TOS Review: “Charlie X” (season 1, episode 2, original air date 9/15/66)
Note: The TOS reviews continue. Spoilers within. Watch the episode here:
http://www.cbs.com/classics/star_trek/video/video.php?cid=619493214&pid=XCNEhdbQEzGgYAUX_9aBPpzEUsW0mcR2&play=true
0:08: Again I’m compelled to start this off with sartorial commentary. Why is Kirk wearing this green surplice-y type blouse all of a sudden? Everybody else has the regular Starfleet jersey on. Was Kirk’s in the wash? Is this an “I’m-captain-and-you’re-not” thing? Is it a special occasion? Is he about to be knighted by Admiral Whatsis?
0:40: Here’s the titular Charlie (slave name: Evans), and he too is oddly dressed in some kind of asymmetrical tweed coat-of-many-colors. The actor playing him, Robert Walker, was obviously cast for his Frankenstein-shaped head and deranged blue eyes. You know from the get-go not to trust this guy, even before he starts telepathically controlling people’s minds to get them to say flattering things about him, a la Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate. Charlie’s two minders cannot ditch him and beam away from the Enterprise fast enough, despite Kirk’s plying them with offers of “entertainment tapes” (I believe this is code for “porn”) and booze.
Charlie, it turns out, was raised by wolves. Well, actually by the interactive electronic memory bank of the transport ship he was a passenger on as a toddler when it crashed, killing everyone else on board; but he is still pretty poorly socialized, as you can imagine. Yeoman Rand is the first woman he has ever met, and he’s seventeen (though as per TV custom of the time, he looks, and IRL was, 26). You can sense that this isn’t going to go well.
Speaking of Yeoman Rand, I rather like her. She has a compelling enough personality that after a while you stop noticing her amazing basketweave bouffant wig, which goes Wilma Flintstone and Marge Simpson one better in the big-ass updo sweepstakes. She really doesn’t deserve to be saddled with the errant sexual attentions of a maladept like Charlie, but you at least feel she’ll be able to put him in his place intelligently. Though she doesn’t immediately do so, actually: when Charlie takes leave of her by smacking her ass, in imitation of something he’s seen two male crew members do earlier, she gets indignant, but seems to think it is not her job to explain why, and refers him to Kirk or Bones for elucidation. Two guesses as to which of them he’ll choose!
08:14: Kirk, Spock and Bones are discussing the odd history of the newcomer, and Spock keeps mentioning “Thasians,” in this very loaded way. Since it’s Spock saying this, Thasians will of course turn out to be the key to Charlie’s whole story, but Kirk and Bones aren’t really interested, as they’re too busy deciding which of them should provide a “father image” for Charlie, who is apparently gravely in need of such a thing. Neither Kirk nor Bones wants the job, and their exchange on the subject basically consists of variations on “I know you are, but what am I?”
09:43: Ah! It’s the famous Uhura-serenading-Spock scene! This is their second semi-flirty scene together, following the “Vulcan has no moon, Miss Uhura” scene in “The Man Trap”; both of these scenes are often mentioned as secret predictors of the Spock/Uhura romance in the Star Trek reboot movie. The “Man Trap” scene, though, is such a one-sided flirtation that its purpose must’ve been mostly to establish character (Uhura = normal human being with interests and emotions not connected to the Enterprise; Spock = insufferable Vulcan who doesn’t bat an eye when he hears that Kirk or Bones might be dead), rather than to lead anywhere narratively.
This serenading scene, however, has more to it. Uhura is impressive here: she has a good voice and a singing style of her own, sort of scat crossed with medieval English balladry, and she demonstrates an amazing capacity for spontaneously inventing intelligent, rhyming lyrics to a melody she’s never heard before. Plus she is adorably cheeky, singing this teasing song about Spock and his “devil ears” and “alien love” right to his face. He is raising his eyebrows all over the place in response, but kind of almost smiling, and he also doesn’t stop accompanying her on the lute, so you know he is actually, on some level, digging it.
Then Charlie walks in the room, and Uhura starts making the song about him (“Oh, Charlie’s our new darling; we know not what he’ll do”). Charlie is NOT digging it, and telepathically paralyzes her voice so that she can’t continue. He is such a jerk, this guy.
12:42: Now Charlie’s trying to put the moves on Yeoman Rand, and in an attempt to impress her with his freaky mental powers, he causes images of her face to appear on a deck of playing cards. Does he really think this is going to get him some play? I’m sorry, but the images don’t even move! Hasn’t he ever seen a wizard trading card, like you can buy on the Hogwarts Express?
14:00: Charlie seeks out Kirk for advice on how to better...relate to Yeoman Rand. Yeah, I’m rolling my eyes too, but theoretically this is Kirk’s great area of expertise, and man is he falling down on the job. His speech recalls a George W. Bush press conference in its sheer verbal awkwardness, and also anticipates the total farklemptness of Spock trying to explain pon farr at the beginning of season two.
15:22: The Enterprise is contacted by the Antares, the ship that brought Charlie to the Enterprise, but as the crew is attempting to speak to them, the Antares is suddenly, mysteriously destroyed. At that very moment Charlie walks in. “It wasn’t very well-constructed,” he notes suspiciously. In a clearly related development, the galley reports with astonishment that the mock-meatloaf that was in the ovens for Thanksgiving dinner has turned into real turkeys. This is the first and only really endearing use to which Charlie will put his powers.
16:55: Kirk and Spock are playing three-dimensional chess, the board for which resembles one of those multi-level pastry trays you sometimes see in restaurants. I wish Kirk and Spock would break the fourth wall of this episode, turn toward the camera and explain to the TV viewer how this game is played, ‘cause I would far rather sit still for that than for the next cringe-inducing interaction between Charlie and Rand.
It’s obviously an atypical form of chess, at any rate, because Kirk beats Spock. Spock tries to play it off in a quintessential exchange:
“Your illogical approach to chess does have its advantages on occasion, Captain.”
“I prefer to call it inspired.”
“As you wish. At any rate, the game is yours.”
Then, because they were discussing Charlie a moment prior, the freaky one himself walks in the door and commandeers Spock for the next game. In his poor control of his id, Charlie makes Kirk look positively Vulcan: he won’t sit still to hear the rules of the game, loses immediately, bores Spock into leaving him, then melts the chess pieces with his maniacal telepathic gaze in revenge. This is presented very dramatically and scored as if it were the Wicked Witch of the West melting, but in fact the melting only affects a couple of chess pieces and makes them look, if anything, like nicely toasted marshmallows.
Your basic Bush vs. Obama scenario
20:00: The confrontation between Charlie and Rand we’ve all been dreading. Charlie’s feelings for Rand have escalated to full-blown, and dangerous, infatuation. He’s all, “If I had the whole universe, I’d give it to you,” and many more sentiments in that overblown yet creepy vein. At one point he actually says, “You smell like a girl.” Hoo boy. I am officially nervous on Yeoman Rand’s behalf.
21:35: Rand tells Kirk what's up with Charlie, and asks him to give Charlie a talking-to before things get out of hand. Kirk agrees, but ends the conversation blatantly smirking. It’s all very well for him; he’s not the one who’s gonna be raped on his way to breakfast tomorrow.
22:48: More advice to Charlie from Kirk on love ‘n’ sex. I can’t decide whether Kirk is the best person on board to hold forth to him on these subjects, or the worst. I guess he's preferable to Spock, but really, why doesn’t Charlie talk to Bones, whose perspective on sex, as a doctor and a dude with a more typical batting average, would be better grounded in both physiological and psychological reality? However, Kirk acquits himself pretty well in the end. He tries to gently clue Charlie in to the fact that it ain't gonna happen between him and Rand, and when Charlie cries, "What am I gonna do?!," responds, "Hang on tight, and survive. Everybody does." "You don't," Charlie objects, perceptively. "Everybody, Charlie - me, too," Kirk insists, and for the moment, at least, you believe him.
25:42: Woo, topless Kirk in tights! He and Charlie are in the Enterprise gym, where Kirk is apparently trying to teach Charlie to fight (because this will finally endear him to Yeoman Rand after gentler methods have failed?). But really it's just an excuse for some blatant exhibitionism on Shatner’s part - all the other men in the place are modestly clad in Jedi tunics over their tights. I must concede, however, that the Shat’s physical condition justifies the display.
25:48: Check out Shatner’s oblique muscles! OK, I am impressed. Who knew people even HAD obliques back in the personal-trainer-less ‘60s?
The training, surprise surprise, isn’t going well, because Charlie doesn’t want to learn how to fall and gets pissed off when Kirk throws him. A bystander named Sam laughs at him, and Charlie straight up vaporizes him. Kirk’s reaction to this presumable death of a crew member is oddly silent and delayed, as if he is waiting for someone to feed him a Shakespearean soliloquy on the nature of death before responding.
When that doesn’t come, he finally asks Charlie: WTF just happened? Charlie’s explanation makes perfect sense: “He shouldn’t have done that! It’s not nice! I didn’t mean to do that, he made me!” Kirk calls security to take Charlie away, and Charlie vaporizes their phasers. In the meantime, there are ample opportunities for Charlie to vaporize Kirk, who is clearly also not being nice, but he doesn’t take them. For some reason, presumably that whole “father image” thing, Kirk seems to have a hold over Charlie.
30:38: Spock is still going on about the Thasians, and thinks maybe Charlie is one. Bones refutes this by saying weirdly: “The development of his fingers and toes exactly matches the present development of man's on earth!,” like Charlie is three months old or something. The fact that they are discussing Charlie means that he will enter the room in 3..2..1..and there he is. He admits to blowing up the Antares with his mind: "Well, they weren't nice to me!" Oh, Charlie. If I had a corpse for every time someone wasn't nice to me, I could populate a morgue the size of New York City...and yet, I can relate. People are so difficult! WTF do they want, anyway?! There's just no pleasing them, so you might as well kill them!
33:25: Or at least fuck with them in any way you can. Charlie makes Uhura's communications console give her an electric shock, prevents the Enterprise from plotting a new course back to Thasus, cuts off their communication channels, and telekinetically forces Spock to recite poetry: William Blake, Edgar Allan Poe, and whatever hack amongst the writing team composed those lines about “Saturn’s rings and roads of Martian red.” “Very nice, Mr. Ears!” says Charlie in Simon Cowell mode, before noting, “I can make him do anything.” Question: if you could see Spock forced to do something, anything, out of character, would that something really be reciting poetry? I’m kind of mourning the wasted opportunities here.
35:39: We see Rand alone in her quarters in her nightgown, a pink one-shouldered number. Yes, folks, the moment has come: Charlie enters unannounced, right on time for his big sexual assault scene.
“Janice, don’t ever lock your door on me again. I love you!” He is such an asshole.
“I’ll lock it when I please. What is it you want, anyway?” Oh, Rand, don’t ask him that!
"You." Well, natch. He walks toward her, and the screen fades ominously to black.
But Rand cleverly switches on the intercom while they are talking, so that they can be heard on the bridge. Kirk and Spock, her knights in shining armor, rush in to defend her honor. But Charlie throws them against the wall with his mind, then vaporizes Rand. Charlie: "Why did she do that? I loved her! But she wasn't nice at all!" Classic abuser-speak, right there. Charlie then telepathically breaks Spock's legs while the latter is sitting on the floor, mends them again, and goes off to do a bunch of other nasty shit to various other people.
Kirk devises a plan, something to do with turning on all the electrical devices on board so that Charlie's mental powers will be overtaxed. This doesn't really make a lot of sense, but OK.
43:01: Charlie re-enters the bridge and takes Kirk's seat. Kirk says, “Get out of my chair, Charlie, and get out of it now,” causing all fans of the reboot movie to erupt in Butthead-style snickers. Spock and Bones flip every switch in the room to "on" while Kirk handles the psychological part of the showdown. It works, and Rand rematerializes in her nightgown as Uhura reports an incoming message from a Thasian ship off the Enterprise's starboard bow - a ship which has... no physical substance.
This analogy deserves further investigation.
A green Thasian dude appears on the bridge as a disembodied face, great-and-powerful-Oz style, to reclaim Charlie, who is of course freaking out. Charlie begs frantically to stay with the Enterprise, and Kirk makes a case for Charlie's ability to learn to control his powers and live among humans (Charlie is in fact human, but his Thasian rescuers/captors gave him some of their powers to help him survive), but the Thasian dude isn't buying it, and I'm with him. Charlie is saying all this stuff in a tormented voice about how you can't even touch the Thasians, and they can't even feel. "Not like you!" he cries to Rand, his passion for whom is doomed to remain unconsummated.
The Thasians do seem creepy, simultaneously remote and paternalistic, and when they finally seize Charlie and telepathically take him away, everyone is quiet. The show ends on an ominous note, with Bones leading Rand away so that the viewer doesn't even have a chance to lighten the somber mood by checking out her nipples.
Drunkenness potential from playing the TOS drinking game: Quite low. Spock accuses Kirk of illogic once and Bones of being "emotional" once. Charlie vaporizes all phasers on board before anyone can even think of setting them on stun. Kirk loses several crew members, but never says he wants to know why, although he does express a wish to have them back.
http://www.cbs.com/classics/star_trek/video/video.php?cid=619493214&pid=XCNEhdbQEzGgYAUX_9aBPpzEUsW0mcR2&play=true
0:08: Again I’m compelled to start this off with sartorial commentary. Why is Kirk wearing this green surplice-y type blouse all of a sudden? Everybody else has the regular Starfleet jersey on. Was Kirk’s in the wash? Is this an “I’m-captain-and-you’re-not” thing? Is it a special occasion? Is he about to be knighted by Admiral Whatsis?
0:40: Here’s the titular Charlie (slave name: Evans), and he too is oddly dressed in some kind of asymmetrical tweed coat-of-many-colors. The actor playing him, Robert Walker, was obviously cast for his Frankenstein-shaped head and deranged blue eyes. You know from the get-go not to trust this guy, even before he starts telepathically controlling people’s minds to get them to say flattering things about him, a la Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate. Charlie’s two minders cannot ditch him and beam away from the Enterprise fast enough, despite Kirk’s plying them with offers of “entertainment tapes” (I believe this is code for “porn”) and booze.
Charlie, it turns out, was raised by wolves. Well, actually by the interactive electronic memory bank of the transport ship he was a passenger on as a toddler when it crashed, killing everyone else on board; but he is still pretty poorly socialized, as you can imagine. Yeoman Rand is the first woman he has ever met, and he’s seventeen (though as per TV custom of the time, he looks, and IRL was, 26). You can sense that this isn’t going to go well.
Speaking of Yeoman Rand, I rather like her. She has a compelling enough personality that after a while you stop noticing her amazing basketweave bouffant wig, which goes Wilma Flintstone and Marge Simpson one better in the big-ass updo sweepstakes. She really doesn’t deserve to be saddled with the errant sexual attentions of a maladept like Charlie, but you at least feel she’ll be able to put him in his place intelligently. Though she doesn’t immediately do so, actually: when Charlie takes leave of her by smacking her ass, in imitation of something he’s seen two male crew members do earlier, she gets indignant, but seems to think it is not her job to explain why, and refers him to Kirk or Bones for elucidation. Two guesses as to which of them he’ll choose!
08:14: Kirk, Spock and Bones are discussing the odd history of the newcomer, and Spock keeps mentioning “Thasians,” in this very loaded way. Since it’s Spock saying this, Thasians will of course turn out to be the key to Charlie’s whole story, but Kirk and Bones aren’t really interested, as they’re too busy deciding which of them should provide a “father image” for Charlie, who is apparently gravely in need of such a thing. Neither Kirk nor Bones wants the job, and their exchange on the subject basically consists of variations on “I know you are, but what am I?”
09:43: Ah! It’s the famous Uhura-serenading-Spock scene! This is their second semi-flirty scene together, following the “Vulcan has no moon, Miss Uhura” scene in “The Man Trap”; both of these scenes are often mentioned as secret predictors of the Spock/Uhura romance in the Star Trek reboot movie. The “Man Trap” scene, though, is such a one-sided flirtation that its purpose must’ve been mostly to establish character (Uhura = normal human being with interests and emotions not connected to the Enterprise; Spock = insufferable Vulcan who doesn’t bat an eye when he hears that Kirk or Bones might be dead), rather than to lead anywhere narratively.
This serenading scene, however, has more to it. Uhura is impressive here: she has a good voice and a singing style of her own, sort of scat crossed with medieval English balladry, and she demonstrates an amazing capacity for spontaneously inventing intelligent, rhyming lyrics to a melody she’s never heard before. Plus she is adorably cheeky, singing this teasing song about Spock and his “devil ears” and “alien love” right to his face. He is raising his eyebrows all over the place in response, but kind of almost smiling, and he also doesn’t stop accompanying her on the lute, so you know he is actually, on some level, digging it.
Then Charlie walks in the room, and Uhura starts making the song about him (“Oh, Charlie’s our new darling; we know not what he’ll do”). Charlie is NOT digging it, and telepathically paralyzes her voice so that she can’t continue. He is such a jerk, this guy.
12:42: Now Charlie’s trying to put the moves on Yeoman Rand, and in an attempt to impress her with his freaky mental powers, he causes images of her face to appear on a deck of playing cards. Does he really think this is going to get him some play? I’m sorry, but the images don’t even move! Hasn’t he ever seen a wizard trading card, like you can buy on the Hogwarts Express?
14:00: Charlie seeks out Kirk for advice on how to better...relate to Yeoman Rand. Yeah, I’m rolling my eyes too, but theoretically this is Kirk’s great area of expertise, and man is he falling down on the job. His speech recalls a George W. Bush press conference in its sheer verbal awkwardness, and also anticipates the total farklemptness of Spock trying to explain pon farr at the beginning of season two.
15:22: The Enterprise is contacted by the Antares, the ship that brought Charlie to the Enterprise, but as the crew is attempting to speak to them, the Antares is suddenly, mysteriously destroyed. At that very moment Charlie walks in. “It wasn’t very well-constructed,” he notes suspiciously. In a clearly related development, the galley reports with astonishment that the mock-meatloaf that was in the ovens for Thanksgiving dinner has turned into real turkeys. This is the first and only really endearing use to which Charlie will put his powers.
16:55: Kirk and Spock are playing three-dimensional chess, the board for which resembles one of those multi-level pastry trays you sometimes see in restaurants. I wish Kirk and Spock would break the fourth wall of this episode, turn toward the camera and explain to the TV viewer how this game is played, ‘cause I would far rather sit still for that than for the next cringe-inducing interaction between Charlie and Rand.
It’s obviously an atypical form of chess, at any rate, because Kirk beats Spock. Spock tries to play it off in a quintessential exchange:
“Your illogical approach to chess does have its advantages on occasion, Captain.”
“I prefer to call it inspired.”
“As you wish. At any rate, the game is yours.”
Then, because they were discussing Charlie a moment prior, the freaky one himself walks in the door and commandeers Spock for the next game. In his poor control of his id, Charlie makes Kirk look positively Vulcan: he won’t sit still to hear the rules of the game, loses immediately, bores Spock into leaving him, then melts the chess pieces with his maniacal telepathic gaze in revenge. This is presented very dramatically and scored as if it were the Wicked Witch of the West melting, but in fact the melting only affects a couple of chess pieces and makes them look, if anything, like nicely toasted marshmallows.
Your basic Bush vs. Obama scenario
20:00: The confrontation between Charlie and Rand we’ve all been dreading. Charlie’s feelings for Rand have escalated to full-blown, and dangerous, infatuation. He’s all, “If I had the whole universe, I’d give it to you,” and many more sentiments in that overblown yet creepy vein. At one point he actually says, “You smell like a girl.” Hoo boy. I am officially nervous on Yeoman Rand’s behalf.
21:35: Rand tells Kirk what's up with Charlie, and asks him to give Charlie a talking-to before things get out of hand. Kirk agrees, but ends the conversation blatantly smirking. It’s all very well for him; he’s not the one who’s gonna be raped on his way to breakfast tomorrow.
22:48: More advice to Charlie from Kirk on love ‘n’ sex. I can’t decide whether Kirk is the best person on board to hold forth to him on these subjects, or the worst. I guess he's preferable to Spock, but really, why doesn’t Charlie talk to Bones, whose perspective on sex, as a doctor and a dude with a more typical batting average, would be better grounded in both physiological and psychological reality? However, Kirk acquits himself pretty well in the end. He tries to gently clue Charlie in to the fact that it ain't gonna happen between him and Rand, and when Charlie cries, "What am I gonna do?!," responds, "Hang on tight, and survive. Everybody does." "You don't," Charlie objects, perceptively. "Everybody, Charlie - me, too," Kirk insists, and for the moment, at least, you believe him.
25:42: Woo, topless Kirk in tights! He and Charlie are in the Enterprise gym, where Kirk is apparently trying to teach Charlie to fight (because this will finally endear him to Yeoman Rand after gentler methods have failed?). But really it's just an excuse for some blatant exhibitionism on Shatner’s part - all the other men in the place are modestly clad in Jedi tunics over their tights. I must concede, however, that the Shat’s physical condition justifies the display.
25:48: Check out Shatner’s oblique muscles! OK, I am impressed. Who knew people even HAD obliques back in the personal-trainer-less ‘60s?
The training, surprise surprise, isn’t going well, because Charlie doesn’t want to learn how to fall and gets pissed off when Kirk throws him. A bystander named Sam laughs at him, and Charlie straight up vaporizes him. Kirk’s reaction to this presumable death of a crew member is oddly silent and delayed, as if he is waiting for someone to feed him a Shakespearean soliloquy on the nature of death before responding.
When that doesn’t come, he finally asks Charlie: WTF just happened? Charlie’s explanation makes perfect sense: “He shouldn’t have done that! It’s not nice! I didn’t mean to do that, he made me!” Kirk calls security to take Charlie away, and Charlie vaporizes their phasers. In the meantime, there are ample opportunities for Charlie to vaporize Kirk, who is clearly also not being nice, but he doesn’t take them. For some reason, presumably that whole “father image” thing, Kirk seems to have a hold over Charlie.
30:38: Spock is still going on about the Thasians, and thinks maybe Charlie is one. Bones refutes this by saying weirdly: “The development of his fingers and toes exactly matches the present development of man's on earth!,” like Charlie is three months old or something. The fact that they are discussing Charlie means that he will enter the room in 3..2..1..and there he is. He admits to blowing up the Antares with his mind: "Well, they weren't nice to me!" Oh, Charlie. If I had a corpse for every time someone wasn't nice to me, I could populate a morgue the size of New York City...and yet, I can relate. People are so difficult! WTF do they want, anyway?! There's just no pleasing them, so you might as well kill them!
33:25: Or at least fuck with them in any way you can. Charlie makes Uhura's communications console give her an electric shock, prevents the Enterprise from plotting a new course back to Thasus, cuts off their communication channels, and telekinetically forces Spock to recite poetry: William Blake, Edgar Allan Poe, and whatever hack amongst the writing team composed those lines about “Saturn’s rings and roads of Martian red.” “Very nice, Mr. Ears!” says Charlie in Simon Cowell mode, before noting, “I can make him do anything.” Question: if you could see Spock forced to do something, anything, out of character, would that something really be reciting poetry? I’m kind of mourning the wasted opportunities here.
35:39: We see Rand alone in her quarters in her nightgown, a pink one-shouldered number. Yes, folks, the moment has come: Charlie enters unannounced, right on time for his big sexual assault scene.
“Janice, don’t ever lock your door on me again. I love you!” He is such an asshole.
“I’ll lock it when I please. What is it you want, anyway?” Oh, Rand, don’t ask him that!
"You." Well, natch. He walks toward her, and the screen fades ominously to black.
But Rand cleverly switches on the intercom while they are talking, so that they can be heard on the bridge. Kirk and Spock, her knights in shining armor, rush in to defend her honor. But Charlie throws them against the wall with his mind, then vaporizes Rand. Charlie: "Why did she do that? I loved her! But she wasn't nice at all!" Classic abuser-speak, right there. Charlie then telepathically breaks Spock's legs while the latter is sitting on the floor, mends them again, and goes off to do a bunch of other nasty shit to various other people.
Kirk devises a plan, something to do with turning on all the electrical devices on board so that Charlie's mental powers will be overtaxed. This doesn't really make a lot of sense, but OK.
43:01: Charlie re-enters the bridge and takes Kirk's seat. Kirk says, “Get out of my chair, Charlie, and get out of it now,” causing all fans of the reboot movie to erupt in Butthead-style snickers. Spock and Bones flip every switch in the room to "on" while Kirk handles the psychological part of the showdown. It works, and Rand rematerializes in her nightgown as Uhura reports an incoming message from a Thasian ship off the Enterprise's starboard bow - a ship which has... no physical substance.
This analogy deserves further investigation.
A green Thasian dude appears on the bridge as a disembodied face, great-and-powerful-Oz style, to reclaim Charlie, who is of course freaking out. Charlie begs frantically to stay with the Enterprise, and Kirk makes a case for Charlie's ability to learn to control his powers and live among humans (Charlie is in fact human, but his Thasian rescuers/captors gave him some of their powers to help him survive), but the Thasian dude isn't buying it, and I'm with him. Charlie is saying all this stuff in a tormented voice about how you can't even touch the Thasians, and they can't even feel. "Not like you!" he cries to Rand, his passion for whom is doomed to remain unconsummated.
The Thasians do seem creepy, simultaneously remote and paternalistic, and when they finally seize Charlie and telepathically take him away, everyone is quiet. The show ends on an ominous note, with Bones leading Rand away so that the viewer doesn't even have a chance to lighten the somber mood by checking out her nipples.
Drunkenness potential from playing the TOS drinking game: Quite low. Spock accuses Kirk of illogic once and Bones of being "emotional" once. Charlie vaporizes all phasers on board before anyone can even think of setting them on stun. Kirk loses several crew members, but never says he wants to know why, although he does express a wish to have them back.