Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 5, Episode 2: “The Ship”

Synopsis: While investigating a planet’s minerals, an away team witnesses a Jem’Hadar ship crash, and when there are no survivors found Captain Sisko wants to take the wreckage back to Starfleet.

This episode can be seen as an analogy of what can happen when the Logos-driven rational conscious ego does not allow bits of material from the Eros-driven irrational unconscious to integrate into itself, to make it stronger and the psyche more whole.

In “The Ship” an away team led by Captain Benjamin Sisko witnesses the crash of a Jem’Hadar ship on the planet they are on. When they beam over to look for survivors everyone is dead. Sisko wants to bring the wreckage of the ship back to Deep Space Nine. He contacts Major Kira Nerys and tells her to bring the Defiant to their location in the Gamma Quadrant. Another Jem’Hadar ship comes to the planet and destroys the runabout that brought the away team to the planet and kills her crew. Jem’Hadar beam down to the planet and the away team seeks shelter in the wrecked ship. Kilana, the Vorta in charge of the Jem’Hadar forces attacking the away team speaks with Sisko and tells him there is something on the ship that she wants, but she will not tell him what it is. Sisko does not trust her to let her come aboard to look for it. Eventually, it is revealed that it is a Founder that is aboard the wrecked vessel, when he dies. Kilana beams aboard the ship to tell Sisko that the Jem’Hadar have killed themselves because they let a Founder die, and she asks for some of the remains.

In this episode, when Sisko and Kilana realize that they could have each gotten what they wanted without bloodshed had they only trusted each other, can be seen as analogous to how when the conscious ego doesn’t allow itself to acknowledge and integrate bits of unconscious material when it comes into its awareness, it misses the opportunity to become stronger and the psyche more whole. And when that happens then these two opposites will come together again, and likely in a more forceful and unpleasant way.