Synopsis: Captain Janeway leads an away mission into a Borg cube to try to save the mutated drones that visit Unimatrix Zero.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of the dangers of the Logos-driven rational conscious ego trying to directly contact the Eros-driven irrational unconscious.
In “Unimatrix Zero, Part II” on an away mission to save the mutant drones who find sanctuary in Unimatrix Zero, Captain Kathryn Janeway, Lt. B’Elanna Torres, and Lt. Commander Tuvok are in a Borg cube. They look outwardly as if they have been assimilated into the Borg Collective, but in reality The Doctor has inoculated them with some type of neuro-suppressant that allows them to keep their individuality. Janeway and Torres are responding as expected to the neuro-suppressant, but it is not as effective for Tuvok. Tuvok hears the voice of the Borg Queen calling to him and begins to refer to himself as Three of Twelve. Tuvok begs Janeway to deactivate him before he is forced to betray the mission, but Janeway refuses to do so. Tuvok does grant access to Voyager’s access codes to the Borg Queen, but the mission is a success nonetheless. After returning to Voyager, Janeway and Torres make a speedy recovery, but Tuvok will need more time to heal.
In this episode, Janeway and Torres, with the help of a neuro-suppressant, seem much better able to operate as themselves in the Borg vessel, which can be analogized to the conscious ego trying to make contact with the unconscious. Perhaps because they identify outwardly as female, and in the hetero-normal concepts of Carl (C. G.) Jung, this would mean that their inner others would be male, and again, in a hetero-normal androgynous world, considered a complementary opposite to the irrational unconscious. Whereas Tuvok as a rational male Vulcan, his inner other in Jung’s teachings would be both female and irrational, and therefore more prone to meld with the unconscious. Jung believed that some artists had this same sensitivity to the bits of material in the unconscious which is why their work speaks to the human unconscious as well. But any contact with the unconscious carries risk, which is why the work of individuation, the union of the opposite parts of our psyche, takes courage.
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