Star Trek 1.2 (Charlie X)

First Aired: 15th September 1966

Cast:

Robert Walker Jr. (Charlie Evans)

Charles Stewart (Capt. Ramart)

Dallas Mitchell (Tom Nellis)

Don Eitner (Navigator)

Patricia McNulty (Yeoman Tina Lawton)

John Bellah (Crewman #1)

Garland Thompson (Crewman #2)

Abraham Sofaer (The Thasian)

Writer: D.C. Fontana

This is much more like it! This episode is much more what I expect - and enjoy - about the original Star Trek series. The premise is a little more "real" than in the previous episode - I can believe that a young lad that has spent many years by himself would be emotionally stunted. The "fish out of water" stuff where he struggles to fit into a society that he doesn't really understand are really well realised, as is his sense of wonder that there is a bigger world. I think the actor played the part brilliantly well - and as the episode goes on, and you realise that he is actually capable of almost anything since he has not developed his moral compass, some of the material gets really chilling.

The secondary regulars get some nice stuff to do here as well. Although Uhura's song is annoying, I really liked the resigned way Spock went ahead with it. This is the second episode where both Uhura and Rand get some decent involvement in the story, pity it was not a sign of things to come. Also absent from this episode is good old Scotty. Again. I hope he's in episode three, I miss him!

There is one niggle though. The crew of the Cargo Vessel Antarres do anything to get rid of him as soon as possible, presumably knowing what he is capable of. Of course, it could be that Janice Rand is his first true "victim" and the crew of the Antarres have only experienced the kind of thing he did to Uhura after her song, but I somehow doubt it. Knowing what he was capable of and not passing it on to the Enterprise crew was criminally negligent. They deserved to die. Harsh but fair.

The ending was a little silly, I would much rather that Kirk had had to make a difficult decision and deal with him, it was a bit of a cop out at the end having the Thasians take him away. But since the rest of the episode was so good, I will overlook that!

Crewman Death Count: 0 (as they all get bought back).

Total Crew Deaths So Far: 4

Score: 8/10