Synopsis: The Enterprise rescues a mysterious humanoid alien.
It is perhaps fitting that I watched this episode last night, August 19, 2021, which was the one hundredth anniversary of Gene Roddenberry’s birth, as this episode is about birthing or transforming into something new. This is a thought at the core of depth psychology.
Depth psychology is that branch of psychology that has at its core the study of the unconscious. Which is a paradox, as we cannot by definition know it, because it is that part of our psyche that is not under the control of the purview of the conscious ego, that part of our psyche that we most identify with as being our self, or self-like.
In this episode, a humanoid alien is discovered injured after his ship has crash landed on a planet. There is a golden glow to him that he bestows upon others, but it is not until he is confronted by one of his own kind that he understands who he is. He is the first of his kind to undergo an evolutionary change, a metamorphosis into a new way of being on a new plane of existence.
I believe this is also an ideal that Roddenberry put forth in his own way in Star Trek. It is also an image of the goal of depth psychology.
Original post created 20 August 2021
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