Synopsis: Commander Chakotay’s shuttlecraft is shot down and he is captured by one of two warring factions on the planet he was surveying.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what happens when the Logos-driven rational conscious ego identifies too long with the archetypal power of the Eros-driven irrational unconscious.
In “Nemesis” Commander Chakotay is captured after his shuttlecraft is shot down while he was surveying a planet. The individual who finds him, Namon, takes him to his superior officer, Leader Brone, Fourth Vori Defense Contingent. Chakotay is told that the Vori are at war with their nemesis, the Kradin, whom they call beasts. Namon volunteers to accompany Chakotay when he goes to try to find his shuttle and is killed by Kradin forces. Meanwhile, on Voyager, Captain Kathryn Janeway has been in touch with Ambassador Treen to ask for his government’s assistance in locating Chakotay.
On the planet Chakotay is shot by Kradin forces and takes up arms against them when they attack a village that has given him shelter and treated his injury. Treen, who is a Kradin, comes aboard Voyager and takes Tuvok with him to search for Chakotay. When Tuvok finds Chakotay he appears to him as if he too is a Kradin, but once safe, Chakotay learns that he was brainwashed by the Vori and nothing he experienced was as it seemed.
This episode contains one of those plot twists that Star Trek is famous for. That being that when Ambassador Treen comes aboard Voyager we can see that he is one of the Kradins that Chakotay has been fighting on the planet. And the added twist when it is made clear to Chakotay how the Vori brainwashed him. Everything the Vori told Chakotay the Kradins did to them, was part of a sophisticated brainwashing process. What Chakotay went through can be analogized to when the rational ego is overwhelmed by the unconscious and then experiences an enantiodromia that occurs when it snaps back out of its power. The idea of going through an experience where everything one took as real was a lie. This can be difficult, if not downright dangerous. But it is one way that the conscious ego can assimilate bits of material from the unconscious in an ongoing effort to becomes stronger and make the psyche more whole.
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