Synopsis: The Enterprise crew provides aid to a freighter that has been attacked by pirates.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of how the psyche’s Logos-driven rational conscious ego may project onto another individual bits of material from the Eros-driven irrational unconscious that it does not recognize as being part of itself.
In “Fortunate Son” Starfleet orders the Enterprise to come to the aide of Earth Cargo Ship (ECS) Fortunate, after an automated distress signal was received. Enterprise arrives at Fortunate’s location and Captain Jonathan Archer hails the vessel. When no response is received, he and an away team take a pod to investigate. On Fortunate, they are met by First Officer Matthew Ryan who informs them that he is in charge now after their commander, Captain Keene, was injured in an attack by Nausicaans. One of the away team members is Ensign Travis Mayweather, who was born on a freighter himself, and he and Ryan discuss the differences between being on a freighter and being in Starfleet. Archer offers the assistance of Enterprise’s crew in making the necessary repairs to Fortunate, but Ryan is oddly hesitant about this. This is because he is holding a Nausicaan prisoner and is torturing him so that he can get information that will allow Fortunate’s crew to hunt down and destroy the vessel that attacked them. Knowing that this is not the way that Starfleet would manage the situation, Ryan hides this from Archer. When Archer finds out about this he confronts Ryan, but Ryan traps Archer in a cargo module, jettisons it, and Fortunate heads out to find the Nausicaan vessel. After recovering the cargo module, Enterprise locates Fortunate, which is engaged in a fire fight with the Nausicaans. Archer negotiates an agreement with the Nausicaans that if their crewmember is returned to them, they will stop attacking Fortunate. Then Archer and Mayweather convince Ryan to return his prisoner to the Nausicaan ship. Afterward Keene meets with Archer and tells him that Ryan has been reduced in rank because of his conduct.
In this episode, when Archer disagrees with Ryan’s actions, what he is unhappy with is the shadow aspect of Earth space vessels wanting to take care of their problems themselves. A position the he himself has taken with the Vulcans when they have offered assistance to his crew from a place of superiority. Ryan is acting out in a way that we saw Archer do in prior episodes. That Archer does not recognize that he has held similar feelings can be analogized to how the conscious ego can project bits of unconscious shadow material onto another, without realizing what it really is perceiving is something within its own psyche. But once the ego does acknowledge that it is projecting its own shadow onto another, then the process of integrating these bits of unconscious material can occur, making the ego stronger and the psyche more whole.
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