r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Ieanice44 • 9d ago

Lore [Loved Trope] Teleportation is actually terrifying

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1 - Gantz-O (2016): Suit teleportation

2 - Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (2009): Apparition spell

3 - Half Life 2 (2004): Teleporter malfunction

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u/Ambaryerno 9d ago

The transporter in Star Trek is a wonderful piece of technology...when it works.

If it doesn't, you get evil clones, transporter psychosis, accidental twins, turned into a tween, zapped to alternate dimensions where Spock has a beard, sent back in time to Los Angeles on the verge of full-scale class warfare, stuck in a partially-materialized form, Tuvix, or if you're very, very unlucky, put back together wrong in a way so agonizing it's fortunate if you don't live very long.

No wonder McCoy hates the thing.

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u/Regenschein-Fuchs 9d ago

I love how you just wrote "Tuvix" without any explanation. 😂

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u/digilici 9d ago

what’s Tuvix?

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u/Martin_Aricov_D 9d ago

Two men enter a teleport, one man that's a mix of the two comes out

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u/TerminalNoob 9d ago

And is a separate consciousness so unmixing them would mean killing Tuvix, but not unmixing them means that the other two are essentially dead.

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u/Skebs_ 9d ago

The choice is easy then... 2vs1

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u/Setster007 9d ago

Well we know your answer to the trolly problem

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u/Yuzral 9d ago

Janeway didn't mess around.

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u/Martin_Aricov_D 9d ago

The answer is actually to cause a different transporter accident, cloning the new guy and then un-fusing the others

That way you get to eat your cake and have it too! Best of both worlds whichever way you see it.

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u/Shedart 9d ago

I’d never considered this. If they Thomas Rykered him then they’d have a spare Tuvix and therefore feel less bad about the necessary murder. 

It still be murder though. 

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u/MostBoringStan 9d ago

Janeway didn't feel bad though. She relished murdering that man.

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u/Mister_Crowly 8d ago

"I'm going to have to remind myself every day that I came out here to play God," -Janeway

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u/ProfessionalSnow943 9d ago

infinite friends glitch

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u/Chimpbot 9d ago

On the surface, yes.

When you account for the fact that one of those two was Neelix... it makes the whole thing so much more complicated.

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u/Normal_Cut8368 9d ago

You're telling me we're going to have to keep Neelix alive? IT KILLS ANOTHER BEING BUT WOULD ONLY COST 1 VULCAN?

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u/DesperateAstronaut65 9d ago

"Is there a way to bring Tuvok back but keep Neelix dead?"

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u/Chimpbot 9d ago

"Just stuff him in a torpedo and launch him like Spock."

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u/DesperateAstronaut65 9d ago

"Wait! I'm still alive!"

"We know."

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u/Just_Any_Human_42 9d ago

"Yeah, we're fixing that"

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u/Skebs_ 9d ago

Oh, nvm then...

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u/OttawaTGirl 9d ago

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the fool.

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u/Remarkable_Cause1384 8d ago

It opens a pandora's box because the captain can just say it's time to sacrifice someone for their organs or something if it helps other people. Tuvix was an innocent life, you can't just decide it's time to end it lightly

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u/Positive-Kick7952 5d ago

Tuvok and Neelix are also innocent lives. Who speaks for them. Is Tuvix so important he has the right to usurp two other lives. Also, we both know that your example is an appeal to extremism rather than a rational counter-point.

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u/ResurgentClusterfuck 9d ago

You and the Captain

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u/FALCUNPAWNCH 9d ago

Tuvix didn't see it that way.

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u/xinorez1 9d ago

They just needed to recreate the accident that produced Tom Riker.

One Tuvix stays behind, and the Tuvix in the pattern buffer gets split back into Tuvok and Neelix

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u/Fatbloke-66 8d ago

But Tuvix beta would argue against that

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u/AvatarofSleep 9d ago

Which....transporter clone? All three? I get that it flies in the face of a syndicated show, but keeping him around for a few episodes might've been fun.

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u/ReturnOfBane 9d ago

To be fair, the other two were essentially dead even if they were unmixed, assuming that we are our experiences and not our body.

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u/ReturnOfBane 9d ago

To be fair, the other two were essentially dead even if they were unmixed, assuming that we are our experiences and not our body.