Synopsis: Voyager comes across a 1936 Ford pick-up truck floating in space with an SOS call on its radio which leads her crew to a planet inhabited by humans.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what Carl (C. G.) Jung would describe as how a complex allows the Logos-driven rational conscious ego to be made aware of bits of material from the Eros-driven irrational unconscious, that need to be given attention and integrated into it, in order for the ego to become stronger and the psyche more whole.
In “The 37’s” a 1936 Ford pick-up truck comes across the path of the Voyager. Lt. Tom Paris is able to start the engine, which allows an SOS call to be heard on its radio. The Voyager crew is able to determine the planet from which it is coming from, goes there, and discovers a civilization made up of descendants from humans from Earth that disappeared in 1937 and were brought there by an alien race. The crew is heartened to come across fellow humans, and when Voyager leaves, some of the crew decide to stay on the planet instead of making the journey back to the Alpha Quadrant.
Here the pick-up truck can be seen as a physical manifestation of a feeling-toned complex, that brief encounter with a bit of unconscious material, an emotion or instinct, that cannot be ignored. In acknowledging the pick-up truck and working with it, the crew receives a signal from a world unknown to them, much as the complex is a message from the unconscious, which was before unknowable to the conscious ego. And just as the crew is touched by their discovery, the conscious ego learns and is changed by what it can integrate into itself from the unconscious.
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