Star Trek: The Original Series Season 1, Episode 27: “The Alternative Factor”

Synopsis: The Enterprise comes across a rip in space caused by a humanoid alien by the name of Lazarus and his opposite.

This is one of the few episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series that I do not have a vivid recollection of from my childhood. Perhaps this is because there is something very fearful and psychologically inauthentic about it.

In “The Alternative Factor” the crew of the Enterprise, and the universe as we know it are faced with an existential threat, a rip in the universe that lets things enter from – or can let things escape into – a parallel universe. Ours the positive universe; the other a negative universe. And as Mr. Spock tells Captain James T. Kirk, if the two should meet there will be “total complete annihilation.” From a depth psychological perspective, this rip can be compared to a Freudian Slip if you will, something that rips into the consciousness of the ego, and lets something – a message – escape from the unconscious. And the idea that any meeting of the two parts of the psyche  would mean doom, is a defense reflex of the conscious ego.

In this episode two Lazarus figures, one from this universe and one from the negative universe, fight each other in a corridor between the two. This corridor is actually a manifestation of the type of vessel in which the psyche can safely perform the transcendent function, the union of opposites. But here it is portrayed as a hellish endeavor that will go on for eternity. In fact, the process is ongoing yes, and it does involve a trip to Hades, the Underworld, to Psyche, but from a non-egoist  perspective it is a place of internal exploration and new self-knowledge.

The Lazarus from this, the positive, egocentric universe wants to kill his opposite – which he claims is a murderous mad man. The Lazarus in the negative universe proposes to Kirk that the only way to protect the safety of the two universes is for the two Lazarus figures to remain in the corridor between the two universes, in an eternal battle. And while this is the way the episode ends, and the two universes are saved, there is a certain unsatisfying feeling to this outcome. The ego has won, but the psyche is stymied.

Original post created 2 February 2021