Synopsis: The U.S.S. Discovery travels to Kwejian to try to free it from the oppression of Osyraa and the Emerald Chain.
This episode can also be seen as an illustration of what Carl (C. G.) Jung called the collective unconscious in his later writings.
In “The Sanctuary,” Cleveland (Book) Booker receives a message from his brother, Kyheem, that his home planet, Kwejian, is being threatened by Osyraa and the Emerald Chain. Commander Michael Burnham, Captain Saru, and Book go before Admiral Charles Vance, asking his permission to travel to Kwejian. He authorizes the mission on the condition that Discovery and her crew go there as observers only. However, once Discovery arrives at Kwejian, Burnham and Book beam down to the planet and are taken prisoner by Kyheem and his men, who work for Osyraa. Osyraa also travels to Kwejian in her heavily armed starship, Viridian, and starts bombarding the planet. Since Discovery has been ordered not to intervene, Lt. Keyla Detmer uses Book’s vessel to fire on the Viridian driving Osyraa away. Then on Kwejian, Book and Kyheem resolve their differences and use their combined empathic powers to ask the swarming sea locusts, that have been wreaking havoc with the crops, to move back out to sea.
In this episode, when Book and Kyheem are able to communicate their wishes to the sea locusts and ask for their cooperation, this can be seen as an illustration of how Jung envisioned the collective unconscious in his later writings. Originally, Jung saw the psyche as being composed of the conscious, with the ego in the center of it, the personal unconscious, which was different for everyone, and the collective unconscious, which was unconscious material that all humans shared. Later, he changed his outlook to image the collective unconscious as something we are all a part of. This is what Kwejian seems like to me.
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