Synopsis: The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise try to prevent a comet from impacting an inhabited planet.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of how the conscious ego perceives itself as being all that exists in the psyche.
In “Children of the Comet” Science Officer, Mr. Spock, discovers that a comet is about to hit an inhabited planet, Persephone III. Fearing that this will wipe out the inhabitants of the planet, the Deleb, the crew immediately devises a plan to stop this from happening. When the crew attempts to fire at the comet to change its course, it puts up a force field and a large structure is detected inside it. An away team is sent to the comet to try to determine if there is a way to alter its course from there. At this point, another vessel approaches and orders the crew to stop interfering with the comet. The individuals on the other ship call themselves the Shepherds and they tell Captain Christopher Pike that what the crew is perceiving as a comet is to them an ancient arbiter, a M’hanit, and that its course is preordained from the beginning and cannot be changed. Pike and Spock put into action a plan that they believe will divert the M’hanit without touching it. This diverts the M’hanit, and keeps it from hitting Persephone III. However, it comes close enough that it changes the planet’s atmosphere, making it more fertile. The Shepherds hail the Enterprise and tell Pike and the crew to behold the power of the M’hanit.
In this episode, when Pike and the crew are determined to divert the path of the “comet,” they are behaving in a manner that can be compared to the conscious ego, when it considers itself the center of the psyche. But just as the crew’s interpretation of the situation is not the only one, as the Shepherds have a completely different understanding of what is happening, the ego is not all that exists in the psyche. When at the end of the episode the crew ponders whether or not the outcome of the “comet’s” close pass to Persephone III, and making it more verdant, was because of their efforts or if it was preordained, this can be analogized to when the conscious ego acknowledges that bits of unconscious material exist. This is the first step in making the ego stronger and the psyche more whole.
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