Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, Episode 9: “Lagrange Point”

Synopsis: The U.S.S. Discovery and her crew reach the location of the Progenitors’ technology.

This episode can be seen as an illustration of what James Hillman called the metaxy, the place in between the conscious and unconscious.

In “Lagrange Point,” the U.S.S. Discovery arrives at the location of the Progenitors’ technology, and find that it is held in a container caught in the gravitational equilibrium between two black holes, called the lagrange point. Ruhn’s dreadnought arrives and beams the container into the Breen ship’s shuttle bay. To retrieve the container of the Progenitors’ technology two teams from Discovery will beam aboard the dreadnought disguised as Breen soldiers. Captain Michael Burnham and Cleveland (Book) Booker will try to reach the container and put a transportation lock on it, while Lt. Commander Gen Rhys and Ensign Adira Tal, will try to deactivate the dreadnought’s shields. However, Malinne (Moll) Ravel discovers their presence and thwarts the plan.

In this episode, the lagrange point, the location of gravitational equilibrium between the two black holes, can be analogized to what Hillman called the metaxy— an in-between place, a “middle position” between the “physical and material” and the “spiritual and the abstract” (1976, p. 68). Hillman compared it to Jung’s idea of a middle realm or “psychic reality” (1983/1994, p. 56). This middle realm is also analogous to a psychoanalytic theory proposed by Thomas H. Ogden, the analytic third, the healing space created in therapy between the conscious and unconscious of the psychoanalyst and conscious and the unconscious of the analysand (1994/1999). So it is fitting that the coordinates for the vast power of the Progenitors technology would place it in this spot, which is both a physical reality and mythic in its meaning.

References:

Hillman, J. (1976). Re-visioning psychology. Harper.

Hillman, J. (1994). Healing fiction. Spring Publications. (Original work published in 1983)

Ogden, T. H. (1999). The analytic third: Working with intersubjective clinical facts. In S. A. Mitchell, & l. Aron (Eds.), Relational psychoanalysis: The emergence of a tradition (pp. 459-492). Routledge. (Original work published in 1994)