Synopsis: When the U.S.S. Enterprise is trapped in a nebula the crew are transformed into characters from a fairy tale.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of how the conscious ego perceives the unconscious as acting in ways that are different from its own.
In “The Elysian Kingdom” the U.S.S. Enterprise is trapped in a nebula that it is surveying. While the crew conducts the survey Dr. Joseph M’Benga reads a fairy tale to his gravely ill daughter, Rukiya. M’Benga has been keeping her pattern in the medical transporter buffer, hoping that in the ship’s journey they will discover a cure for the disease that she will soon die from. He brings her out of the pattern buffer periodically to read to her. The fairy tale he reads her this day, “The Elysian Kingdom,” M’Benga has read to his daughter many times before, and she asks him why can’t they change the ending in which the king is asked to choose between keeping his great weapon to ensure the safety of his kingdom or to save his daughter. Instead, she would prefer an ending in which Z’ymira the Huntress unites with his court to save the day. M’Benga is called to the bridge and when he arrives he finds that it has been transformed into the world of the fairy tale, with him in the role of the king. M’Benga plays his part, which he recognizes from the fairy tale, until he notes that Z’ymira and a member of his court start working together. He then understands that there is an entity in the nebula that is both holding the ship in place and orchestrating the crew’s involvement with the story. As it turns out, the nebula has a way to heal his daughter, but only if she stays there. M’Benga asks her if that is what she wants to do, and she says yes.
In this episode, the nebula’s way of communicating as well as its method for healing M’Benga’s daughter can be compared to the way that the conscious ego perceives the behavior of the unconscious. Just as the nebula has its own way to cure the illness, that M’Benga does not understand, the unconscious has its own way of healing within the psyche that the ego will likely believe is illogical. But the true way to psychic healing is for the conscious ego to acknowledge and integrate bits of unconscious material into itself, which will make it stronger and the psyche more whole. Mythologically, the unconscious has also been analogized to the underworld, and another name for the underworld in ancient Greek myth was the Elysian Fields, where the best among us would spend eternity.
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