Synopsis: The Enterprise travels to a planet expecting to find a salvageable wreck of an alien vessel and instead finds the vessel is very much in use by its crew.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of the relationship between the archetypes, or patterns of unconscious energy, of the Senex, the wise elder, and the Puer, the eternal youth.
In “Oasis” Captain Jonathan Archer is told by an alien trader, D’Marr, about a ship wreck on a small planet that will provide them with much needed supplies, if they don’t mind it being haunted. Enterprise arrives at the location of the wreck and Archer, Sub-Commander T’Pol, Commander Charles (Trip) Tucker and Ensign Travis Mayweather take a shuttlepod to explore it. They find the supplies, but they also find that it is not abandoned – there is a crew aboard her. Archer has Tucker work to repair the vessel and he becomes attracted to a beautiful young woman, Liana. However, it is discovered that the crew other than Liana and her father, Ezral, are all holographs. It seems that Ezral created the holographic crew after the real one died when the vessel was caught in the ion storm that forced it to crash on the planet. Tucker tells Ezral that he has no right to keep Liana on the ship when there is a whole galaxy to explore now that the ship is being repaired. Ezral then tells Archer he has decided to take Liana to their home world.
In this episode, Liana’s father, Ezral, can be seen as embodying the Senex archetype, and Tucker the Puer. In order to take care of Liana, Ezral built an entire community and believed that he was giving her everything that she needed. But when Tucker arrives on the scene, true to his nature and dreams of exploration, he tells Ezral that this is not enough. Liana needs to see more than the vessel she has lived her entire life in. Ezral, being wise, listens, and decides on a third plan of action. To take Liana to her home planet. Archetypal Psychologist James Hillman believed that the relationship between the Senex and the Puer, the tension and the give and take, could be used to understand the dynamics between all the complimentary archetypes in the unconscious. At least to the extent that the conscious ego could perceive them.
mydailysoultrek 