Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, Episode 5: “Mirrors”

Synopsis: Captain Burnham and Cleveland Booker travel through a wormhole of sorts and discover a remnant from the mirror universe.

This episode can be seen as an illustration of what Carl (C. G.) Jung called the union of opposites—the conscious and the unconscious.

In “Mirrors,” when the U.S.S. Discovery arrives at the last know coordinates of Malinne (Moll) Ravel and L’ak, the crew discovers a wormhole of sorts. Believing that this is where Moll and L’ak are, and with them the latest clue to the location of the Progenitors’ technology, Captain Michale Burnham and Cleveland (Book) Booker take a shuttle through it. Once inside, they find Moll and L’ak’s ship in ruins and the damaged I.S.S. Enterprise from the Terran Universe. Burnham and Book board the Enterprise, to find that Moll and L’ak are already there. Through flashbacks the history of the relationship between Moll and L’ak is revealed. How they met and fell in love. Flashbacks also reveal that the Breen have two faces, a fluid form and a solid form. By showing Moll his solid Breen face as opposed to the fluid form, he is vulnerable. An explosion on Enterprise disconnects the shuttle that Burnham and Book arrived in, leaving them stranded. The only way for all four to return to safety is for the Enterprise to pass through the aperture to the wormhole. With assistance from the Discovery and her crew, the Enterprise makes it safely out of the wormhole. And although Burnham and Book now possess the next clue, Moll and L’ak escape in a warp pod.

In this episode, the two faces of the Breen can be analogized to the conscious and the unconscious parts of the psyche in humans. L’ak’s uncle, the Breen Primarch, and those that he commands believe that only one face, the fluid or outer face that projects invulnerability is the true face of the Breen. But L’ak, as has been shown here and in the earlier episodes, through the love of Moll shows his solid more vulnerable face. In this episode L’ak tells his uncle that the Breen have two faces and to deny one is wrong. L’ak’s understanding that both the Breen faces are part of an individual and should be honored can be compared to when the conscious ego acknowledges bits of unconscious material and integrates them into itself, to become stronger and for the psyche to become more whole.