Synopsis: A jack-in-the-box in Vic Fontaine’s holosuite program appears, which requires much of the senior staff to come to the holographic character’s rescue to restore the program to normal operating parameters.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of how Trickster energy can be a conduit for change in the Logos-driven rational conscious.
In “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bong” Chief Miles O’Brien and Dr. Julian Bashir are in Vic Fontaine’s Las Vegas showroom holosuite program, when suddenly everything changes. Frankie Eyes and his associate, Tony Cicci, walk into the altered showroom. Frankie Eyes tells Fontaine that he has purchased the hotel that the showroom is in and that Fontaine is out. O’Brien tries to delete the unwelcome characters from the program, and then end the program, both of which are unsuccessful. After exiting the program, O’Brien and Bashir learn that its designer has installed a jack-in-the-box, a deep surprise, into it, so that the program will never get boring. They also learn that the only way to restore the program to its normal operating parameters is to eliminate the threat, Frankie Eyes, in a way appropriate to that time period. Viewers also learn how much the holographic character, Fontaine, has meant to the residents of Deep Space Nine. All except for Captain Benjamin Sisko, who has never entered the program because it is set in a world of bigotry and racial discrimination. O’Brien comes up with a plan to rob the casino so that Frankie Eyes will be eliminated by the Mafia boss Mr. Zeemo when he cannot pay him his cut. The senior staff all take part in the caper, including Sisko. The scheme proves successful and the episode ends with Sisko joining Fontaine in a duet of “The Best is Yet to Come.”
In this episode the jack-in-the-box can be compared to a Trickster character, which is a surge of irrational unconscious energy that tends to unbalance the rational conscious ego and force it to do something it normally wouldn’t. Similar to how a complex allows bits of unconscious material to come to the awareness of the conscious ego so that self-knowledge and growth can occur, when Trickster energy appears this same opportunity exists. If the conscious ego finds a way to acknowledge the Trickster and learn the lessons from it, the ego will become stronger and the psyche more whole.
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