Synopsis: Q returns to Voyager to leave his son, Q2, in the care of Captain Janeway.
This episode illustrates three different psychic archetypes, the Great Mother, the Senex, and the Puer, and their relationships to each other.
In “Q2” Q appears to Captain Kathryn Janeway on Voyager and brings with him his now adolescent son, Q2. Q explains to Janeway that he has told his son about his encounters with Starfleet, and he wants Q2 to vacation there for a week. Janeway tells Q that she is not Q2’s mother and Q tells her she is like a mother to her crew. Q disappears and Q2 starts to cause havoc on the ship. Midweek Q reappears and is disappointed that Starfleet values have not rubbed off on Q2. Janeway tells Q that what Q2 needs is parenting from Q. Instead, Q takes Q2’s omnipotent powers away from him for the duration of his stay on Voyager and threatens to turn him into an amoeba for eternity if he does not change his behavior. Initially, Q2 does follow Janeway’s rules, but eventually, he takes Icheb on the Delta Flyer on an excursion through spacial rifts. Icheb is injured in one such journey when the Delta Flyer is fired upon for trespassing. When Q2 returns to Voyager with the wounded Icheb he is told that the only way to save Icheb’s life is for Q2 to go back to the aliens that injured him, apologize, and beg them to help his friend. As it turns out the alien that caused Icheb’s injury was Q in disguise, and because he acted on his friend’s behalf and not his own, his powers are restored, and Q decides to spend more time with him.
In this episode, when Q drops off his son with Janeway, telling her that she is like a mother to her crew, he is perceiving her as a Great Mother archetype. When Janeway tries to teach Q2 how to behave like a Starfleet officer, it can be said that she is embodying that role. Q, as being omnipotent and the father of Q2 can be seen to be embodying the Senex, or wise old man archetype, especially when he goes before the Q Continuum arguing on behalf of Q2. Q2 can be interpreted as embodying the Puer, or eternal youth archetype, especially when he behaves mischievously and with no respect for the consequences of his actions. James Hillman believed that the relationship between the Senex and the Puer archetypes could be used to understand all the other archetypes in our psyches, and he also wrote about the tension between the Puer and the Great Mother. The relationship between these three shown in this episode can be analogized to what goes on between these archetypal energies in our own psyches.
mydailysoultrek 