Synopsis: When Captain Janeway is held hostage by aliens, The Doctor tries to rescue her without help from his Voyager crewmates.
This episode illustrates what can happen when the Logos-driven rational conscious ego is too one-sided.
In “Renaissance Man” Captain Kathryn Janeway and The Doctor are returning from a medical symposium on the Delta Flyer. The Doctor is explaining to Janeway how hologram life is superior to being human when something happens. When The Doctor and Janeway return to Voyager, Janeway informs Commander Chakotay that she has been informed by the Supreme Archon of R’Kaal, a species that has outlawed warp drives, that Voyager has been traveling through their space for three weeks. The penalty for this is that they are to surrender Voyager’s warp core. Chakotay is suspicious and discovers that the Janeway that returned to the ship is an imposter. Meanwhile, The Doctor keeps changing his identity to masquerade as various members of the crew, in his efforts to bring the warp core to the aliens, to rescue Janeway. The Doctor is successful in bringing the aliens the warp core, but instead of freeing Janeway, they try to reprogram The Doctor to become a thief. Lt. Commander Tuvok and Lt. Tom Paris mount a rescue of Janeway, The Doctor, and the warp core. When The Doctor is returned to Voyager, it is discovered that his program has been tampered with, and thinking his program will be lost, he starts admitting all his misdeeds to the senior crew. However, his program is restored and The Doctor is humiliated by his admissions.
In this episode, when The Doctor explains to Janeway that being a hologram is superior to being human, because of his superior abilities and not being burdened with bodily needs, this can be compared to how a one-sided conscious ego may feel about the Eros-driven irrational unconscious. Even though the unconscious is the complementary and necessary part of the psyche. However, when The Doctor tries to use his superior skills in a way that he feels rationally will solve the dilemma at hand, he made it much worse. He did not listen to Janeway’s orders to not give the aliens the warp core, instead, he believed that he could rescue her without input from mere humans. This was almost catastrophic for Voyager and her crew, but in the end Voyager’s crew was able to rescue Janeway and The Doctor. This can be compared to how sometimes bits of material from the unconscious need to be acknowledged and integrated into the conscious ego, to make it stronger and the psyche more whole.
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