Synopsis: Temporal Agent Daniels sends Captain Archer to the 31st century in which Starfleet never existed.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what Carl (C.G.) Jung calls a complex, and how it allows bit of material from the Logos-driven irrational unconscious to be acknowledged by and integrated into the Eros-driven rational conscious ego.
In “Shockwave, Part II” Captain Jonathan Archer and Temporal Agent Daniels find themselves in the 31st century, in the middle of a devastated cityscape. Daniels realizes that by bringing Archer there he changed the past and must get Archer back to the 22nd century, but without any time travel tools at his disposal. Meanwhile, on Enterprise, which is surrounded by a swarm of Suliban cell ships, Sub-Commander T’Pol tells Silik that Archer is not on board. Suliban soldiers search the ship. They do not find Archer, but they find a temporal signature in a turbolift. T’Pol is interrogated. When she is returned to her quarters, she receives a holographic message from Archer telling her that she must get a device out of Daniels’s former quarters aboard the Enterprise. A plan is devised, but the Suliban intercepts the device and Silik tries to make it work to bring the shadowy figure back to give him instructions. Instead, Archer is brought back to his time. Archer gets back to the Enterprise and the ship rendezvous with the Vulcan ship, D’kyr. On Earth, Vulcan Ambassador Soval admits that Enterprise has nothing to do with the catastrophe at the alien colony, but still wants the mission recalled. This discussion is also viewed on Enterprise, where Archer tells Soval that humans learn from their mistakes. T’Pol stands with Archer and tells Soval that she believes the mission should continue. Later, Archer wakes T’Pol with the news that he just heard that the mission will continue and tells her it was her standing up for the mission that made the difference.
In this episode, Soval can be seen as embodying a conscious ego that seems unable to acknowledge that bits of unconscious material exist. T’Pol on the other hand, can be compared to an ego that at least understands that there are things outside itself. When Archer tells Soval that humans learn from their mistakes, this can be compared to how the conscious ego integrates bits of unconscious material into itself – if we analogize mistakes to complexes – which allow bits of unconscious material to come to the attention of the ego. Sometimes this is not an easy or smooth process, complexes can often contain psychic wounds. But when an individual uses a complex as a means towards greater self-knowledge, then the ego becomes stronger and the psyche more whole.
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