Synopsis: The crew of the Enterprise is sent to a planet where individuals forget their identities.
In one sense, this episode can be seen as an illustration of James Hillman’s acorn theory—that just as an acorn has everything inside it to become an oak tree, humans have inner daimons that have all the information we need to become who we are meant to be.
In “Among the Lotus Eaters” the crew of the Enterprise is ordered to Rigel VII, to investigate cultural contamination left behind when the ship and her crew last visited there. A landing party of Captain Christopher Pike, Dr. Joseph M’Benga, and Lt. La’an Noonien-Singh take a shuttle down to the planet and discover that what was left behind was an Enterprise crewmember that was thought killed in action, Zac Nguyen. On Rigel VII he is now known as High Lord Zacarias. Pike apologizes and pleads with Nguyen to come back to the Enterprise, but Nguyen refuses since he knows that he has broken the Prime Directive and will be punished for that. He tells Pike that the planet will work its magic on him, which it does and the landing party find themselves in a cage not being able to remember their names or who the others are. Meanwhile, on the Enterprise, the crew is also affected by the radiation from the planet. Back on the planet the landing crew is aided by a Kalar individual, Luq, who tells them that because the Kalars’ memories are impaired by the radiation, they use colors, pictures, and symbols to identify what they do and where they live. After Pike, M’Benga, and Noonien-Singh are out of the cage Luq shows them a totem that tells the story of the Kalar people—how some people are to remember the past and choose the future for the society while others are fated to be free of the memory and just work in the present for the good of the community. Luq tells Pike that he is helping him because Pike is acting through his emotions, his truth. With Luq’s assistance, Pike returns to the palace, which is made out of an ore that shields it from the radiation that causes the memory loss, and remembers who he is. Nguyen tells him that the radiation came from an asteroid that hit the planet thousands of years before. The landing party regains their memories and returns to the Enterprise, where Lt. Spock was able to develop a shield harmonic to block the radiation that was causing the forgetfulness. Pike orders that the Enterprise use her tractor beam to send the asteroid into a debris field away from the planet.
In this episode, when Luq tells Pike that he is acting from his emotions, which for him are his truth, this can be analogized to when an individual listens to their inner daimon, that has all the information needed for that individual to become who they were meant to be. Because Pike was being true to himself and acting from that truth, which Luq was able to recognize, Pike was able to save the landing crew and later the fate of the entire planet. Just as if we act upon what our inner daimon tells us about who we are meant to be, we can all accomplish the task that we were put on Earth to do.
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