Synopsis: Odo and Quark crash land on a baren planet while on Deep Space Nine Jake Sisko and Starfleet Academy Cadet Nog become roommates.
This episode is an illustration of what happens in the place in between the Logos-driven rational conscious ego and the Eros-driven irrational unconscious that archetypal psychologist James Hillman called the metaxy. The place where soul is made.
In “The Ascent” Odo and Quark are in a runabout heading toward Inferna Prime, when an explosion causes them to crash land on a barren planet. Their onboard systems are down, but Quark has a plan to take the transmitter, which is still operative, to a mountaintop so that a distress signal can get through. This will require that both individuals overcome their mistrust of each other in order to be rescued. Meanwhile, on Deep Space Nine Jake Sisko is moving out of the quarters of his father, Captain Benjamin Sisko, and into a new living arrangement, sharing space with returning Starfleet Academy Cadet Nog. Nog has returned to the station after a year away, firmly embodying all the ideals of Starfleet, while the younger Sisko has embraced the idea that he is now an adult and no one can tell him what to do. That is until his father tells him that his new apartment needs to be occupied by at least two individuals.
Here, the two pairs of opposites, Odo and Quark, and Jake Sisko and Nog, both had to come to a meeting point where they could be who they are and also be able to respect the differences of the other. For Odo and Quark, it meant that they were rescued from a barren planet. For Sisko and Nog, it meant that they had to compromise in order to live together. From an archetypal psychological perspective, being rescued and finding compromise both occur in the in-between place, the metaxy. The place where soul is made.
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