Synopsis: An alien probe attacks Earth and Captain Archer receives guidance from the same shadowy figure who guides the actions of the Suliban as to how to proceed.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of archetypal psychologist James Hillman’s acorn theory, that just as an acorn has everything within it to become a tree, we all contain an inner daimon that contains all the information we need in order to be who we are destined to become.
In “The Expanse,” Earth is attacked by an alien probe of unknown origin. Enterprise is recalled to Earth. While travelling home Suliban vessels abduct Captain Jonathan Archer and take him onboard one of their ships where he receives guidance by the shadowy figure, the time traveler sought by temporal agent Daniels. The shadowy figure tells Archer that the probe is from a species called the Xindi, and the reason they attacked Earth was because another time traveler told them that in four hundred years humans would eradicate them. Therefore, they developed a weapon to annihilate humans before humans could annihilate them. Archer is also told that this probe was just a test, that there is a much more powerful weapon being created, and if Starfleet does not stop its production before it is completed, Earth is doomed. Archer brings this information back to Admiral Maxwell Forrest and Vulcan Ambassador Soval. Forrest listens but Soval tells Archer that time travel is impossible. Yet in spite of Soval’s objections, Archer and Enterprise head out to the Delphic Expanse where Archer was told the Xindi, and their weapon can be found.
In this episode, and in several others, particularly those involving time travel and the shadowy figure that guides the actions of the Suliban, Archer is set up as some kind of fulcrum from which the future of humanity will be determined. This can be seen here when the shadowy figure, who in prior episodes has been the nemesis of Archer and temporal agent Daniels, gives Archer the information he needs to act on to save Earth. Archer needs to believe that the information given him is pivotal to the needs of the planet and that he is the man who was meant to act upon it. This is the type of certainty that individuals can feel when they are listening to their inner daimons and know that they are on the path that they are destined for.
mydailysoultrek 