do they have more agency than the cybermen?
In terms of the individual it’s definitely the Daleks that have more agency. While the cybermen aren’t a collective consciousness like the Borg they do operate under neural inhibitors that shut down emotions and such. Daleks really are just assholes in tanks.
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The episode with Clara as a Dalek showed no matter what she said it came out expressed as hatred. Was that supposed to apply to all, or was that just Missy messing with her? 
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I thought they were programmed that way? But my Dr. Who knowledge is much weaker than for other sci-fi shows, so I could be wrong about that.
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No, Daleks are a mutated humanoid species that has changed so much as to be a vaguely squid-like blob that are encased into their armour from birth. They are taught their genocidal values rather than being programmed. I don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Doctor Who either but I double checked on wiki just to be sure.
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Thanks. Then that’s a bad example of what I’m trying to say. I know there are some good examples of sci-fi baddies who are programmed (be it computer or genetic programming) to be that way, and have little agency, but we root against them anyway.
Cylons? Terminators?
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Contrary to some fanboys there is not a reliable 100% canon to Doctor Who. Even the rules of time travel sometimes change with the author of the episode of the week. And with many rouge time travelers around (the Doctor is by far not the only one) it is also no wonder if the universe changes all the time 
Something else. I always wondered what the Trolley Problem actually is. I mean the only question the typical scenario offers me is if I would be quick enough to reach the lever. I only recently learned it is about taking responsibility by action and thus “murdering” the lone guy. So the real question is if inaction also makes you responsible?
When it is two lives vs. one you go for two lives.
You could do better than the Good Place episode where they deal with it…
Some blood here, so be forewarned…
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It’s fake blood, but the pain is real.
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I have not had a chance to watch this yet… but here it is anyways
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Interesting, but this left me with more bones to pick.
SPOILERS (tag is failing me, for some reason)
Haven’t seen the original video that these comments are referencing, but I get a lot of bad faith from this reviewer. He says doesn’t feel like he knows the characters having watched the entire series. He points out the accident angle, but ignores the hybrid angle and somehow forgot about a similar case on ST: Enterprise in “Similitude.”
What I mean by the hybrid angle is that the new being was the sum of two individuals. This wasn’t a blank slate but a fused version of two people who attempted to resurrect relationships with people based on the lives of those two original people. That someone made a callback to the duplicate Riker from ST:TNG was a good one, because that relationship issue happened then, too. Had Tuvix been a blank slate, the result might have been different.
Any ST captain could be called a murderer. If they watched the series and never understood Janeway’s or Kes’ characters says a lot. They both wanted the dead crew members back. The rest of the crew wanted them back. This reviewer calls them complicit and condemns that they moved on afterwards instead of thinking about/mourning the being they knew for less than a month. There was an opportunity to bring the two people they had known and loved for years, and they decided to take it. Some call it murder, but I still consider it a rescue - and ST has resurrected characters who were dead far longer than that.
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Thank you for linking that. The original discussion is here:
Strangely, after listening to that, I’m even more certain about my position. No one ever establishes that Tuvix is a person. Not in the discussion, and certainly not in the episode. At least, a unique, individual, person.
It goes back to what defines a person. It’s the unique combination of biology and experience that defines a person. We know that, at least with humans, identical twins can share biology and yet develop into completely different people. The Tuvix problem is the inverse of that. Tuvix has the merged biology and experiences of Tuvok and Neelix. At least at the point of the transporter accident, Tuvix had no experiences of his own. Who Tuvix was at that point, was entirely made up of Tuvok and Neelix.
Tuvix gains his own experiences, but is that still unique, or simply the product of Tuvok and Neelix riding around, conjoined involuntarily? I don’t think that gets established in the episode. Even the things that are supposedly setting Tuvix apart for Tuvok and Neelix could easily just be the product of close collaboration of those two people.
Some argue that Tuvix didn’t cause the accident, and therefore is innocent in the sublimation of Tuvok’s and Neelix’s personalities. I don’t buy that, either. Tuvix didn’t cause the accident (although, those flowers are certainly sus), but he certainly benefitted from it, at Tuvok and Neelix’s expense. It’s like someone who buys a stones Ferrari F40 for $20. Yeah, you didn’t steal it, but you sure as hell didn’t earn it.
This whole thing goes back to how all science fiction screws up cloning. It’s totally botched. A clone of someone doesn’t look or act exactly like the person who was cloned. A clone of someone is a baby. Even if you pretend that there’s a technology that can accelerate the aging of the resulting clone to match the age of the original, it’s going to be completely wrong. Even an incredibly advanced society cannot figure out 1. Prenatal maternal hormones; 2. Prenatal maternal diet; 3. Pre- and post-natal environmental influences (hormones, diet, activity levels, latitude, barometric pressure, diseases, etc.) for every moment of the original’s life that led them to the point their DNA was sampled. It’s damn near impossible to even comprehend [insert “inconceivable!” gif] that level of complexity. And that’s without even examining personality, and how the sum of experienceS of the person synthesizes their personality.
Tl;dr: Creating an exact working replica of a person is damn near impossible, even assuming incredibly advanced technology. Creating such a clone with the same personality and same memories = truly impossible. Sorry, I’m calling it.
Which brings us back to Tuvix. At best, Tuvix is a hybrid clone with stolen experiences from Tuvok and Neelix. And I would explore options to keep him around, despite all the awkwardness that would cause if you also had Tuvok and Neelix, too. But not at the expense of the individual, real, genuine people of Tuvok and Neelix.
And I say that, even though I never liked Neelix. There. I said it.
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At this point I think they should have just killed Tuvix.
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