Synopsis: The Enterprise answers a distress call from Lt. Worf’s foster brother.
This episode, like the prior episode, “The Pegasus,” is an illustration of how the Logos-driven rational conscious ego has to make an accommodation when it is forced to integrate bits of Eros-driven irrational unconscious material into itself.
In “Homeward” the Enterprise responds to a distress call from Lt. Worf’s foster brother, Dr. Nikolai Rozhenko, who has been working as a cultural observer on the planet Boraal II. A sudden atmospheric dissipation on the planet will make it uninhabitable in only a few hours. When Worf beams down to look for his brother, he finds that Rozhenko has broken the Prime Directive, and used technology to save the inhabitants of one village on the planet. When Captain Jean-Luc Picard tells Rozhenko that because of the Prime Directive he cannot save the Boraalans that Rozhenko has befriended, Rozhenko deceives Picard and the crew and brings them aboard the Enterprise.
When Picard finds out what Rozhenko has once again violated the Prime Directive, and his explicit orders, he must figure out a way to make the best of a bad situation, just as he had to do when he learned that the equipment that was aboard the Pegasus had been created in violation of a peace treaty with the Romulans. Picard is dismayed that Rozhenko disobeyed his orders, but Rozhenko has an idea on how to save the Boraalans, but to do so is not without consequence.
This is much how the rational ego approaches bits of unconscious material that come into its perception. If the ego can acknowledge and integrate the bits of material, as Picard was able to address the situation with the Boraalans, then it can be made stronger and the psyche more whole. However, when this is done the rational ego is made aware that there are bits of unconscious material that have been integrated into it, and sometimes this can be an uncomfortable understanding. As uncomfortable as Picard is in being forced to save the lives of the Boraalans, arguably the right thing to do, even though it is against the Prime Directive.
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