Synopsis: Captain Archer and Commander Tucker are invited to visit a planet, not realizing that their host is considered a terrorist.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of how bits of material from the Eros-driven irrational unconscious come into the awareness of the Logos-driven rational conscious ego through what Carl (C. G.) Jung called a feeling-toned complex.
In “Desert Crossing” Enterprise receives a distress call from an alien vessel, responds, and the pilot of the vessel, Zobral, invites Captain Jonathan Archer and Commander Charles (Trip) Tucker to come to his home. Their presence there is noted by the Torothan authorities on the planet and Chancellor Trelit hails Enterprise and tells Sub-Commander T’Pol that Zobral is a terrorist, and that Archer and Tucker are in danger. T’Pol contacts Archer to inform him of this. Archer then speaks with Zobral, who tells him that it is the Torothans who have terrorized his people for centuries. Zobral also tells Archer that he ran across a group of Suliban that told him how Archer fought for their release from a detention complex. Wanting to stay out of the conflict, Archer and Tucker head out into the desert. They get lost and T’Pol is warned by Trelit not to take any action. Zobral contacts Enterprise and asks to be brought aboard, T’Pol tells him what actually happened at the detention complex. T’Pol, Zobral, and Lt. Commander Malcolm Reed then take a shuttlepod to the planet to try to locate Archer and Tucker. They are found and return to Enterprise. T’Pol tells Archer she believes that decisions about becoming involved in alien cultures’ conflicts should be the responsibility of governments, and Archer agrees, yet he does feel that Zobral’s cause may be one worth fighting for.
In this episode, the conflict between the Torothan forces and Zobral’s people can be compared to the differences between the conscious ego and the unconscious. Like the conscious ego, the Torothan forces, and arguably Starfleet as well, want order. Like the unconscious, Zobral’s people realize that the only way that they can get the attention of the Torothan is to disrupt their order. Disrupting the order is one way to describe a feeling toned complex, which contains bits of unconscious material that when recognized by the conscious ego forces it to experience things it would not otherwise. This can lead to an increase in self-knowledge, but it can feel like an internal war to get there.
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