Synopsis: The Enterprise is sent to the Minarian Star System to evacuate a scientific team before the star they were observing goes nova, but instead finds the Starfleet personnel dead and a female humanoid with empathic abilities being tested by another race to see if her kind is worthy of being saved.
In “The Empath” the crew of the Enterprise comes across yet another alien race with superior technology and mental capabilities, the Vians. However, this time it is not them who are being judged as being inferior, but another individual from a race that is being tested by the Vians – Gem, as Dr. Leonard (Bones) McCoy decided to name her, who is from a race of empathic mutes. She cannot speak, instead she feels the emotions of those around her.
The Vians appear to be yet another race that has suppressed emotion and Eros from their psyches and have privileged the rational Logos to accelerate their scientific knowledge, but this is alluded to, not actually stated. They are just advanced. Yet in a climatic speech at the end of the episode Captain James T. Kirk accuses them of this. In fact, at the end of the episode McCoy gloats over how Kirk’s emotional appeal seemed to have saved the day to Mr. Spock, the half-Vulcan embodiment of Logos on the Enterprise.
It is true that Kirk’s emotional plea to the Vians did seem to sway them into judging that Gem and her race were indeed worthy of being saved. Which means, that this is another incidence in Star Trek where the importance of listening to our Eros, the irrational connection in our psyche, and not become one-sided.
It is also interesting – dare I say fascinating, that an advanced rational race such as the Vians, choose a race to rescue from the destruction of the upcoming nova, is a race that has no words and instead communicates only through feeling the emotions of others. It seems to set the universe in balance.
Original post created 20 March 2021
mydailysoultrek 