Synopsis: While traveling in a shuttlepod to explore a dark matter nebula, Captain Archer tells Sub-Commander T’Pol about a colleague of his who has just died.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what can happen when the Logos-driven rational conscious ego acknowledges and integrates bits of material from the Eros-driven irrational unconscious into itself.
In “First Flight,” Enterprise comes across a dark matter nebula just as Admiral Maxwell Forrest sends a message to Captain Jonathan Archer, that a colleague of his, Captain A.G. Robinson, has been killed in a mountain climbing accident. While Archer and Sub-Commander T’Pol are traveling in a shuttlepod, T’Pol asks Archer about his friend. Archer tells her about the flights of the first two warp 3 prototype starships. After Robinson is selected for the first test flight, he tells Archer that he was passed over to pilot the first prototype, NX-Alpha, because while he worked hard and was completely by the book, sometimes you have to take the risks that your gut tells you to do to get the job done. However, during the maiden voyage of the NX-Alpha, Robinson ignores an order to abort the mission and the ship is destroyed. Robinson barely makes it back alive and the NX Program is put on hold by Starfleet, listening to the recommendations of the Vulcans. Archer and Robinson decide that the only way they can prove that the program is ready to continue is to take the second prototype, NX-Beta, on an unauthorized test flight. The flight is successful, Archer and Robinson are reprimanded, but the NX Program is saved.
In this episode, when Robinson tells Archer that he was not selected for the first test flight because he tried too hard, was too by the book, and that he needed to take risks in order to be a captain, Archer can here be compared to the conscious ego when it is too one-sided, thinking that it’s way to understand the world is the only correct way. When Archer does take a risk with Robinson, a risk that cost both of them something, they were able to accomplish something that they would not have been able to do otherwise. And that can be compared to when the conscious ego acknowledges and integrates bits of unconscious material into itself, to become stronger and make the psyche more whole.
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