Because the whole Tuvix wank is rearing its head every week on Trek forums, I finally decided to rewatch this episode. I mostly avoided it because I am So Tired of the wank and how it's been relitigated for YEARS.
I was over it when it first popped up and I was even more over it with the way it's used as a bludgeon to promote 'psycho Janeway'.
But what's left out in the discussions is Kes's part in all of this, from the jump, Kes was troubled with the merging of Neelix and Tuvok, and anytime Tuvix tried to make advances, she just kept getting more uncomfortable.
(When Tuvix unconsciously touched Kes's shoulder, it looked like she had to consciously not flinch.)
To Tuvix's credit, he did give Kes space and respected her wishes but she was not happy with the whole merge because her relationship with Neelix and Tuvok is different.
We don't see the other people grieve but we see Kes's grief and confusion, which was shared by Janeway. But also, the moment the EMH had a solution to separate the two people in Tuvix, Harry jumped at the chance.
And he's already spent weeks with Tuvix.
The irony is that Janeway was coming around to thinking of Tuvix as an individual but the cure presented itself, but also as the Ship's Captain she has an obligation to care for her crew and absent or not that meant advocating for the two voices who couldn't speak up: Tuvok and Neelix.
Kes was the deciding factor. Kes made her plea to separate Neelix and Tuvok.
Kes was the biggest reason why Janeway decided to separate Tuvok from Neelix.
It was such a cop-out from the Doctor that he refused to do the procedure he made and pioneered. And forced Janeway to execute it instead.
Janeway is clearly not happy about the decision and she's caught between a rock and a hard place.
In Nothing Human Janeway verbalizes it.
"Any consequences of this decision will be my responsibility. Dismissed."
Janeway's constantly put into a wheelhouse of trolley problems, as the only high-ranking Starfleet officer, she is the final authority. In Nothing Human everyone is locked in an endless debate about the morality of using the Cardassians' methods to save B'Elanna's life. Meanwhile, the clock was running down to zero and B'Elanna could have died more.
(Honestly, the story should have been more B'Elanna, Doctor, and Janeway-centric than it was. Nothing Human is a weird episode. Especially since Seven was barely in it and seems to be the Acting Chief Engineer -- amusingly enough because the writers thought they killed Joe Carey between s2 and 3. Alas, poor Vorik, he's not getting any promotions either).
TLDR: Janeway is constantly living through what the Doctor of Doctor Who is living through. Or as the 12th Doctor once said: "Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones, but you still have to choose."
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My wife has started a rewatch of Voyager, which I had never really seen, so I've been watching most of it with her. I just took it upon myself to start tracking the Voyager tag on here. I am IMMEDIATELY fascinated with Threshold Day. Like...of course this is the shit people make a "holiday." Janeway basically admitted to fucking Paris while they were catfish and they had a baby. It naturally needs to be celebrated.
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I've said this already in the tags on a different post but I can't stop thinking about Janeway after the Pathfinder project is successful and she starts getting reports from Starfleet HQ about the Dominion War. How inexorable a force the Jem'Hadar seem. How world after world is falling. How the casualties mount. The Maquis have already been destroyed and she can feel the grief from those of her officers who lost friends, but beyond that there's the knowledge that the destruction didn't end with a few rebels on the edge of Federation space. The entire Alpha Quadrant is tearing itself apart, and it's all so far away. Yes, her little ship has face Borg and alien power struggles and a Void without stars - they've lost friends too - but as the numbers keep coming in, day after day, impossibly high, what goes through her mind? Does she wish harder that she hadn't destroyed the array, so that she could have stayed to fight and do her part to save the home she so desperate to get back to? Or is some part of her soothed about her decision, knowing that by putting the needs of the Ocampa before her own, she likely saved the lives of many of the people now under her command? How do you deal with loss on such an abstract yet personal scale, and how do you sit and read the reports of lost battle after lost battle, knowing that it might mean the home you were so desperate for might no longer exist by the time you get there?
What if Voyager ends up being all that's left?
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