| Contemporary science fiction television series, such as Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, and Babylon Five, fascinate viewers as expressions of popular culture precisely because they update in modern garb the Western attempt to grapple symbolically with the tension between consciousness and the unconscious. More specifically, these series owe much of their power and appeal to their ability to draw from and weave together Christian, Gnostic, and medieval alchemical symbolism. Using Jungian and archetypal perspectives, this dissertation amplifies key symbols of the Self and the shadow within the three previously mentioned series in the interest of gleaning a richer understanding of the contemporary Western psyche---its tensions, its possibilities, and its needs for compensatory balance. The commonalities shared by these three sci-fi television series lead the author to make four observations: (1) It would appear that polytheistic images of the divine are emerging as a symbolic counterweight to monotheism, for all three series under consideration offer images of the divine that are grounded in a corporate or polytheistic symbolism; (2) it would appear that more ambivalent images of the divine are emerging as a counterweight to the split between good and evil characteristic of the historically dominant symbol of the Self within the West; namely, the Christian God-image; (3) through their portrayals of the positive effect that human characters have upon supernatural characters, these three sci-fi television series would seem to validate symbolically the benefits of a strong ego upon the Self's expression; and (4) it would appear that feminine images are emerging as a counterweight to masculine images of the Self, bringing with them a reminder of the critical importance of embodied awareness and concern for the welfare of the larger group. |
