Star Trek TOS’s “Charlie X”: When Nostalgia Presents Things That Never Went Away
I haven’t seen all that many episodes of the original series Star Trek. I was raised on the movies, and I somehow obtained a book that novelized every episode of the first season. I read it as a kid. And, obviously, I saw “Amok Time” and “The Trouble With Tribbles,” because how could I not?
But still, when Netflix re-added all the Star Trek series this summer, I was determined to actually watch through them, starting in chronological order. That means Kirk, Spock, et al.
Both TOS and TNG are striking in the way their intended progressiveness is more revealing of the abandoned politics of the times in which they were created than an enduring picture of a utopian future. In the first couple episodes of TOS, it’s okay to assume Spock’s cultural differences are obviously inferior, to uphold rigid gender roles, and to impose heteronormativity. Metaphors seem clunky and naive, if well intended.
But every now and then, something is depressingly relevant to modern day. Take 1×02, “Charlie X.”
Written by D. (Dorothy) C. Fontana based on an idea from Gene Roddenberry, the story is a variation of the common sci-fi trope of a child having omnipotent powers and wreaking havoc through limited understanding of other people. Like his analogue Anthony Fremont in Jerome Bixby’s “It’s a Good Life,” the eponymous Charlie X has phenomenal cosmic powers and not enough insight to use them beneficently.
But unlike Anthony, who’s only a preschooler, Charlie is a teenage boy. Where Anthony tries to make people happy and punishes those who stop him from having whatever he wants, Charlie has the additional roiling motivations of adolescence.
Like most teen boys, Charlie wants to be liked and respected. He wants to be treated like an adult and hates it when someone shows him that he doesn’t yet have an adult’s skills. And he can’t yet reconcile his own burgeoning sexual desires with the idea that other people don’t exist just to gratify them.
In particular, Charlie is attracted to women, and, from the moment he beams aboard the Enterprise, he’s infatuated with Yeoman Janice Rand. He has literally zero use for any woman who isn’t her — he ignores them or hurts them out of spite. They aren’t what he wants, so they aren’t people.
For example, although we see him punish male crew members for specific transgressions, we see him punish women simply for being female and existing. Charlie disappears a male crew man for laughing at him, but he turns one woman into a lizard and rapidly ages another just because he passes them in the corridors and wants them to suffer.
Charlie claims he loves Rand, but we and she can see that what he really loves is himself. His “love” is greedy and possessive and has no place for considering what she might want. Even when he gives her gifts of her favourite things, it’s not to make her happy: it’s to make her like him.
Charlie’s behaviour sends chills down my spine because even fifty years later, it speaks to real-world issues.
A lot has changed between now and when this episode originally aired: it is awkward, not cool, to watch Spock and Uhura jam together in the rec room. Men do not commonly wear bright red yoga pants for martial arts training. More seriously, professional men generally know better than to refer to female colleagues as “girls” and women are more likely to occupy powerful positions in the workplace hierarchy, not just administrative assistants, nurses, or telephone operators.
But some things haven’t changed. When Kirk and McCoy learn of Charlie’s behaviour, their primary concern is for Charlie and his development rather than for the women he is harassing. The camera shows us that Rand is terrified and uncomfortable, but nobody talks about her feelings or her safety.
Similarly, the episode spends a lot of visuals and dialogue helping us understand Charlie’s frustration at trying to fit in but not knowing how. It doesn’t spend very much time having characters pinpoint why this behaviour is not okay and how it makes the people on the receiving end feel. The message is: well, of course Charlie feels that way and behaves that way — he’s an ordinary teenage boy! We have to figure out how to deal with him in a way that doesn’t hurt his emotional growth or cause him pain.
Meanwhile, Rand and the other women are expected to put his feelings above their own comfort. The only concern Rand is allowed to have about the situation is the worry that she’s going to have to “hurt” him by telling him she’s not interested.
I don’t know how well this episode does at speaking to contemporary teenage boys or adult men about how it feels like to be a teen boy or someone responsible for a teen boy. I do know that it still resonates about how it can feel to be a woman.
Charlie’s omnipotence feels uncomfortably like the power dynamic we witness again and again in cases of assault, rape, and online harassment. Charlie can do anything he wants; those in power like Kirk only notice a problem after he causes someone physical harm; and even once he’s caught, there’s not a darn lot anyone’s willing or able to do unless it threatens the people in power directly.
Charlie is scary because he still exists.
He’s still the guy who feels super-sorry for himself because he’s “bad” at social interaction, who feels frustrated because he seems to be unfairly penalized for breaking rules he didn’t know existed.
To some extent, he’s right — it’s not fair that our society doesn’t commit resources to developing everyone’s emotional intelligence the same way we work hard to develop, say, students’ analytical intelligence. But the harm “Charlie” can do to others because he’s not yet able to consider their feelings alongside his own causes greater suffering than he faces because, somehow, his perspective is considered the default one. Those who have the power to stop him automatically consider his side and his feelings before those of the people hurt by him.
That’s a far cry from omnipotence, true — real-life Charlies can’t turn anyone into animals. But immediate, emotional sway over authority can feel just as overwhelming and unassailable. If the people supposed to protect you from him are more interested in protecting his feelings from the fallout of having hurt you, what can you do?
Star Trek isn’t much help: it suggests (fifty-year-old spoiler) waiting for the aliens who adopted him to take him back to their society. Unfortunately, we Western humans must acknowledge these things of darkness ours and figure out how to change our culture so in another fifty years, episodes like this can become a quaint blast of the past.