ST:TOS Charlie X

Another day, another god-like entity. No, I'm not being facetious. It's been a total of two episodes since Where No Man Has Gone Before, and we already have a plot that revolves around much of the same idea and a similar story. But this time it's about a teenager, so I guess that's different. *shrugs*.

Contrary to what you might expect, however, TOS actually does a great job at keeping the audience, or at least me, interested throughout the episode while forcing you the think about the situation and draw your own conclusions. And here's the situation. A boy is discovered on an abandoned planet and comes aboard the Enterprise. His name is Charlie Evans, and the exact circumstances surrounding his life are somewhat of a mystery, hence the title of the episode. Because he has been away from civilization for most of his life, he knows little about society's social "rules" and therefore has problems fitting in correctly with the rest of the Enterprise crew.

"Three more strokes and you beat Kirk."

The twist is that Charlie appears to have god-like powers, those very similar to Gary Mitchell, something he doesn't reveal fully until he becomes infuriated with being unable to do anything right in the real world. Eventually his powers pose a threat to the crew, and Kirk is forced to stop him as long as he can. Apparently Charlie can only be concentrating on several targets of his powers at one time, so the bridge crew help create problems around the ship, so many that Charlie cannot possibly stop them all.

3D Chess: The chess of the FUTURE!

But Charlie's race returns, in their evolved state, and Charlie finally gets what he deserves. He unwillingly leaves with his race, crying out in anguish that he will never be able to love, or touch anybody for that manner. So, on the surface, this episode seems dull and cheesy, but Charlie's character really progressed throughout this episode. At first, he seemed like the innocent child who didn't understand the rules of life, or how to be in a relationship with someone. He failed each time he tried to do something right and could only hang his head in shame. Eventually, though, his anger caught up with him and he found that he could only effectively get things done through using his power. In the end, though, you still feel sympathy for his situation. He only ever wanted to belong, but he found that he couldn't even do that with his power.

All in all, a decent episode. Charlie's character got annoying at times, but there were many interesting scenes. Uhh, except for the Uhura singing scene, which I admit was ten times better than watching her nude shadow dance in Star Trek V, but still...uncomfortable.

Score: 5

Best Quote: "I wanna...stay...stay...sta..." (Charlie fading away)

Best Moment: Kirk trying to explain to Charlie why it's wrong to hit a girl.

Red Shirt Death Count: 1 (+1) Our first red shirt death, which I'm counting as a death because it was never shown that the crewman was brought back from oblivion.