Synopsis: Dr. Phlox is abducted by the Klingons to help them deal with a dangerous virus.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of just how connected we all are in the unis mundus, C. G. Jung’s term for a single united world.
In “Affliction” Dr. Phlox is abducted from Earth and taken to a Klingon medical research colony on Qu’Vat. It seems that the Klingons were able to take some of the human Augment DNA and decided to try to create Klingon Augments. But as well as being superior physically and mentally, apparently Augments are also better equipped to spread a lethal virus, and the Klingon Empire is facing a sever outbreak. Also, the Klingon Augment DNA is not stable. A Klingon general, K’Vagh wants Phlox to create Augments with more stable DNA. Phlox refuses. Meanwhile, aboard Enterprise, Captain Jonathan Archer has Commander T’Pol perform a mindmeld on Ensigh Hoshi Sato, who was with Phlox when he was abducted. She is able to remember the language the assailants were speaking, and this leads Archer to where Phlox has been taken. However, after having experienced the mindmeld, Sato also experiences a vision of T’Pol and Commander Charles (Trip) Tucker III appearing in a dreamscape. This is the same vision that appears to T’Pol while she was meditating and to Tucker in a daydream. But en route to where Phlox has been taken, Enterprise is boarded by a group of Klingon Augments who sabotage her engines, which requires the vessel to maintain a high speed in order to avoid exploding.
In this episode, when T’Pol performs a mindmeld on Sato, when their minds touch, which leads Sato to experiencing the same vision as T’Pol and Tucker, this can be seen as an expression of how humans are all a part of a greater united world, or unis mundus. This is also illustrative of what Jung called the collected unconscious, which was how he explained that all individual unconscious parts of our psyches are joined together. We just feel separate because that is what our conscious ego perceives.
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