Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 7, Episode 25: “What You Leave Behind”

Synopsis: The war between the Federation and Dominion forces comes to an end and the lives of those on Deep Space Nine change.

This, the last episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, can be seen as an illustration of James Hillman’s concept of the acorn theory. That just as an acorn has all the information inside it to become a tree, so too humans have an inner daimon in their psyches that contains all the knowledge of who they are destined to become.

In “What You Leave Behind” this is especially true for Captain Benjamin Sisko and Security Chief Odo. The episode begins with Sisko leading the Federation allies in space and Colonel Kira Nerys and the Cardassian Elim Garak leading the rebellion forces on Cardassia Prime. They would not have prevailed had not the Dominion forces destroyed Cardassian cities, at which point the Cardassians changed sides to join with the Federation. Afterwards, Odo goes to Cardassian Prime to cure the Founder of the Starfleet Section 31 created virus and she agrees to stand trial. Now Chief of Operations Miles O’Brien will teach at Starfleet Academy on Earth, Lt. Commander Worf will become the Ambassador to Kronos, and Garak will return to Cardassia, but only after 800 million have been killed. The biggest changes though are for Sisko and Odo. Sisko will remain with the Prophets for a while to learn what he needs to for the rest of his life, while Odo returns to the Great Link to cure all the Founders of the virus.

In this episode, the actions of both Sisko and Odo can be seen as illustrations of Hillman’s acorn theory. Sisko, whose very birth was engineered by the Prophets so that he may protect Bajor when the time came, and Odo, who was sent out into the galaxy by the Founders to learn about other civilizations and bring back wisdom, who in the end saves his species. This can be analogized to what happens to humans when they listen to their inner daimons and fulfill their destiny in what Carl (C. G.) Jung called the unus mundus, the one united world, in service to the anima mundi, the world’s soul.