Synopsis: Saru, a Kelpien living on the planet Kaminar looks to the stars for hope and his future.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what James Hillman would call the tension between the energy of the Senex, the wise elder, and the Puer, the eternal youth, archetypes. Hillman believed that the relationship between these two archetypes could be used to explore the tension between other archetypes in our psyches.
In “The Brightest Star,” on the planet Kaminar, Saru, a Kelpien, his sister, Siranna, and his father are living out their lives. The custom among his species is that when Kelpiens are called, they willingly give up their lives to the Ba’ul to maintain the Great Balance. Saru questions this. Saru’s father finds a fragment of a Ba’ul spaceship which turns out to be a communications device, which Saru secretly uses to contact Starfleet. Lt. Philippa Georgiou comes down in a shuttlecraft and offers to take him to the Federation, but he may not return to Kaminar if he chooses to do so.
In this episode, Saru’s father and the culture in which Saru grew up in can both be compared to the energy of the Senex archetype. His father the wise elder and the culture represented by the Great Balance, the way that things have always been done. Saru, by questioning both, can be seen as representing the energy of the Puer archetype. Questioning, not wanting to follow the ways of the Senex just because it is the way things have always been done. This tension can be seen in all of us to some degree in our own psyches. And sometimes, as here, when one chooses to follow the draw of Puer energy, there can come at great cost. But sometimes that is the price that must be paid for the Puer to break away from the Senex and become who one was meant to be.
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