Synopsis: Lt. Mariner tries to get demoted on an away mission with Commander Ransom, while on the U.S.S. Cerritos Ensign Rutherford tries to get promoted.
This episode can be seen as containing several illustrations of Carl (C. G.) Jung’s concept of a feeling-toned complex.
In “I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee,” Lt. Beckett Mariner overhears a part of a conversation between Commander Jack Ransom and Lt. Shaxs about her, and believes that he will demote her; so she decides to earn the demotion by behaving insubordinately. Ransom, Mariner, and Ensign Gary take a shuttlecraft to Narj’s Miraculous Menagerarium, where two humans are trapped in a display. Meanwhile, aboard the U.S.S. Cerritos, Ensign Samanthan (Sam) Rutherford tries to get promoted through his engineering skills, but is repeatedly out-engineered by another ensign, Livik, eager to be promoted. On Narj’s Miraculous Menagerarium, the humans in captivity released a dangerous creature from its cage and it killed Narj, which the humans thought would put them in charge. Because of this Ransom decides to leave them in their cage until another ship can pick them up. Back on Cerritos, Livik is about to be promoted, when Rutherford admits to Lt. D’Vana Tendi that in the past, before his friends were promoted, he turned down promotions. So Tendi asks Chief Engineer Andy Billups if Rutherford can be promoted now, and Billups agrees. Rutherford is promoted not Livik.
In this episode, there are several examples of individuals that are in the throes of a feeling-toned complex: Mariner, when she is so sure that Ransom is going to demote her, that she decides to act insubordinately; Rutherford, in feeling the need to prove himself; and the humans, who believe that they deserve to be in charge of the menagerarium. In all these instances, Mariner, Rutherford, and the captive humans felt compelled to act in a certain way. Jung wrote that the reason that he called complexes feeling-toned, was because when someone is caught in the throes of one, that they cannot control how they act. Yet, complexes are also a means to self-discovery, when the unconscious material contained in them, such as a wound, is acknowledged by the conscious ego and integrated into it. Here, Mariner and Rutherford both learn about themselves and grow from their experiences. This is similar to how the conscious ego is made stronger and the psyche more whole when a complex is addressed.
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