Synopsis: The Enterprise encounters an alien race with three genders.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of the danger of the Logos-driven rational conscious ego being one-sided, believing that its way of perceiving the world is the only way.
In “Cogenitor,” while exploring a rare hypergiant star, Enterprise is hailed by Captain Drennick, the commander of a Vissian vessel. The Vissians are a more technologically advanced race, and Drennick offers to assist in modifying Enterprise’s scanners in exchange for a chance to learn more about Enterprise’s crew, since they have never met humans before. Drennick and a contingency of Vissians come aboard Enterprise, including the Vissian vessel’s chief engineer, his wife, Calla, and their cogenitor – a member of their specie’s third gender whose sole purpose is to help couples conceive. Commander Charles (Trip) Tucker is appalled by this arrangement and takes it upon himself to contact the cogenitor and try to educate it as to its “human” rights to education and freedom. This leads to the cogenitor requesting asylum aboard Enterprise, and when that request is denied, the cogenitor commits suicide.
In this episode, when Tucker decides that he must educate the cogenitor as to what it should want from life, he is coming from a place of believing that there is only one way to treat individuals fairly. This can be analogized to how sometimes the rational conscious ego believes that its way of thinking is the only way for the psyche to take in information. This can result in the conscious ego being one-sided, which is dangerous to psychic balance. A psyche is much more whole when the ego acknowledges bits of material from the unconscious, making itself stronger and more resilient as well.
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