Synopsis: A shuttlecraft containing Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and Assistant Federation Ambassador Hedford is taken off course by an alien in the shape of an ionized hydrogen cloud.
This episode can be seen as an elucidation of the depth psychological concept of the sacred marriage, or the hieros gamos. Also, it shows us how sometimes we need to open our hearts in order to see love when it happens.
When a cloud shaped alien encases the shuttlecraft Galileo, the crew aboard her has no idea that they are being held captive by a living creature. And it is not until they land on a planet and try to speak with the creature that they realize that it is feminine, and in love with a human that has been marooned there for 150 years, Zefram Cochran. Cochran can communicate with the alien creature the alien that has given him immortality, healed him, and has taken care of him since he arrived, and calls her “The Companion,” yet he is completely unconscious of what she really represents.
Cochran tells the Galileo crew that The Companion has brought them there because he told her that he needed the company of members of his own species. The Companion herself tells Captain James T. Kirk: “he felt it to me” that he needed it to survive. He is grateful for all The Companion has done for him, yet when he learns that it is female and loves him, he is immediately repulsed by this, calling what The Companion did, crawling around inside me, “into my mind, my feelings” “disgusting.” Mr. Spock comments Cochran is acting illogically and is displaying a “totally parochial attitude.” Cochran, a man of science, could not perceive that the alien that was keeping him alive had any other purpose other than to serve him. Cochran claims that “it fed on me . . used me,” yet from the perspective of The Companion, she was giving everything, and Cochran, the one needing her to stay alive. Yet when The Companion comes to him in the body of Nancy Hedford, a beautiful woman, he realizes that he loves her and cannot leave the planet with the others, as she has given up everything to be with him. They will now both live and die together.
This connection displayed in this episode, “symbiosis . . a joining” is an embodiment of the psychological union of opposites that takes place in a sacred marriage or hieros gamos. By acknowledging and accepting that part of our psyche that is in opposition to our conscious ego we become more whole.
Original blog created 15 February 2021
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