This is why I'm not a fan of Aughra being an avatar or the "spirit" of Thra. It just doesn't fit to me. Why would the Guardian God of Thra let an alien race—the Skeksis—massacre the Gelfling?
Also, Aughra isn't made of plants, rocks, or earth. She's got human/gelfling-like skin and ram's horns. Her face is vaguely skull-like in my opinion. Her face, body, and clothing gives zero impression that this is a being that was spat up by earth itself.
To me, Aughra has always seemed to be a member of a non-Gelfling race who just wanted to be left alone. A woman who said, "The Skeksis only want Gelfling dead. The Prophecy mentions only Gelfling. I'm not Gelfling, so it's not my problem." (This extermination could be comparable to those who didn’t defend Jews from the Nazis. “They only want Jews,” they said. “I’m not a Jew. This isn’t my problem.”)
Pretend for a moment that Aughra isn't the spirit of Thra or anything, and merely an ordinary scientist. She's just a mortal woman who hid away on her hill, studying alchemy (for alternate ways to extend her life, perhaps?) and watching the stars, counting down the years until the Great Conjunction... something she'd witnessed before. This could be one explanation as to why she looks so ancient and skeletal. Aughra has lived beyond her normal lifespan—just like the Skeksis!
Say 1,000 years before the Movie, Aughra witnesses the union of the Three Suns. Observing the power of the Great Conjunction takes her eye, but her lifespan is extended many times beyond that which is normal.
Over the course of the next 1,000 years, the children of the Great Conjunction--Aughra, the Skeksis and the Mystics--live on, but still age and decay. The Mystics are slow in thought and movement, the Skeksis and Aughra are like walking corpses.
Not wanting to die, Aughra builds the Observatory. She wants to predict the exact moment of the Great Conjunction. She looks forward to extending her life once again.
This view of Aughra--a selfish keeper of secrets, not a thoughtless earth god—makes better sense. Also, it wasn't original intent for Aughra to be the Spirit of Thra.
During filming, Aughra really was just that: an aloof old hag on a hill. The screenwriter, David Odell, wrote that the decision to make Aughra the Thra "earth mother" figure was made later in Froud's World of the Dark Crystal.
Anyway, I know that this isn’t a canonical explanation for Aughra’s behavior toward the Gelfling extermination. Perhaps the new novels to be released in coming years can try to explain why Aughra seemed to turn her back on the Gelfling.
But my non-canon explanation would be: Aughra didn’t heal the Crystal because she didn’t care.
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DalekCaan
9 years ago
I haven't read any of the expanded DC universe materials, but your explanation of Aughra makes sense to me. The whole spirit of Thra thing sounds like a retcon, and doesn't really make much sense strictly from the movies point of view.
Although I never got the impression she was as indifferent and self-serving as you make her out to be. I think she did care. She does seem inclined to help Jen, and encouraged him and Kyra when they needed it. If she really were indifferent and selfish then she wouldn't have let Jen into her observatory to begin with. Why bring the Skeksi's most wanted into your house if you have no horse in that race?
As to why she didn't heal the crystal herself... I can pretty much see how that would go. Garthim capture her because she's an old woman and not a ninja, and the Skeksi's acquire the shard for themselves, which gives them more leverage to prevent the prophecy. No, I feel like the best thing Aughra could do for the prophecy is to keep the shard hidden from the Skeksi until the prophesied gelfling arrives to claim it. Aughra's role in that world is its observer and lore keeper. I always assumed her name was from the word "Augur" or "Augury" which basically means to divine the future. She doesn't have much power beyond that. She couldn't stop the Garthim's massacre of the Gelflings. So she collected knowledge, built a machine to predict the next conjunction, and waited for the prophesied gelfling to come, so that she could help him in his quest... which she did, and her actions lead to the destruction of her home. And even after that, she helped Kyra escape from the dungeon. And then she saved Fizgig from the thermal vent. So yeah Aughra's inclined to be a good person when she's able to. She just has the pragmatism to know that it was a waiting game for the right hero to come.
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