Synopsis: Captain Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery are sent to cross the galactic barrier on a diplomatic first contact mission, while Cleveland Booker learns about what motivates Ruon Tarka.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what Carl (C. G.) Jung called a complex.
In “The Galactic Barrier” a diplomatic team comes aboard the U.S.S. Discovery to travel beyond the galactic barrier to make first contact with the Ten-C. Meanwhile, Cleveland (Book) Booker still wants to go after the Ten-C and realizes that he needs Ruon Tarka’s assistance to do it. Tarka tells him that he needs programmable antimatter to make it through the galactic barrier and he knows where they can get some. They travel to a planet where there is an abandoned Orion Emerald Chain work camp. Tarka was held here for years, along with a fellow scientist, Oros. Although initially they did not like each other, when Oros was emotionally triggered by an alarm that went off in the camp, Tarka comforted him. When Oros asked why, Tarka told Oros he never had a friend before. Oros created a transporter system that he thought could get him back to his own galaxy and invited Tarka to come with him. When Oros tried to use it, the Orions became aware of the device and beat them both. Tarka was taken away for questioning, but escaped by killing a guard. He comes back for Oros. Oros is too badly injured to move and tells Tark to leave him, which he does. Tarka believes Oros was able to get to the other galaxy and wants to join him.
In this episode, when Tarka explains himself to Book, what he is describing is the making of what Jung called a “feeling-toned” complex. Jung described the feeling of having a complex as being unable to control your actions, that an individual simply cannot help but react in a certain way. Tarka wants to get back to Oros not only because he truly wants to join his friend, but because he feels guilty about leaving him alone. This causes him to act in a way that seems to the Federation to be irrational. When Book admits to Tarka that he is going after the Ten-C because of what they did to his planet and he does not want to feel powerless like his father, he is also motivated by a complex. Jung wrote that complexes in themselves are not necessarily negative, but an opportunity to gain self-knowledge. The idea being that if we understood that we were in the grips of a complex, and could figure out what was causing us to feel this way, we could learn more about ourselves and in the process heal.
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