite the idea that Neelix’s character is integral to this episode, nothing about this brief introduction makes you like him if you’ve never seen him before. Had “Tuvix” occurred in later seasons, when Neelix was a bit more complex and likable, the premise might have carried more weight. As it stands, one problem with “Tuvix” is that the crew spends a lot of time talking about how Neelix’s famously questionable cooking has improved since the transporter accident, which feels like a net win.
Anyway, because of some odd properties of the flowers, Neelix and Tuvok are fused into one person when they’re beamed up, a hybrid character played by Tom Wright who soon calls himself Tuvix. Some have compared this to the TOS classic “The Enemy Within,” in which Kirk was split into two versions by a transporter malfunction, or TNG’s “Second Chances,” which gave us duplicate Rikers. But those comparisons are somewhat superficial, because in those cases, the psyche of one character was being explored. “Tuvix” explores the notion of two people being fused into one, which isn’t relatable to the audience because there’s no discernible analogy to pull from it. As Wright put it in 1997, “There isn't any moralizing...It's just a story about a character, and you follow that character during the time he is alive.”
He’s not wrong. The thought experiment of “Tuvix,” at least for the first 40 minutes, is more about the crew’s reactions to the hybrid character, rather than any kind of reflection on the actual human condition. In fact, as pitched by writers Andrew Price and Mark Gaberman, the original idea for “Tuvix” was more oriented toward humor, something which Voyager staffer Kenneth Biller toned down in a big rewrite.
But the farcical nature of the basic premise is still present in the final episode, because the ethical dilemma — that Tuvix doesn’t want to go back to being two people again — isn’t brought up until well into the third act. Tuvix claims that he’s a living being with the right to exist, and he even argues that he knows this desire is cowardly because it sacrifices two lives to preserve one. The crew, including the holographic Doctor (Robert Picardo), basically agrees. And although there is a way to un-Tuvix Tuvix, the Doctor refuses to do it, because that would murder this newly created lifeform.
Janway, however, doesn’t flinch and performs the procedure herself, and the episode ends as Tuvok and Neelix become individuals again. It’s one of Mulgrew’s best performances as Captain Janeway, and briefly, that’s what the episode feels like it’s about: a leader makes a hard decision for the good of her crew. This is classic Star Trek stuff, where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or the Tuvix).
And yet, in the ensuing decades, Janeway’s decision has been regarded as controversial, even murderous. Never mind that the 1995 DS9 episode “Facets” depicted a very similar plot in which Curzon Dax didn’t want to leave the body of Odo (René Auberjonois), a sort of proto-Tuvix character. Or there’s the 2003 Enterprise episode “Similitude,” in which a clone of Trip (Connor Trineer) is created to harvest organs. Neither had as much fan discussion and scrutiny as “Tuvix,” even though the ethical dilemma in those examples is more tangible. “Tuvix” is written in such a way that we’re meant to think this hybrid being is totally sane (a bizarre assumption) and that the repressed individual personalities of Tuvok and Neelix are completely fine with this mental cohabitation.
In a sense, Janeway is the only voice of reason in the entire episode, someone who sees that two crew members and colleagues have been effectively erased by a bonkers sci-fi accident. Should the crew have left Janeway and Tom Paris in their salamander forms after the warp speed accident in “Threshold”? This is the problem with the “Tuvix” debate, which again, is made bigger by the fact that the Tuvix memes — in which Janeway is made out to be a stone-cold murderer — are all very, very funny.
Unlike Bones carrying Spock’s katra in The Search for Spock, the aftermath of “Tuvix” isn’t explored much. Or, perhaps more precisely, the real questions about them sharing a body aren’t really the focus of the discourse, both in and out of the show. So, the compelling sci-fi premise of two minds sharing one body is overshadowed by the hardcore decision Janeway makes in the end. It’s almost as if the episode created a dramatic ending for no reason. As many fans have suggested, it seems plausible that a copy of Tuvix could have been made in the transporter, and then the second Tuvix could have been un-Tuvixed, allowing all three lives to be preserved.
But if that was an option, then the episode couldn’t work. Sometimes, to tell a compelling story, Star Trek needs to paint itself into a corner. And, depending on where you fall on the “Tuvix” debate, that’s either a wonderful thing or, sometimes, a silly question and fuel for future memes.
