Synopsis: Commander Sisko takes a warship into the Gamma Quadrant in order to find the Founders.
In the midst of all the aggressive stances taken by the various species in this episode, it also can be seen as an illustration of what Archetypal Psychologist James Hillman calls the acorn theory. The idea that just as each acorn contains everything that it will need to grow into an oak tree, we each have an inner daimon, that contains everything we will need to find our true destiny in life, if we only listen to it.
In “The Search, Part I” Commander Benjamin Sisko arrives at Deep Space Nine with a new warship, the Defiant, and a new Starfleet security officer, Lt. Commander Michael Eddington. Eddington will be in charge of Starfleet security on the station and Odo delegated to handling everything else. This does not please Odo, yet Odo does agree to accompany Sisko and his crew on a mission into the Gamma Quadrant to find the Founders. Major Kira Nerys and Odo are separated from the rest of the crew and are in a shuttlecraft when Odo tells Kira: “I’ve had this feeling of being drawn somewhere” (Moore & Friedman, 1994). Odo is being drawn to the Omarion Nebula, where on a rogue planet, they discover a race just like Odo, that welcomes him home.
What Odo was describing, an inner instinctual drive, is what Hillman calls the human inner daimon. Hillman has written that the knowledge of the daimon is there before we are born and that the daimon even chooses the parents for us that will help us along our own individual path. Here, Odo is experiencing this for the first time, and when he gets to the planet and is welcomed by one of his own kind he will never be able to go back to being who he was before, feeling alone in the universe. It was his destiny to find this planet. And since this is a two-part episode, we will learn shortly what else lies in store for him.
Reference:
Moore, R. D. (Writer), & Friedman, K. (Director). (1994, September 26). The search, part I (Season 3, Episode 1) [TV series episode]. In M. Piller & R. Berman (Executive Producers), Star trek: Deep space nine. Paramount Television.
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