Synopsis: While Captain Pike is away, Lt. Spock is left in charge of the U.S.S. Enterprise and takes the ship and her crew on an unauthorized rescue mission.
There is much going on in this episode, but what I will comment on is how it can be seen as an illustration of what Carl (C. G.) Jung called the union of opposites.
In “The Broken Circle,” Captain Christopher Pike takes a shuttle to meet the one attorney that Lt. Commander Una Chin-Riley believes can defend the allegations against her for concealing her identity as an Illyrian. This leaves Lt. Spock in command of the U.S.S. Enterprise. The Enterprise receives a distress call from Lt. La’an Noonien-Singh. Spock asks Admiral Robert April for permission to take the Enterprise to her location, but April denies his request. Spock then tells the senior crew that he is going to steal the Enterprise, which he does, to come to the aid of Noonien-Singh. When the Enterprise arrives at her location, Cajitar IV, Spock, Nurse Christine Chapel, Ensign Nyota Uhura, and Dr. Joseph M’Benga beam down to assist Noonien-Singh. She tells them that that there is a new mining syndicate that wants to restart the war between the Federation and the Klingons. When M’Benga and Chapel go to administer medical assistance, they are taken by a group of Klingons onto a stolen Starfleet vessel which the Klingons launch from the planet. M’Benga is able to get a message to the Enterprise to destroy the ship before a nearby Klingon vessel discovers it, and a war is reignited. M’Benga and Chapel are able to get off the ship and the Enterprise destroys it, averting an interstellar incident. Later, when April confronts Spock about his actions, Spock tells him that he was following his gut.
In this episode, the Spock that is presented here is much different from the Spock of Star Trek: The Original Series. Here, when Spock gives into his emotions, this can be seen as an illustration of what Jung would call the union of opposites—the conscious and the unconscious, both at work in our psyches. Much like the internal battle that we witness Spock experiencing, Jung wrote:
Conscious and unconscious do not make a whole when one of them is suppressed and injured by the other. If they must contend, let it at least be a fair fight with equal rights on both sides. Both are aspects of life. Consciousness should defend its reason and protect itself, and the chaotic life of the unconscious should be given the chance of having its way too—as much of it as we can stand. This means open conflict and open collaboration at once. (1939/1969, p. 288 [CW 9i, para. 522])
Here, Spock is experiencing and using his unconscious instincts, even to the point of disobeying a direct order. We are seeing a Spock growing into a more whole individual, just as when the conscious ego acknowledges and integrates bits of unconscious material into our psyches, our egos become stronger and our psyches more whole.
Reference:
Jung, C. G. (1969). Conscious, unconscious, and individuation (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 9 pt. 1. Archetypes and the collective unconscious (2nd ed., pp. 275-289). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1939) https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400850969.275
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