Synopsis: Lt. Torres is abducted by a faction of robots and forced to create a robot prototype or Voyager will be destroyed.
This episode is an illustration of one of the steps of what Carl Gustav (C. G.) Jung called individuation, or the union of opposites. Which were his terms to describe the way by which the Logos-driven rational conscious ego integrates bits of material from the Eros-driven irrational unconscious into itself. The step examined here is that of inflation, which is when the ego identifies with the god-like energy from an unconscious archetype. Without inflation, there would be no impetus to move the process forward, yet inflation can be dangerous if it lasts too long or if the identification with the archetypal power is too great.
In “Prototype” an alien robot is found floating in space by Voyager and Lt. B’Elanna Torres tries to repair it. She succeeds, but as a result of this the robot, which identifies itself as Automated Personnel Unit 3947, summons an alien Pralor vessel and abducts Torres and takes her aboard it. Unit 3947 explains to Torres that all the robots on his ship are in need of repair because the individuals that created them, the Builders, have perished. He orders her to create a prototype or Voyager will be destroyed. Torres builds a prototype, but then learns that the reason that the Builders are dead is because the Pralor robots killed them because they became their enemies. She also learns that another race of robots, the Cravic have been in an ongoing war with the Pralor robots after also killing their Builders. Torres is forced to destroy the prototype and feels responsible for having potentially perpetuated a war.
In this episode, the feeling that Torres has both when she is able to initially bring the first Pralor robot back to life and then later when she is able to create a prototype, is akin to the inflation one feels when identifying with a god-like power of an archetype. Here, feeling that she possesses the god-like ability to create life. However, while identifying with that energy she is blind to seeing that what she is really doing is creating a way to perpetuate an ongoing war, where builders, such as herself and Voyager’s crew, are seen as the enemy. This illustrates how we do need to access the powerful energy of the archetype to move forward, yet, if we identify with it too long, it can have unforeseen, and sometimes, as here, dire consequences.
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