Blog 623 – Season 1, Episodes 1 and 2: “Broken Bow, Part I and Part II”
Synopsis: Captain Archer and the crew take the NX-01 Enterprise out on her maiden voyage.
This episode illustrates the relationship between two archetypes, or eternal energy centers, which are contained in the Eros-driven irrational unconscious: that of the Senex, or wise elder, and the Puer, or eternal youth.
In “Broken Bow, Part I and Part II” the relationship between the humans in Starfleet and the Vulcans, who have been advising them for the last ninety years, is forced to change when a Klingon currier, Klaang, is injured on Earth by another alien species, the Suliban. The Vulcans, who already have relations with the Klingons, arrange to take his corpse back to his home planet, Kronos. They explain that Klingons would rather die honorably in battle than to come back home injured. The captain of the NX-01 Enterprise, Jonathan Archer, disagrees. He tells the Vulcans that the human way is to return Klaang to Kronos alive, and that he wants to take the Enterprise on her maiden voyager to do this. The Enterprise sets out on its mission to Kronos with Vulcan Sub-Commander T’Pol assigned to observe. Enroute to Kronos, the Suliban board Enterprise and take Klaang. T ‘Pol tells Archer that the mission is now over, but again Archer disagrees and orders the crew to look for Klaang and rescue him. This is successful and Klaang is returned to Kronos. After the mission, Enterprise is ordered to stay in deep space and Archer asks T’Pol if she would like to stay aboard, acknowledging that he needs her insight.
In this first episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, the relationship between Starfleet and the Vulcans is introduced, as well as that of Archer and T’Pol. Both Starfleet and Archer can be seen as embodying the archetype of the Puer, and the Vulcans embodying the archetype of the Senex. When Archer tells the Vulcans and his commanding officer, Admiral Maxwell Forrest, that he believes that the Vulcan approach to a situation is wrong and that he has a better plan and that he is ready to go forth now, instead of wait, he is acting in the role of the Puer. The Puer individual needs to break through the restrictive nature of the Senex, to start out on one’s own path to becoming who they are. Archer does this again after Klaang has been abducted by the Suliban, when he tells T‘Pol that the mission is not over, but has been expanded, so that now Klaang must be rescued before being returned to the Klingons. The Vulcans, who are more technically advanced and more circumspect in how to respond to the Klingon found on Earth, embody the role of the Senex, who is wise, experienced, but also controlling. Archetypal Psychologist James Hillman believed that the relationship between the Senex and Puer was central to understanding all the archetypes found in the unconscious. This is because between any two opposing, or complementary archetypes, there is a tension between needing what the other has and the need to break from it. At the end of this two-part episode, when Archer admits to T’Pol that he needed her to complete the mission of rescuing Klaang, this can be analogized to when the Puer becomes stronger by acknowledging its need for some of the wisdom of the Senex, but also the need to go forth on its own. This can also be compared to how when the conscious ego acknowledges and integrates bits of material from the unconscious, the ego becomes stronger and the psyche more whole. The mission if you will, of depth psychology.
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