Synopsis: The crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos save the multiverse.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of James Hillman’s concept of the metaxy—the place between the conscious and unconscious, where healing can occur.
In “The New Next Generation,” Lieutenant Junior Grade Bradward (Brad) Boimler receives the message from his clone, Captain William Boimler of the U.S.S. Anaximander, a Federation vessel on a secret mission to discover who or what is trying to destroy the multiverse. The message warns him of the destruction of their universe because of the instability of the dimensional rift. Boimler and Lieutenant Junior Grade Beckett Mariner bring the message to Captain Carol Freeman. Freeman contacts Starfleet Command that confirms the peril that the multiverse is in and that there is no other vessel that can make it in time to assist, so it is up to the crew of the Cerritos to save reality. A plan is devised, but it means that the Cerritos will need to go through five different fields of possibility in order to reach the rift and stabilize it. The Cerritos successfully travels through all these alternate realities to contain the energy of the possibility fields, and the rift is stabilized into a portal to the multiverse. Starbase 80 is moved to its location to serve as a headquarters for new missions through the to explore different realities in the multiverse. After the completion of the mission Freeman is put in charge of Starbase 80, Commander Jack Ransom is promoted to captain of the Cerritos and Boimler and Mariner are both promoted to the rank of provisional first officer.
In this episode, the Cerritos can be analogized to the conscious ego, the rift that needs to be stabilized compared to the unconscious, and the fields of distortion that the Cerritos must pass through in order to save the multiverse to reach the rift likened to the metaxy. Hillman described the metaxy as an in-between place, a “middle position” between the “physical and material” and the “spiritual and the abstract” (1975, p. 68). 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 consciousnesses and unconsciousnesses of both the psychoanalyst and of the analysand (1994/1999). So just as Cerritos needed to pass through unknown and uncomfortable situations in order to save the multiverse, psychic healing also calls for an immersion into the unknowable in the journey toward wholeness.
References:
Hillman, J. (1975). Re-visioning psychology. New York: Harper.
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). New York: Rowan & Littlefield. (Original work published in 1994)
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