Synopsis: Badgey, Peanut Hamper, and AGIMUS reenter the lives of the crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of Carl (C. G.) Jung’s concept of the shadow, those bits of unconscious material that one’s conscious ego does not want to admit is part of an individual’s psyche.
In “A Few Badgeys More” a Drookmani salvage vessel accidentally activates the rogue AI, Badgey. In Bynar space, a Bynar vessel disappears after being confronted by a small vessel. Aboard the U.S.S. Cerritos, Lt. D’Vana Tendi is being sent to attend the parole hearing of the exocomp, Peanut Hamper, at the Daystrom Institute, while Lt. Bradward Boimler is also being sent to this facility because the computer AGIMUS has stated that he has information on the vessels that have been disappearing that he will only tell Boimler. The Cerritos meanwhile will go investigate the disappearance of the Bynar ship. Meanwhile, at the Daystrom Institute, Peanut Hamper and AGIMUS discuss how AGIMUS is going to escape by tricking Boimler and how they will rendezvous and then head to Plymeria to take over that planet. But when they reach Plymeria, neither AGIMUS or Peanut Hamper are really happy dominating the planet, they just had wanted to spend time together. Meanwhile, Lt. Samanthan Rutherford goes aboard the Drookmani vessel and expresses parental feelings toward Badgey, which results in a splitting off of a separate personality, which identifies itself as Goodgey, that contains all Badgey’s positive traits. Badgey ends up gaining infinite power and wisdom, which means that he no longer wants to kill Rutherford or anyone else, but to go into another dimension and explore it. Rutherford brings Goodgey back to the Cerritos, to help, but everyone seems a bit weary of him.
In this episode, when Badgey splits off an opposite version of itself that has socially acceptable characteristics, this can be compared to how the unconscious ego suppresses traits it does not want to admit it has in the unconscious shadow. Here, Badgey is considered as having negative attributes, the opposite, Goodgey, contains material that society considers positive. And while it may seem counterintuitive to call the shadow Goodgey, Jung taught that the shadow consisted of material that the ego had not acknowledged and integrated into itself and potentials yet to be developed. This is how we can interpret Goodgey as Badgey’s shadow.
mydailysoultrek 