Synopsis: Infinity travels in time to retrieve Gwyndala and then returns to Voyager.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of James Hillman’s concept of the metaxy—the place in-between the conscious and unconscious where psychic healing can occur.
In “Temporal Mechanics 101,” on Solum fifty-two years in the future, the crew on Infinity receives a message from Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway in the present, informing them that Captain Chakotay and the Protostar are trapped in a wormhole and that a temporal paradox is developing. Meanwhile, on Solum in the present, Gwyndala (Gwyn), her body fluctuating through time, lies in the cavern where she had been fighting Asencia. Fugitive Zero tells the rest of the Infinity crew that they need to build a time machine in order to travel back in time to retrieve Gwyn. They do this and discover her with her father, Ilthuran, whom they know as The Diviner. Ilthuran tells Gwyn that he has found a purpose in his life and Infinity travels through the wormhole to Voyager, where Gwyn receives a temporal stabilizer. On Voyager, the crew there wonders who is behind the voice that is helping them.
In this episode, the wormhole and the temporal paradoxes related to it can be compared to what Hillman called the metaxy—the place in-between the conscious and unconscious where psychic healing can occur. Here, there is some entity that is trying to help rescue Gwyn and keep the Protostar crew together even though they are situated in two different places in time. The crew’s place in time can be analogized to the conscious ego and Gwyn’s place in time to the unconscious. If this is the case, bringing and keeping the crew together can be likened to the psychic healing that occurs when the conscious ego acknowledges and integrates bits of unconscious material into itself; which strengthens it as well as makes the psyche more whole.
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