Synopsis: Voyager’s crew discovers that they are biometric copies of the original crew that once visited a Demon-Class planet.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of the existence of Carl (C. G.) Jung’s concept of the Eros-driven irrational unconscious as part of the psyche, in addition to the Logos-driven rational conscious ego.
In “Course: Oblivion” Lt. B’Elanna Torres and Seven of Nine investigate an abnormally in a Jeffries tube only to find out that it is losing molecular cohesion. Further study shows that it is not just the Jeffries tube, but the entire vessel as well as Voyager’s crew are also losing molecular cohesion. A hypothesis that something must have happened to the ship in the past to explain this occurrence reveals that this Voyager and her crew are not the Voyager and crew that visited a Demon-Class planet months earlier but are all biomimetic copies of the original vessel and crew. This copy of Commander Chakotay urges the copy of Captain Kathryn Janeway to return to the Demon-Class planet, which is their home. But the copy of Janeway refuses, instead she wants to continue heading towards Earth, copying as well the mission of the original Voyager and her crew. The copy of The Doctor then urges that they try to find the original Voyager, and the copy of Voyager almost does. But before the original Voyager reaches their position the biomimetic copies deteriorate, and all that is left for Voyager to find are their remains.
In this episode the biomimetic copies can be seen as a physical manifestation of the unconscious, a completely different and unique entity from the original Voyager and her crew, which can be interpreted as the conscious ego. Yet both vessels and crews exist in the universe. Each with its own place in the universe, one no more important or better than the other. Even though in the episode where the biomimetic compounds were first seen in the episode “Demon,” the original Voyager crew believed them to be menacing. Just as the conscious and the unconscious both exist in the psyche; although the conscious ego tends to believe that it is the only part that is valuable. Jung wrote: Psychology does not know what good and evil are in themselves; it knows them only as judgments about relationships. ‘Good’ is what seems suitable, acceptable, or valuable from a certain point of view; evil is its opposite” (1951/1968, p. 53 [CW 9ii, para. 97]). And although the stories of Star Trek: Voyager are most often told from the perspective of the conscious ego, because what is conscious is what can be perceived, this episode reminds us of what is out there that we cannot know, but does exist.
Reference:
Jung, C.G. (1968). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self. In R.F.C. Hull (Trans.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 9ii). Princeton University Press. (Original work published in 1951)
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