Charlie may seem familiar to you. Charlie has trouble dealing with other people, and he has awkward exchanges with the female population; he also tends to shadow the cool kids in a sad, desperate bid for acceptance.
Charlie is that kid from high school.
You know the one. His mother probably still dresses him, bad hair cut, big head, plays Magic The Gathering on weekends. The only difference between Charlie here and Daniel Cochran, captain of the chess team, is that Charlie can melt your head with his mind.
Yee.
We first encounter Charlie in the transporter room as two grinny crewmen of the research ship Antares drop him off as quickly as possible, and right away the "inspiration" for this episode becomes fairly clear. Also, on top of the plot being lifted from "The Twilight Zone" (again), it stands as the fourth episode in a row about telepathy. Come on guys, shake it up! Give me some time traveling alien death lords, or a rapidly exanding sun that's threatening a near by planet populated by eager, green skinned sex wenches. Just chill with the ugly people with telepathy and a God complex.
Charlie becomes particularly smitten with Yeoman Rand's basket hair, begins standardly following her around, coming into her bedroom, giving her things, and--best part--showing off his card tricks.
Jesus Christ, Charlie....
Kirk avoids mentoring on things like how to treat women, social niceties, and physical exercise; understandably as well, because every time Kirk tries to give even the slightest advice to Charlie he just proves that he would be the worst father in the history of history. In fact, every time that Kirk interacts with Charlie he seems seconds away from hitting the boy and calling him a weenie.
As Charlie starts to become more frantic in making friends, the strange incidents occuring throughout the ship begin to increase. But even as the Antares tries to warn the Enterprise about Charlie, only to explode mid-message, Kirk just now begins that something may *may* be up with young Charles. So in effort to give the boy a bit of character, what does Captain James Tiberius Kirk do?
He takes the geeky, short tempered, dangerous, psychic kid to the gym. I'm sure that will work out well, Jim; well played.
Kirk's exploits in the gym send Charlie over the edge, and he goes through the ship making various crew members blink out of existance, while also doing various mean things to random crewmen, like turning a girl into a lizard, transforming one foxy crewwoman into an old hag, and wiping off a girl's face for laughing:
Basically we witness an intergalactic school shooting. The nerdy kid gets bullied about, snaps, and then reigns terror on his oppressors. In a way, I guess it could be called the predicessor to Carrie. I just kept expecting Kirk and Spock giggling to eachother as they dump a bucket of Landarian Swamp-Goat Blood on the kid.
But perhaps the worst part (or best part, depending on your perspective) of this episode comes in the rec room when Uhura serinades Spock as he plays his handy Vulcan Space Harp. Not only does this stir my fears that the producers plan to push a subtle Spock/Uhura fling, but the woman can't sing either. The scene seems to last forever as Uhura flings about Spock, croaking in her deep tuneless voice. Charlie obviously feels the same way because he does exactly what I wanted to do for the entire scene and mentally chokes her just to get her to stop fucking croning.
After taking back control of his ship from Charlie, Kirk shows that little brat who's boss before sending him off to the lonely planet from whence he came:
GIVE ME YOUR LUNCH MONEY YOU FUCKING NERD.This is Star Trek
Spock and Uhura's sing along:
Charlie catching on to how to exploit Yeoman Rand:
Is... is that a girdle?:
Production Episode #8
Death Count: 20
Entire crew (20) of the Antares, destroyed by Charlie.
Total Star Trek death toll: 48.
On the next episode...
Spock wraps himself in bubble wrap and giggles for hours.
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