Synopsis: Aboard a mercenary vessel, Captain Picard and Commander Riker try to foil a plot to recover a deadly ancient Vulcan weapon.
This episode has a bit of an unsatisfying finish. It can be analogized to how the rational Logos-driven ego believes that it is the center of the psyche, when it is not.
In “Gambit, Part II” Captain Jean-Luc Picard, masquerading as the smuggler Galan, is told by Tallera, who misrepresents herself to him as a member of the Vulcan Security V’Shar, that the artifacts the mercenaries are collecting are from the time before the Vulcans found logic and peace, also called the time of awakening. The artifacts together will reconstruct the Stone of Gol, from Vulcan mythology, a device that uses telepathy as a weapon and can kill with a thought by focusing and amplifying telepathic energy. One of the most devastating weapons ever created, it was believed to have been destroyed by the gods when Vulcans found peace. When the Stone of Gol is reassembled, Tallera uses it to kill a couple of the mercenaries she had been traveling with who were angry with her for cheating them out of some of the profits they had been promised. However, the weapon is ineffective against Picard because he noticed that the glyph of peace was the piece of the artifact that was missing, and that it fit between the icons of the god of death and the god of war. Therefore, Picard reasoned that only “negative” thoughts of a victim of could be used against him or her by the weapon, but that it could not attack an individual having only peaceful thoughts. Picard then tells Tallera that the weapon was not destroyed by the gods because the Vulcans found peace, it was disassembled by the Vulcans because it was no longer effective when Vulcans started repressing all emotions.
Picard’s reasoning, that emotions cannot hurt him if they are repressed, mirrors how an individual’s rational, Logos-driven conscious ego believes that it has control of the unconscious part of an individual’s psyche. This is an inaccurate assumption. While the ego may be the center of the rational part of the psyche, it cannot completely repress the unconscious side of the psyche without damage to psychic health. In actuality, when the conscious ego can acknowledge and integrate bits of material from an individual’s unconscious it does become stronger and the psyche moves toward wholeness. But complete control of the unconscious is impossible and not desirous. As we see in other episodes of Star Trek series and Star Trek films, not even Vulcans can fully repress all emotions all the time. Although the ego-driven intentions of Picard are arguably positive, it is detrimental to the entire psyche and even an individual’s body when the conscious ego is cut off from the emotions of the unconscious.
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