Synopsis: When an anti-insurgency defense system is triggered, everyone on the station must work together to stop the automated destruction of Deep Space Nine.
This episode can be seen as a physical manifestation of what can occur in our psyches when bits of material from the Eros-driven irrational unconscious try to come into awareness of the Logos-driven rational conscious ego.
In “Civil Defense” while working in an area on the station that used to be an ore processing unit under the Cardassian occupation, a computer program is opened which trips an automated counter-insurgency security program. When Commander Benjamin Sisko, his son, Jake Sisko, and Chief of Operations Miles O’Brien are able to escape the poisonous gas that is piped into their location, the program initiates counter-insurgency program level two, and locks down the station. When Garak, the Cardassian tailor and likely Cardassian operative come to Ops to try to shut down the lockout, he trips counter-insurgency program level three, which activates a self-destruct program that will destroy the station in two hours by causing a meltdown of the station’s fusion reactor. Gul Dukat, the commander of the station when it was under Cardassian rule, arrives and tries to negotiate a deal to turn off the counter-insurgency program with his command codes in exchange for Cardassian militia being installed on Deep Space Nine. When he wants to leave the station to let the Ops personnel consider his offer he instead trips program level four, meaning that no codes are able to stop the ensuing destruction of the station. It is at this point that Sisko and O’Brien are able to physically shut down the fusion reactor. The station personal, working together, were successful in getting through the security measures.
The Cardassian counter-insurgency security program can be analogized to how the rational conscious ego can try to suppress bits of unconscious material that comes into its purview. The ego can choose to ignore the material, sending it back into the unconscious, yet when it does it will pop up once again. When that happens, it sometimes can deny the importance of these messages, and sometimes is able to repress the bits of unconscious material, at least for a while. Sometimes these defenses, through repeated use over time, become as effective as well-oiled machines. But eventually, just as the personnel aboard Deep Space Nine were able to figure out a work around to defeat the Cardassian security measures, the unconscious will find a way to get through to the conscious ego. It’s just a matter of how much psychic energy or wounding it requires in the process.
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