Star Trekkin' - Charlie X

Charlie X

The Enterprise picks up Charlie Evans, the sole survivor of a crash that lived alone for his entire life, and begins to transport him when they discover that he has powerful mental abilities but not the temperament to control them.

This is another episode, like Where No Man has Gone Before, where a character has godlike powers. But this time the person with the powers is a maladjusted teenager. Charlie Evans has never seen a woman before arriving on the Enterprise, and unfortunately for Yeoman Rand, she is both the first woman he has ever seen and his first crush.

Charlie begins slowly, watching people on the ship and trying to emulate their actions, but eventually his desire to be liked over whelms the crew and they become cautious of him, he takes over the ship. And honestly, this episode is a bit of a drag. There's a stretch where every scene is basically Charlie walks somewhere, has an awkward interaction with someone, uses his power against them, and walks to another scene, and repeats. It felt like the episode was being padded to fill a run time.

The most disturbing bit about the episode is when the Thalsians take him back at the end of the episode. They reveal that they gave him the abilities so that he could survive alone on the planet, and they plan to take him back with him. But Kirk argues that he belongs with his own people, but the Thalsians take him back anyway, basically sentencing Charlie into a prison of loneliness. Granted the alternative runs the risk of similar instances continue to happen if Charlie doesn't mature, or doping him up on tranquilizers to keep him from using his powers, so neither option is great.

This episode is just alright. It has some pacing issues, but it isn't awful. It wasn't boring though.