Synopsis: An alien vessel spies on Voyager through the lens of The Doctor’s dreams.
This episode can be seen as a cautionary tale, of how the Logos-driven rational conscious ego can misinterpret bits of material from the Eros-driven irrational unconscious.
In “Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy” The Doctor has done some tinkering with his own Emergency Medical Hologram (EMH) Program because he wanted to be able to dream like his fellow crewmates. Because he feels mistreated by the crew, many of his dreams are about heroic escapades. Unfortunately, being a doctor and not an engineer, his changes to his program are unsuccessful and he becomes unable to control when he dreams and gets to a state where it is difficult for him to separate his dreams from reality. In the meantime, Voyager has entered an area of space controlled by an alien race calling themselves the Hierarchy. Initially, because the sensors on the Hierarchy vessel could not penetrate Voyager’s shields to determine the extent of her weaponry, the Hierarchy were not going to approach Voyager. However, an enterprising scientist aboard the Hierarchy vessel, Phlox, comes up with a way to see into Voyager using The Doctor’s EMH Program. Phlox mistakes The Doctor’s dreams of grandeur for reality, and instead of letting Voyager pass by unscathed, the Hierarchy decide to attack her instead. Phlox realizes his mistake and warns The Doctor, allowing Voyager to avoid attack.
In this episode, The Doctor can be seen as embodying the conscious ego anxious to connect to bits of material of unconscious material but tries to control the unconscious. Phlox on the other hand, can be seen as embodying the conscious ego that misreads bits of material from the unconscious because it is interpreting the material in the ways the conscious ego expresses itself, not how the unconscious does. Both The Doctor and Phlox run into problems in their approaches. This can be analogized to how when the conscious ego tries to force connection with the unconscious and control it, the ego will be unsuccessful. To truly integrate bits of material from the unconscious into itself, the ego needs to let the unconscious communicate in its own way, in its own good time.
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