Synopsis: While exploring a planet that’s land mass has become uninhabitable, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are modified to become able to live in water.
In “The Ambergris Element” the water in which Captain James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock find themselves can be seen as representing the unconscious. And Kirk and Spock as symbolizing the rational ego that wants to protect itself from it. This is similar to the situation in which the crew of the Enterprise found itself in the last episode, “The Time Trap,” in which they were able to escape the Underworld-like that was Elysia, without much change in either their physicality or thinking process.
Here, Kirk and Spock, representing the conscious ego, have a much more meaningful contact with “the other” that is the Underworld or the unconscious. They have been physically altered by the Aquan junior tribunes so that they would be able to survive, by making them able to breath water instead of air. However, this arrangement will not work in the air-breathing community on the Enterprise. Much as the conscious ego is what human beings need in order to participate in everyday life, as opposed to staying unconscious or in a dream state. However, Kirk and Spock are able to work with the Aquans to not only restore Kirk and Spock to their former air-breathing selves, but also to save the undersea civilization of the Aquans. In fact, after averting a sea-quake that would have destroyed the Aquan’s major undersea city, another city re-surfaces. Much like contact with unconscious elements of our psyche, the contact with the Aquans was intense and a catalyst for change. It was difficult, but both were richer for the contact.
Original post created 19 April 2021
mydailysoultrek 