Synopsis: Lt. Tuvok’s shuttle crash lands on a moon where he finds three aliens that appear to be humanoid children.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of how the Logos-driven rational conscious ego tends to approach things differently than the Eros-driven unconscious, yet when the conscious ego acknowledges that there are other ways of perceiving the world, it makes the ego stronger and the psyche more whole.
In “Innocence” Lt. Tuvok’s shuttle crashes on a moon in the Drayan System which he believed was uninhabited, until he is met by three children. They are survivors of a crash as well and are terrified because they believe that they are going to be killed. Meanwhile, aboard Voyager, Captain Kathryn Janeway receives First Prelate Alcia from Drayan II. Alcia tells Janeway that her world has adopted a reformation which has isolated it from the wrong path of technology. On the moon, two of the children disappear, and Tuvok tells the survivor, Tressa, that he will protect her. Janeway and Lt. Tom Paris take a shuttle to the moon to rescue Tuvok, only to find that Alcia is there also. Tressa tells Tuvok that Alcia is there to kill her. Janeway wants to help the child. Alcia explains to Janeway and Tuvok that Tressa is 96 years old, that their race ages backwards, and at the end of life those near death take on the form of children. Janeway apologizes for interfering, and Tuvok stays with Tressa, to walk her to the cave and her death.
In this episode, viewers first experience events from the viewpoint of Tuvok and Janeway. Their Starfleet ideals can be seen as representative to the ideals of the rational conscious ego. Alcia, from a planet that has shunned technology, can be seen as representing the viewpoint of the unconscious. However, in the end it turns out that the unconscious had its own way of doing things, based on something completely different than what the conscious ego is used to. When Janeway apologizes to Alcia at the end of the episode, this can be interpreted as similar to when the ego acknowledges bits of material from the unconscious, which when integrated into the ego, make it stronger and the psyche more whole.
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