Synopsis: An exploratory away team mission to excavate an ancient structure uncovers something unexpected.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of how the conscious ego prioritizes its way of being in the world over that of the unconscious shadow.
In “Through the Lens of Time,” an away team beams down to Vadia IX, and are greeted by their host, N’Jal, a M’Kroon—a species descendent from the creators of what is about to be revealed in an archeological dig. The power of the U.S.S. Enterprise is focused on the site and excavates an enormous structure. Once inside, Ensign Dana Gamble, who is on his first away team mission, finds a dead body. More bodies are discovered. A memory stone is recovered, and under it an orb. Gamble touches the orb, it attacks him and burns out his eyes. Gamble is beamed directly to sickbay while the orb is sent to Commander Pelia for analysis. The landing party is ordered to return to the ship, but are trapped inside the structure when N’Jal becomes spooked and tries to escape it. A new door leading deeper into the structure opens. When the landing party goes through it they are separated—Nurse Christine Chapel and Lt. La’An Noonien-Singh are together in a chamber with a giant statue, Lt. Spock and Dr. Roger Korby are in another chamber, which looks like the same one they were trying to leave; and Ensign Nyota Uhura and Beto Ortegas are in another. Chapel and Noonien-Singh discover that the statue is both alive and not—quantum instability on a molecular level. Spock and Korby discover thousands of orbs like the one that attacked Gamble. Korby deciphers a term meaning evil parasites, and using a visor Spock detects that there are thousands of orbs like the one that attacked Gamble, and they all have something in them. Beto Ortegas has been filming the mission, and his drone camera sees them all as being in the same place, they are just in different dimensions. Noonien-Singh then reasons that they are in a prison. The landing party uses the memory stone to reunite. Spock deducts that the space they are in operates in inverted causality—effect before the cause. He says that a bridge they saw before will appear if they walk across empty space, which is how they escape the structure.
Meanwhile, on Enterprise M’Benga tells Pike that Gamble was attacked by a biological weapon and Pelia says that the orb is a containment unit. That what was in it forced its way out and that this something frightens her. Captain Marie Batel comes into sickbay and attacks Gamble. They fight. Pike and a security team walk in. M’Benga sedates Batel and goes after Gamble. Gamble is caught and put into the brig. When Batel regains consciousness she tells Captain Christopher Pike that she had an overwhelming feeling that she needed to kill what was inside Gamble. Gamble escapes the brig and Pelia shoots him. Whatever was inside Gamble leaves the body. Lt. Montgomery Scott captures it, puts it back in the orb, and puts the orb in a transporter buffer. Later, Pike states that good and evil are relatives terms. Pelia tells him that whatever was in the orb was ancient and malevolent.
In this episode, the way that the structure on Vadia IX operates, effect before cause, can be analogized to how the ways of the unconscious can seem unfathomable to the conscious ego. Additionally, the ancient and malevolent entity contained in the orbs can be analogized to bits of unconscious material that the conscious ego fears and has suppressed. Batel, who is now a human-Gorn hybrid entity, has access to that part of herself and was able to confront it. Pike, stating that good and evil are relative terms echoes one of Jung’s observations found in Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self,where Jung wrote:
Psychology does not know what good and evil are in themselves; it knows them only as judgments about relationships. ‘Good’ is what seems suitable, acceptable, or valuable from a certain point of view; evil is its opposite. (1951/1968a, p. 51 [CW 9ii, para. 97])
What this means is that from a depth psychological perspective, what the ego identifies as good is not an absolute, it is its interpretation of a given situation. Put another way, the conscious ego can and does have a different way of interacting with things and situations than the unconscious. Neither is necessarily always correct and the strongest way to perceive and interact with a situation is by accessing all ways of interpreting the world around us, not just those that the conscious ego is comfortable with. In my studies of depth psychology, one of the hardest things for me to accept was that the world is not black and white, as we are often taught as children. Instead, growing into our mature selves is a constant ongoing and lifelong acknowledgement and integration of all the shades of gray between black and white.
Reference:
Jung, C. G. (1968). The collected works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 9 pt. 2. Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self (2nd ed.). (In H. Read et al., Eds.). (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1951) https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400851058
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