Synopsis: Marla McGivers helped Khan and his followers defeat the Ceti-eels and also told Khan she was pregnant.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of Carl (C. G.) Jung’s concept of projection—how an individual projects bits of their own unconscious onto another.
In “Magical Thinking” Khan began the episode wanting to shield his followers from a painful truth that he thought they could not handle. While he was burying the bodies of Richter and Sylvana, Ivan came to him and told him that it was not his job to judge Khan, but to follow him. At the settlement, Ursula performed an autopsy but needed more Ceti-eels to analyze how they affected them. McGivers had a phaser and used it on the Ceti-eels. McGivers asked Ursula not to tell Khan about the weapon. Khan returned to the settlement and asked to speak with McGivers. He told her that he was unaccustomed to people doing as they please not as he orders them. McGivers suggested to him to perform funeral rituals for the fallen. Khan told her that they don’t look back. He said that magical thinking was born of fear and doubt. McGivers suggested to him that he should lead his people through their grief. That night, at a campfire, Khan acknowledged the dead with his people. McGivers also noted that Khan’s people do not fear him, they love him. Almost like a parent. She worried that her love for him made him vulnerable. Paolo found a large Ceti-eel and brought it to Ursula. It was different. They then realized that there was a single colony of Ceti-eels on the planet and that its queen must be killed. Khan was going out to hunt the queen. Before he went, McGivers told him that she was pregnant. McGivers followed the hunters and used her phaser to kill the queen. Khan proposed to McGivers and they were married.
In this episode, many of the characters were projecting their inner fears onto others, until they realized what they were doing, and saw the other for who they were. In the case of Khan and McGivers, Khan projected upon McGivers his own independence and saw it as a negative when it came to her interactions with him, until she not only saved his life but that of the settlement. McGivers in turn projected her fear of loving Khan and that it made her weak onto him, but when it came time for a commitment to be made between the two, it was Khan who was the one urging that they move forward. McGivers also projected her own initial feelings of Khan as being a tyrant onto his followers, but when she removed that from them, she saw that they followed him not out of fear but love. These were just a few examples from this rich episode on how when removed ones projection from another, that allowed the other to be seen for who they were and for the projector to better understand themselves.
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