Synopsis: Aliens come undetected aboard Voyager and use the crew in medical experiments.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of how the Logos-driven rational conscious ego and the Eros-driven irrational unconscious may operate in different ways.
“Scientific Method” begins with a confrontation between Lt. Torres and Seven of Nine, when Seven decides to start repairs on a system without telling Torres. When Torres gets angry, Seven tells her that she is not used to a hierarchy. But shortly The Doctor and Seven discover that Torres’s outburst, and various outbursts and unusual ailments among the crew are being caused by slightly out of phase aliens who have been using the Voyager crew as subjects of their medical experiments. When this is exposed Captain Kathryn Janeway informs the aliens that the Federation has outlawed such experiments long ago. When the aliens refuse to stop Janeway puts Voyager on a course heading into a pulsar, forcing the aliens to flee to save their own lives.
While on the surface this episode can be understood as a comment on the ethics, or lack thereof, concerning humans doing research on lab animals, in the conversation between Torres and Seven of Nine, there is an explanation of one way in which the irrational unconscious differs from the rational conscious ego. In the unconscious, when it gets down to the collective unconscious, it is believed that there is not a hierarchy as perceived by the conscious ego. Yet, when pushed to extremes, as Janeway was, she acted not in her normal rational manner, but with the irrational impulse, like those from the unconscious, in order to defend herself and her crew from an imminent threat. This illustrates how sometimes it is to the benefit of the rational ego to use impulses from unconscious for its own health and survival.
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