Synopsis: Coming through a rip in time, the long lost U.S.S. Enterprise C appears to the Enterprise D crew and alters the present timeline.
In “Yesterday’s Enterprise” there is a very interesting set of scenes involving the character Guinan, portrayed by Whoopi Goldberg. Guinan is a member of an alien race that was almost entirely wiped out by the Borg, the alien race that was introduced in the second season episode “Q Who.” Guinan is very long lived and has some sort of intuitive ability to perceive things that humans, or even the half Betazoid Counselor Deanna Troi cannot. There is also some sort of past experience that brought Guinan and Captain Jean-Luc Picard together that is never really fleshed out in the series.
In any case, in this episode it is Guinan who can feel that there has been a change in the timeline brought about by the discovery of the thought to be long lost Enterprise C, which emerges from the past in some sort of rip in time in space. Guinan brings her concerns to Picard, and in what is an amazing trust in her instincts, decides that the Enterprise C must return to the past. This is in spite of the recommendations from First Officer, Commander William Riker, who understands that this means that the crew aboard the Enterprise C will be facing almost certain death.
Indeed, as it turns out, there was a change in the timeline that caused a war between the Federation and the Klingons, that had not been the case in the moments before the Enterprise C emerged from the past. And while Picard does have certain knowledge in this alternate timeline that things are going badly for the Federation in the war, it is mainly his reliance on Guinan’s intuition of the feeling of something is off that is behind his decision.
In the terms of the depth psychological typology system devised by Carl (C. G.) Jung and then furthered through the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Picard’s person generally seems to reflect an extroverted thinker type. As such, feeling would be his inferior function, it would make sense that he leans on Troi’s ability to read feelings in others, or in this case, Guinan’s feeling that something is wrong. As it turns out, Picard was correct to place his trust in Guinan, and in doing so, saves the day, or rather the timeline.
Original post created 9 August 2021
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