Synopsis: Arik Soong is brought aboard Enterprise to help the crew locate genetically enhanced humans he has created.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of James Hillman’s acorn theory, how just as an acorn has everything inside it to become an oak tree, we all have inner daimons that
Have all the information we need to become who we are.
“Borderland” begins with a group of very powerful humans killing the crew of a Klingon Bird of Prey and then taking the ship for their use. On Earth, Captain Jonathan Archer visits Arik Soong, who is in prison. In the past Soong stole DNA that remained after the Eugenic Wars to give life to genetically enhanced embryos, who became the band of Augments that captured the Klingon vessel. Soong is ordered to come aboard Enterprise which is going to the Borderland where the Augments have taken the Klingon vessel. En route, Enterprise is confronted by Orion Interceptors, and nine members of the crew are abducted to be sold into slave labor. Archer and Soong go to a slave market to liberate the crew members and are successful, except that Soong tried to escape. This landed him in Enterprise’s brig upon his return. Orion Interceptors attack Enterprise once again, however this time the Augments in the Klingon ship drive them away. Afterward, the leader of the Augments asks permission to dock, but when he and his followers board Enterprise, they overpower the crew to free Soong, whom they all consider their father. They then leave Enterprise to seek out more Augments.
In this episode, the Augments created by Soong, as well as the Soong character himself, embody the idea that we all have inner daimons that have all the information that we need to become who we are meant to be, if we only listen to it. In the case of the Augments, it has been placed into them by design, and they act in the way that they were genetically coded to do. But in the character of Arik Soong, like every other character with that surname who has appeared on any incarnation of Star Trek, there is a deep seeded need to explore the limits of science, particularly when it comes to augmenting human physiology and cybernetics,beyond even what conventional scientists might consider appropriate, or within methodological norms. Soong is brilliant and knows it, and will not abide by what he considers short-minded laws. This quality of knowing what he must do and the willingness to do whatever it takes to accomplish his goals, comes from the certitude of being in touch with one’s inner daimon. However, when taken to extremes, as it is here, could also be seen as identifying too closely with the god-like archetypal power found in the unconscious. But that is a topic for another discussion.
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