Synopsis: While in the Romulan Neutral Zone, Dal R’El learns about his past.
This episode can be seen as illustrating James Hillman’s acorn theory, that just as an acorn has everything inside it to become an oak tree, we all have inner daimons with all the information we need to become who we were meant to be.
In “Masquerade,” when the Protostar arrives in the Romulan Neutral Zone, Captain Thadiun Okona tells the crew about Noble Isle, where he believes they can dock to repair the ship. Once there, he takes the crew to the laboratory of Dr. Jago, an experimental geneticist, so that they can help him explain what happened to the cargo he was meant to deliver to her. Once she sees Dal R’El, she immediately recognizes him as being a human-hybrid product of the proteges of Dr. Arik Soong. Dal R’El is saddened to learn that he does not have a family, and feels broken. Jago tells him that she can install an implant to allow him to take advantage of all the recessive genes in his DNA to address this, but the Protostar crew tells him that he does not need to be fixed. Without the crew’s knowledge, Dal R’El does have an implant installed, and his temporarily improved abilities, along with Murf’s newfound fighting skills, allow them to escape and then defeat the Romulans who try to take over Protostar. But Gwyn and the crew convince Dal R’El to have the implant removed before he is forever changed. Meanwhile, aboard the U.S.S. Dauntless, Ensign Asencia reveals to The Diviner that she like him, is a Vau N’Akat sent back in time to find the Protostar.
In this episode, there are at least three illustrations of the acorn theory. Dal R’El discovers that he was created by scientists, not a biological family, and then learns that he doesn’t need to activate his recessive genes in order to be whole. Murf evolves from being shaped like a malleably flexible worm into a powerful individual with legs and arms, and helps the crew defeat the Romulans. Asencia reveals to The Diviner that she is a Vau N’Akat from the future, just as he is, and reminds him of his mission. These scenarios illustrate how when individuals acknowledge and listen to their inner daimons, that have all the information they require—genetic and otherwise, they become who they are meant to be. This allows them to fulfill their own unique mission as part of the unus mundus, Carl (C. G.) Jung’s term for the unified world—or perhaps here universe, in service to the anima mundi, the world’s soul—or the idea that everything in the cosmos is connected.
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