Synopsis: Trapped on a Klingon occupied planet, Commander Chin-Riley met her doppelganger, while Dr. M’Benga, and Ensign Uhura taken on alternative identities.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what happens when the unconscious material that Carl (C.G.) Jung’s called a complex is projected onto another and then removed.
In “A Case of Chiaroscuro” the U.S.S. Enterprise crew were tasked with recovering the Angelo-1 Probe which had drifted into Klingon territory. Commander Una Chin-Riley (Number One), Ensign Nyota Uhura, and Dr. Joseph M’Benga took a shuttle to retrieve it. But a Klingon battlecruiser blocked the shuttle’s path. Number One ordered that the shuttle land on Mat’Aar XII to avoid detection.
On Mat’Aar XII, the three entered a town on a Klingon-occupied planet. Number One was identified as Nevette, the leader of a resistance movement. Number One questioned a prisoner. The prisoner gave Number One a message and then committed suicide by ingesting a poison pill. This displeased the Klingons, who were looking for the prisoner’s accomplice. Number One told M’Benga that it would be safer if Uhura and he waited on the shuttle for Enterprise to retrieve them. They left for shuttle, but at a checkpoint, Uhura was arrested. At the bar, the bartender, Ja’Lem, told Number One, who he believed was Nevette, that he would help Uhura. Number One was able to access Nevette’s quarters, and Number One and M’Benga found blueprints of a munitions factory that the resistance planned to bomb. They also found Nevette’s body. Uhura was released after being told that her identification card had been verified. Number One was identified as an imposter, but she slipped the detonator from the explosives at the munitions factory onto the individual who fingered her. The detonator was activated and the power went off, freeing the resistance members from a proposed forcefield around the planet.
Once the shuttle was able to safely head back from Mat’Aar XII to Enterprise, Number One revealed to M’Benga that when she joined Starfleet, she decided to play it by the book, to not draw attention to herself, and her secret of being an Ilyrian. She said that she understood Nevette’s reasons for living a hidden life to help others.
In this episode, when Number One told M’Benga that while she would not have done what Nevette did, she understood Nevette’s reasons for doing it, this can be compared to when an individual’s conscious ego realizes that it had projected its own unconscious complex onto another. By being forced to take on Nevette’s identity, as an individual who needed to keep her role as leader of the resistance movement secret from the Klingon occupying force, Number One came to understand why she had acted as she did in Starfleet. This can be analogized to when an individual’s conscious ego removes the projection of its unconscious complex from the other. When this happens, the other can be seen for who they are, and at the same time, the individual’s ego becomes stronger and the individual’s psyche more whole.
