Synopsis: The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise is placed in a soap opera style existence by a god-like alien.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of Carl (G.G.) Jung’s concept of how a complex can bring unconscious material into the awareness of the conscious ego, to begin psychic healing.
In “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass” Captain Christopher Pike woke up in sickbay on the U.S.S. Enterprise with a bandage on his head. Dr. Joseph M’Benga told him he had been in a terrible shuttle accident and that Pike was suffering from cosmic amnesia. M’Benga told Pike that in order to be cleared for duty, he needed to speak with the ship’s counselor, Dr. Eleanor Chivers.
Meanwhile, a god-like entity Trelane was watching Pike on a monitor in what seems to be a studio control room as if he were directing a soap opera. Trelane appeared to Pike in this altered reality, explaining that he had turned the Enterprise into a soap opera set as a school assignment. Trelane also told Pike that although he realized that he was in an experiment, it could not end until Pike addressed his internal struggle.
Chivers told Pike that he was repressing something. Pike asked her how something could be real and unreal at the same time. She told him the search for emotional and scientific truth was the same thing. Pike returned to his quarters, and found waiting for him his daughter from another timeline, Juliet. She told him that his life with her was real, just in a different way. Pike found Chivers and told her that he was ready to address his issues. She asked him to talk about loss. About losing Captain Marie Batel. She told Pike that we mourn not only the person, but the loss of our future with them. Pike cried.
In this episode, when Pike finally realized that he needed to address his feelings of loss, this can be compared to when the conscious ego acknowledges unconscious material in the form of a complex. And while normally one does not have a god-like entity fashioning our reality into a soap opera, ignoring a complex can make life as unreal as a television drama, until we address the unconscious material that it contains.
