Released: 8 December 1979
Synopsis: The crew of the Enterprise reunite to protect Earth from an energy cloud of enormous power heading directly for it. The cloud turns out to surround a modified Earth probe launched by NASA that is returning home to join with its creator.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture continues Gene Roddenberry’s Humanistic vision of an altruistic future from the original television series, in which species from around the galaxy have joined together to form a United Federation of Planets. But in addition to this perspective, the film can also be explored through depth psychological concepts.
The overall plot of the film can be seen as an enactment of Carl (C.G.) Jung’s concept of the tension between opposite energies in an individual’s psyche, the Logos-driven rational conscious ego and the Eros-driven irrational unconscious, and the need to unite them in order to become more whole. This he called the transcendent function, the end result of which is their sacred marriage or hieros gamos.
The drive to attain Jung’s sacred marriage, or hieros gamos, is physically manifested in the film when the modified Vger probe that started life as NASA’s Voyager VI, heads back to Earth because it wants to unite with its creator in order to download its information. The Logos-driven Vger has learned all that is knowable and realizes that it needs to evolve, but that something is missing that will allow it to do so. Vger understands that it must incorporate the Eros-driven human element in order to attain wholeness. This is explained in the following conversation involving Mr. Spock, Dr. Leonard (Bones) McCoy, Commander Willard Decker, and Captain James T. Kirk:
Spock: “V’Ger must evolve . . . What it requires, doctor, is the answer to its question, is there nothing more.
McCoy: “What more is there than the universe Spock?”
Decker: “Other dimensions, higher levels of being.”
Spock: “The existence of which cannot be proven logically. Therefore, V’Ger is incapable of believing in them.”
Kirk: “What V’Ger needs in order to evolve is a human quality, our capacity to leap beyond logic.”
Decker: “And joining with its creator might accomplish that.”
McCoy: “You mean this machine wants to physically join with a human? Is that possible?”
Decker: “Let’s find out.”
And indeed, Star Trek: The Motion Picture concludes when Vger and Decker, the human who ends up joining with it, simultaneously evolve and merge, attaining the sacred marriage or hieros gamos.
Original post created 3 May 2021
mydailysoultrek 