Synopsis: A female alien comes aboard Voyager, saying that she came back to the vessel because she fell in love with Commander Chakotay.
In this episode we get an illustration of the way in which the Eros-driven irrational unconscious cannot truly be perceived by the Logos-driven rational conscious ego.
In “Unforgettable” Voyager’s crew rescues an injured female alien, Kellin. When she regains consciousness in Sick Bay, she tells Commander Chakotay that she has been on the ship before and fell in love with him, but that memories of her species, the Ramura, cannot be held in the minds of other species. After a few hours of leaving their presence, all memory of them fades. She came back to Voyager believing that if she did, she could make him remember her and they could be together. However, her species is also very xenophobic, and do not allow any members of their society to leave their world. In fact, when Kellin initially came aboard Voyager, she was there to return another individual to Ramura. Just as Kellin came to return a fellow Ramuran home, another Ramuran has come to take her back to her planet. And while Chakotay did once again fall in love with Kellin, when the other Ramuran finds Kellin, he shoots her with a neurolytic emitter which erases all her memories of Chakotay and her time on Voyager. Kellin leaves, and Chakotay tries to write down his memories before he forgets her.
In this episode, Chakotay and the crew can be seen as analogous to the conscious ego, and Kellin and the Ramura, as the unconscious. Like messages from the unconscious, and especially dreams, the memories of which the conscious ego quickly forgets, the memories of Kellin being on Voyager are forgotten by the crew soon after she leaves. But just as Chakotay tried to write down his memories of Kellin before he forgot her, we can do the same with our dreams, before we forget them. And then work with them, to try to understand what our unconscious is trying to tell us.
mydailysoultrek 