Synopsis: The Prodigy crew create hologram duplicates of themselves in order to take Infinity to rescue Captain Chakotay and the Protostar.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what Carl (C. G.) Jung called projection—how the conscious ego projects bits of its own psyche onto another.
In “Imposter Syndrome,” the Prodigy crew believe that Captain Chakotay and the Protostar are on an O-Class planet in a spiral nebula. A scheme is devised to create hologram doubles of the Prodigy crew, so that they will not be missed when they take Infinity to the planet where they believe Chakotay and the Protostar are located. The Prodigy crew then learn that Starfleet has ordered that all evidence of the mission be destroyed, including Infinity, a cloaked ship. Infinity will be flown into a hypergiant star. Not being deterred, the Prodigy crew boards Infinity, and uses the ship’s cloaking abilities to make it seem as if the vessel has been destroyed, when in fact the Prodigy crew is aboard her and they have left their hologram doubles behind on Voyager.
In this episode, both the hologram doubles and the cloaking mechanism aboard Infinity can be seen as examples of projection. Here the Prodigy crew projects their identities onto entities that are fabricated doubles of themselves. And the Infinity’s cloaking mechanism allows the Voyager crew to see what they want to see—what they believe is the destruction of the Infinity. This can be compared to what Jung called projection, when the conscious ego projects bits of its own psyche onto another individual. When this is happening, the ego cannot see the projectee for who they are. Just as the Voyager crew cannot tell that the holograms are not real and that the Infinity is not destroyed, but merely camouflaged. However, if and when the projection is removed, then the ego can see the projectee for who, or what, they truly are. This is not the case here – yet.
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