The Ambergris Element

DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (The Ambergris Element)

This was a bit of a special one for me. I don't know if it was the first one I saw as a child, or not, but it was certainly the one that stuck in my head, this idea of the characters being stuck in this other form of being: Kirk and Spock are trapped 'breathing' water when they're mutated by the underwater Aquans on planet Argo, and it was such an eye-opening idea. I probably also liked the fact they were zipping about underwater and going into deep, dark crevasses. Seeing it again now, all these years later, it's much more cartoonish, but then it had a good excuse: it was a cartoon! And actually it comes across as a lot more realistic in tone and style than the current generation of Trek which, while live-action, is so far into fantasy and melodrama that it doesn't have those essential ingredients any more that make it good Trek. Saying all that, I did find that this particular episode, while dealing with some interesting themes of xenophobia and working together with others who appear so different from you, also had a whiff of being against 'old' ideas, as if the fact that they were created long ago is reason enough for them to be abandoned: the Aquans have their 'ordinations' that can't be disobeyed, and which the older members of the race firmly adhere to, which is bad for our characters as it means they'll be stuck in amphibious form for the rest of their lives (when Kirk talks about not being able to command a starship from inside an aquarium, and he and Spock living in it for the rest of their lives, I thought how interesting that would have made the film series!).

The young Aquans are shown to be the 'openminded' ones, particularly the female, Reela (who I at first thought to be voiced by Nichelle Nichols, but eventually realised was Majel Barrett), quicker to go against the ordinations and help. It seemed a subtle attack on, for example, The Ten Commandments, as if rules for life that have been handed down over many generations need reevaluating simply because of the time that has passed. Perhaps I'm being too harsh on the writers' and assuming too much in their motives, because in this case the ordinations they follow aren't particularly rational (you can't capture a sur-snake), and so there was no reason why they should be followed. It also confuses the issue again when at the end they say they'll make new ordinations, and this time they won't break them, although it does sound a bit like reforming the basic laws of life to accommodate new ideas. From the Starfleet perspective I wondered if perhaps Kirk should have considered remaining a water-breather - yes, he could no longer go back to his old life, but the Aquans seemed to be a pre-warp civilisation and was it right to interfere with their culture just to save himself and Spock? I can't help but think Captain Picard would have been only too happy to think of them first and sacrifice his life so their laws weren't broken, living among them for the rest of his days (at least we'd have been spared 'Nemesis' and 'Picard' if that had happened!).

They do inject some urgency into the situation by making it about a similar planet to Argo, a Federation world that needs help by learning from the approach to seaquakes or whatever it was they were researching there (and I did appreciate the approach of scientific research, and that even after they've been attacked by a sur-snake, they go down to have a gander since they're naturally curious, something we rarely see in Trek any more), so there is that element of it being about more than Kirk and Spock's survival, too. One of the themes that is certainly true is that hardship induces savagery and violence as we've been only too aware from certain groups reacting violently in society when they believe they don't have what others do, so Spock had a relevant thing to say about our times. It's a shame the themes can't be explored further due to the handicap of much shorter running times, but again, they're more eloquent and relevant than anything in 'DSC' or 'Picard' which rely on super-heroics and fantasy to fill the time. Not to say this episode didn't have its share of the kind of cartoon adventure you'd expect, what with sea monsters and underwater cities, and a colourful green race that look like relatives of The Creature from the Black Lagoon - I wonder if they were related to Orions as almost the only other green humanoid race in Trek?

The episode begins from an interesting perspective for those interested in technical details and hardware, as we get a great shot of a shuttle leaving the Shuttlebay - not only that, but we see the bay from the point of view of the control tower which we never did see in 'TOS,' so that was terrific. It's not just any shuttle either, it's apparently an 'aquashuttle,' a vehicle designed to travel underwater as well as through space. I've always been a bit quizzical when it comes to shuttles and water, not because I don't think it possible Starfleet could build one to withstand the pressures of underwater travel, but quite the opposite: I don't see why a standard shuttlecraft couldn't submerge since they're designed for the rigours of space. I was one of the few that actually didn't mind it when the Enterprise descended into an ocean in 'Into Darkness' (about the only thing I didn't find fault with in that film!), but it wouldn't be until 'Voyager' and the Tom Paris episode 'Thirty Days,' that we'd eventually see a shuttle travel underwater, presumably because it was too difficult to do the effect until then (although the stranded Defiant in 'Starship Down' was originally supposed to be trapped underwater, I think, before they decided it would be too costly).

The aquashuttle is one of those things that seemed a natural result of having 'infinite' resources in a world where you can draw whatever tech you want, a superfluous show of variety rather than being forced to rely on uniformity as they did in the real world to save money, but which also adds more reality and consistency. So it's not that I didn't feel the aquashuttle was any good, just not necessary. Even more hard to accept is that Scotty searches on the surface of Argo's sea on what appears to be an Enterprise-branded motorboat! Why wouldn't they simply fly a shuttlecraft over the surface, surely it can hover? Things like this are what make 'TAS' a little bit harder to accept than it otherwise might have been as they couldn't resist changing or adding things unnecessarily. It was good to see Scotty in the Captain's Chair, left in command, as happened a number of times on 'TOS,' and the Scotsman was quite involved with the story, even though it was mainly a Kirk and Spock adventure. McCoy, too, gets plenty to do, though they must have been saving money since while Uhura and Sulu appear, neither have any lines. As I mentioned, Majel Barrett does the voice of Reela, and I think one or two other females. James Doohan makes a good quavering old man impression as the High Tribune Domar of the Aquans, and there's at least one other voice that I didn't recognise.

We see the personal forcefields in use again, a device that was easier, and therefore, presumably cheaper, to draw than the EVA suits we saw on 'TOS' - here we see that even in animation there are limits to the budget as they could just use existing drawings of characters and show a glow around them rather than going the whole hog with new images of the EVA suit, but you'd think they may as well have done that as they were sure to use it again, anyway! And lastly, a couple of nitpicks I noticed: McCoy says Kirk and Spock now have a second eyelid like that of a fish - you'd think he'd have mentioned the inner eyelid Vulcans have as that would have been relevant. And they make a big deal of needing the Aquans' help to retrieve the venom of a sur-snake in order to formulate a cure to the Captain and First Officer's predicament, but before that, when they were escaping just such a sea monster it gets crushed by falling rubble so why not simply return to that one and get the venom from it? The answer, I suppose, would either be that it was too time-consuming to excavate the head buried beneath all those rocks, or that it was dead and the venom needed to come directly from a live beast. But not a bad little story, visually pleasing, and as I say, one that made an impact on me growing up, so it was nice to revisit it today.

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