Synopsis: The Klingon Day of Honor causes Lt. Torres to confront some inner truths.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of several depth psychological themes, but the one I will focus on here comes from James Hillman’s acorn theory, the idea that just as an acorn has all it needs inside to become a tree, inside each of us is an inner daimon with all the information we need to become who we are meant to be.
In “Day of Honor” Lt. B’Elanna Torres is having a bad day. Her alarm didn’t wake her, because she forgot to set it, so she woke up late and missed breakfast. When she gets to Engineering there is a leak and Chakotay tells her that Seven of Nine will be assigned to her. Torres is not pleased and tells Lt. Tom Paris that she has decided not to go through with the ritual program of the Klingon “Day of Honor” that they created for her. Paris is upset. Torres goes to the Mess Hall and Neelix tells her that she can yell at him anytime she needs to let off steam. This changes her mood and she decides to go through with the ritual after all, until the Klingons in the holodeck program start jabbing her with pain sticks. At that point, she fights her way out. There is more trouble in Engineering and the warp core has to be ejected. Paris and Torres take a shuttle to retrieve it, to find that an alien vessel has taken possession of it. The alien vessel fires upon the shuttle and Paris and Torres are forced to transport into space in environmental suits until Voyager can retrieve them.
In this episode, the inner conflict that Torres feels is because she is fighting who she was meant to be. She does not want to accept her Klingon ancestry from her mother, and all its rituals and traditions. She does not want to accept her inner anger. But later in the episode she realizes that her inner struggle is because she has been denying who she is and what is important to her. What makes her unique. In Hillman’s terms, she has not been honoring her inner daimon. When Torres realizes it, at a moment when she thinks she will die, she has the courage to face whatever comes, and even tells Paris that she loves him. We will see in future episodes if this new found self-knowledge is acted upon again.
mydailysoultrek 