Charlie X: Teenage Asshole, or Victim of Abuse?

I like Charlie X  because an alienated 17-year-old boy who has been fostered by a reality-bending species is a fairly interesting antagonist to feature. Yes, it's another monster-of-the-week episode, but at least this one is presented as more than a dumb animal trying to survive only to be put down for being too dangerous. 

You may remember being 17. Being 17 was one of the worst years of my life; my hormones were on fire, my home life was awful, I was constantly torn between wanting to burn down a church (punk raaaawwwwk!), fuck everything that moved, serenade a beautiful woman, find something to believe in and crusade with, go on a month-long bender, write a book, build a house, join a cult, work on a ranch, run for public office...in short, I wanted to do everything right away right away and if I didn't do it soon I would never do it at all; this is what Billy Corgan meant about the urgency of now. 

Charlie is no doubt feeling that way, but he's also got reality warping powers, a raging hard-on, and he's on a ship full of people like him for the first time. Actually, this episode was a little like my first punk show. 

Punk rock!

I don't blame Charlie for the way he acted, because based on how insecure he was and the things he did to people who rejected him or he suspected were making fun of him, I came to the conclusion that Charlie had suffered abuse under the Thasians.

Goddamn energy dicks.

It's a bit cliche, but not untrue, that the abused go on to abuse others. Was Charlie using his powers creatively, or was he doing to people the things done to him as punishment? I go for the latter over the former. How many times had the Thasians lost their patience with Charlie and removed his face, or turned him into an iguana, or made him disappear completely? It took them a while to see that he was missing, so I'm thinking Charlie ran away - speaking from experience, it may have been the adventurous spirit of youth longing to join those like him, but it was also probably abuse. (Maybe I'm biased toward the abuse argument though.)

...and she can only sob.

The crew of the Enterprise did their best to be patient with Charlie, I'll give them that. Like so many foster parents charged with the care of an abused child, they simply didn't have the tools or expertise to deal with this sort of thing and managed as best they could. I'm sure if Charlie had been able to control himself (and what 17 year old victim of abuse can?), he would have found rehabilitation and constructive therapy at Earth Colony 5. I believe that even the young Federation would have a massive and effective mental health system in place for orphans abandoned on alien worlds and lone survivors of destroyed ships and colonies. (That's the kind of hopeful optimism for the future that Star Trek gives us.) 

How could the crew know that Charlie was anything more than an emotionally troubled teenager? As far as we know, they've encountered space orphans before and have shuttled them back to the proper facilities without any incident greater than a possible tantrum - but Charlie's tantrums remove voices and faces. They could not have known. 

I am not defending what he did, I'm trying to explore the reasoning behind his behavior. We usually charge teenage murderers as adults, after all, and Charlie murdered the crew of the Antares - the damning thing is he tried to pretend it wasn't a big deal, that it would have blown up anyways and justifies it by saying the crew of the ship were not nice to him. Well Charlie, my parents are bags of shit but I never murdered them, so that's a big no-no, son. 

Punk rawwwk!

In the end, the Enterprise simply cannot contain this terrible child and the Thasians come to the rescue, hitting a mild reset button (sorry, Antares) and taking back their ward.

And Charlie is terrified!

This was the most damning evidence of abuse to me, because Charlie does NOT want to go back! He wants to stay, because even though he's acting like a jackass, he's afraid of what the Thasians will do to him. Unfortunately, Charlie fucked up too badly to stay, like so many kids who fall through the cracks in the system...but then again, Charlie isn't some foster kid who broke a few streetlights; Charlie is too alien, too powerful to contain. In the end, Charlie is just too much for the Federation, much less the Enterprise, to effectively rehabilitate. It's sad, and Charlie is probably going to grow up and murder the Thasians before going on a rip-roaring rampage of revenge, but that's a story for another time (apparently Tim Russ thought it was one for his, but that's far beyond the horizon of this plain and simple blog for the time being.)

It's well earned to be honest.

Now that I've finished my novel on Charlie, I want to point out that this is the first example of how much of a raging badass Captain Kirk is. The man fearlessly confronted and stood up to Charlie even after being made aware of how dangerous the kid is. I used to wonder if Kirk being a badass was a meme, that it was 90% Shatner trying to hype up his character, but this alone puts him over Sisko in my opinion; Sisko punched Q, Kirk sent this reality warping kid to his room without supper.

He's just not great at being anyone's surrogate father. Riker could have probably shaped Charlie up pretty well, he's adept at telling aliens about sexual organs.

Pic related.

Of course, if anyone had the duty to shepherd Charlie through his hormonal reactions, it was McCoy. He's a doctor, damn it! And you get the feeling that he's Kirk's personal counselor (friendship notwithstanding), so why can't he sit Charlie down, give him a finger of whiskey (hey, it was the 60s, and if Mad Men taught me anything it's that lessons can be learned from a handsome professional with a bottle) and show him some diagrams accompanied with some colorful metaphors about birds and bees? 

I like Spock and Uhura a lot in this episode. As emotionally provocative as music is, I'm surprised it is practiced on Vulcan; perhaps this is a challenge for them, a meditative practice in keeping their emotions in check. Doesn't seem to be working very well for Spock, though...

The smile is a rare treat (Where No Man Has Gone Before and The Cage notwithstanding), even if it could probably be filed under early installment weirdness. On the other hand, Uhura's singing is something I hope that sticks around, though I don't recall it recurring much. It adds a bit of character to the space-telephone operator and already makes her more interesting than Hoshi "everything scares me and I'm going to cry" Sato. 

(I've basically seen all of Star Trek in some form up to this point, and I'm trying to keep future references to a minimum as I re-explore the canon and re-calibrate my understanding of events, plots, episodes, and characters.)

I guess that just leaves us with Yeoman Rand, who is present to be leered at and creeped on by Charlie. I get the sense that her and Uhura are friends, but not much else - she has good rapport with the bridge crew, and it's sad to know she'll unceremoniously disappear after a few episodes. If this were a TNG-era show she would have been an integral part; then again, she's already done more than most of the Discovery crew in 7 episodes (5 to be fair) so...quantity>quality? 

Personal Rating: 3/5, Don't Skip

It's not a great episode, but it's a watchable episode.

I don't recommend watching this before Where No Man Has Gone Before, since that second pilot has a different doctor in place of McCoy and it should be the first episode viewed. 

END.