Synopsis: Commander Riker is confronted by an opportunity to captain his own vessel and a visit from his estranged father.
In the mythologically named “The Icarus Factor,” when his long-lost father arrives to announce to his son that he has been given the opportunity to captain his own ship, Commander William Riker is forced to choose between two men who have been father figures to him, his own father, Kyle Riker, who abandoned him at the age of fifteen, and Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who has become like a father to him aboard the Enterprise.
Archetypal Psychologist James Hillman has called the relationship and tension between the father and son, the Senex and Puer complex. The Senex being the archetype of the knowledgeable sage, or father figure; the Puer, the naïve youth, or son archetype. Sometimes the Puer learns from and depends on the Senex, but sometimes the Puer must pull away from him as well. A complex is defined as the way that a bit of material from our unconscious becomes conscious to our ego and gives it an opportunity to integrate it into our psyche.
There is a bit of a teaser of the relationship between Riker and his father in “Time Squared,” which aired just prior to “The Icarus Factor” in 1989. In the opening scene of the earlier episode Riker invites some of his shipmates to his cabin and cooks an omelet for them. He reveals that he learned cooking from his father, because his mother died when he was very young. In “The Icarus Factor” we learn that his father also left when Riker was fifteen, leaving him feeling abandoned.
Ironically, Picard, who in the very first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation told Riker that he wasn’t good with children, has indeed become a father figure to Riker, someone he would want to emulate, even more than his own father, who by all means seems to also be successful in his chosen profession. In this episode Picard is portrayed as a “positive Senex” figure, and Kyle Riker as a “negative Senex” figure.
Perhaps it is not too surprising then that Riker declines to take the promotion to captain a less prominent vessel in a dangerous and far away part of the galaxy and stay aboard the Enterprise, Starfleet’s flagship. And while this allows him to maintain the Senex-Puer bond he has with Picard; Riker is also able to come to terms somewhat with the problematic relationship with his biological father before the end of the episode, and in so doing, his psyche becomes a bit more whole.
Original post created 8 July 2021
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