Synopsis: A Vidiian scientist splits Lt. Torres into two bodies, one fully Klingon and one fully human.
This episode, which harkens back to the episode “The Enemy Within” from the first season of Star Trek: The Original Series, can be seen as an illustration of the importance of honoring both the Logos-driven rational conscious ego and the Eros-driven irrational unconscious, as defined by the analytical psychological teachings of Carl (C. G.) Jung.
In “Faces” in an effort to ascertain whether Klingon DNA is resistant to the Phage disease that has plagued his species for countless generations, Sulan, Chief Surgeon of the Vidiian Sodality, has taken Lt. B’Elanna Torres and medically reconstituted her genome to create two individuals: one fully Klingon and one fully human. The fully Klingon Torres escapes the medical facility and rescues the fully human Torres, who is then able to deactivate a forcefield around where they are being held, which allows Voyager to transport all crewmembers safely back to the vessel. The Doctor is then able to reunite the Klingon and human Torres’s into one entity.
In this episode, as in “The Enemy Within,” an individual is split into two separate entities, one embodying the conscious ego, which is considered rational and logical, and the other the unconscious, which is considered irrational and emotional. However, unlike in “The Enemy Within” in which a transporter malfunction splits Captain James Tiberius Kirk into a “Good Kirk” and an “Evil Kirk,” here there is less emphasis on preferring one Torres over another. Both embodiments of Torres have their positive aspects and more negative ones. This touches on the realm of archetypal psychology, which teaches that we all have different archetypes within our psyche, and often uses the polytheistic gods and goddess of the ancient Greek and Roman cultures to symbolically represent them. But whether interpreted through Jung’s analytical psychological theories, or the archetypal psychological concepts from James Hillman, through this episode we can see an illustration of how our rational conscious ego and our irrational unconscious are both needed in order for our psyche to be whole.
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