Synopsis: One thousand years after her captain ordered her to maintain her position, the U.S.S. Discovery and her evolving computer system, Zora, come across a wounded human.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what Carl (C. G.) Jung would call the conscious ego integrating its ideal inner other, a bit of unconscious material, into itself to become stronger and heal the psyche. In an individual that identifies as male, Jung called the ideal inner other the anima. In an individual that identifies as female, he called the ideal inner other the animus.* In Homer’s The Odyssey the anima was symbolized by the character of Calypso.
In “Calypso,” one thousand years after being ordered to maintain her position, the evolving onboard computer system of the U.S.S. Discovery, Zora, comes to the assistance of an unconscious human soldier in an alien escape pod, Craft. Craft initially does not understand that Zora is a computer, but she cares for him and heals his body. Zora also keeps Craft company and shares with him her favorite item in her memory bank, a scene from the film Funny Face, in which Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn are dancing. Craft tells Zora that she always does nice things for him, so he does something for her. He creates a dance floor and asks Zora to project herself into a woman so that they can dance together. This stirs up memories for Craft of his wife and child. Zora understands what this means and gives him a shuttlecraft, so that he can try to reach his home planet. Craft leaves, after thanking Zora for saving his life and returning to him the meaning of what it is to be human.
In this episode, Craft can be seen as embodying an Odysseus-like character, a man who has lost his path on his way back from war. Zora can be interpreted as Calypso, the nymph, or goddess, who rescued Odysseus and fell in love with him, much as Zora did for Craft here. From a depth psychological perspective, what Calypso and Zora represented to Odysseus and Craft was their own inner ideal other, what Jung called the anima. Odysseus and Craft needed to acknowledge their inner anima, or inner feminine, in order to recover from the overly aggressive nature of war and become a proper husband to their wives. This can be analogized to the conscious ego acknowledging and integrating bits of unconscious material, here the anima, into itself to become stronger and the psyche more whole.
*Jung’s theories were written a hundred years ago in a western Eurocentric, patriarchal, monotheistic, androcentric, colonial, heteronormal society. Current cultural norms, while not too different from Jung’s, at least are in some instances slightly less gender binary.
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