Synopsis: Captain Pike and the crews of the U.S.S. Enterprise and the U.S.S. Farragut are tasked with completing work on a refinery that will be used for refueling starships.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of how an individual’s unconscious communicates differently than one’s conscious ego, and how the ego resists this way of communicating.
In “Lost in Translation,” Captain Christopher Pike has temporarily been put in command of not only the U.S.S. Enterprise, but also the U.S.S. Farragut and a deuterium refinery that Starfleet is attempting to bring online. Ensign Nyota Uhura starts to hear a strange signals and then has a vision of Lt. Hemmer’s ghost. Meanwhile, Commander Una Chin-Riley and Commander Pelia go to the refinery to try to get it operational. Pelia finds evidence of sabotage and then an individual, Lt. Saul Ramon, the saboteur, who like Uhura, was hearing strange sounds and hallucinating. He is brought aboard Enterprise, but then escapes sick bay and causes an explosion which vents him out into space. Uhura first is worried that she will become like Ramon, but then she realizes that someone is trying to contact her. Lt. Sam Kirk, a xenoanthropologist, tells Uhura about a theory that extra-dimensional lifeforms could emerge in their dimension. Uhura then realizes that the hallucinations that she has been experiencing were messages from these lifeforms and tells Pike that the refinery is killing the lifeforms and that it must stop operating. On the refinery, Chin-Riley and Pelia are unable to shut down its systems, so after they leave in a shuttle, Pike orders that the refinery be destroyed. Uhura sees one more image, that of Hemmer showing his approval.
In this episode, the way that the extra-dimensional lifeform is trying to communicate with Uhura can be analogized to how the unconscious communicates to the conscious ego—using images and dreams. Uhura and the rest of the crew’s initial resistance to the messages can be compared to how the conscious ego often tries to suppress unconscious material. Uhura shifting her perspective enough to understand what is happening, saves the extra-dimensional lifeforms, and Starfleet gains knowledge of one more alien lifeform. This can be compared to when the conscious ego acknowledges and integrates bits of unconscious material into itself, making the ego stronger and the psyche more whole.
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