re: Star Trek: TOS Watchers - Season 1 Wrapup *Page 25*

quote:

---

I thought it was better than I remembered.

---

Yeah, I do like it better as the years go by. I do remember recognizing there was some adolescent issues going on once I went through puberty.

quote:

---

It seems we're supposed to feel bad for him when the Thasians take him away, but I always find myself glad that the little creep gets what's coming to him.

---

I'm always torn. He's supposed to be this immature kid, and you get the feeling that, with the right guidance, he could be a boon - like a superhero. But at the same time, we remember Gary Mitchell and we know it's just not possible.

If I had powers like that, I'd be tough to manage, too, and I'm a pretty good guy.

quote:

---

Also, Tina > Janice. Charlie passed up a good thing.

---

Grace Lee Whitney was 36 when Charlie X was filmed, Robert Walker was 26 (playing a character 9 years younger), and Patricia McNulty was just shy of her 21st birthday.

Interesting to note this could be an early case of Cougaring (with all due respect to Gloria Swanson and William Holden - she was almost 20 years his senior) - or MILF chasing.

In any event, I haven't dwelled on this (much, at least I don't think so) in this thread, but McNulty's appearance is another one of those I suspect might be a Big Gene's Casting Couch deal. She was fairly cute.

quote:

---

Grace looks for 36 especially back then.

---

She threw that away on the Marlboroughs and Wild Turkey. She looked old well before 50.

Go Charlie!



The arse smack had me rollin. As did Kirk trying to explain women.

Spock smiled while Uhuru was singing. I guess we can chalk it up to music distracting him and letting emotions bubble up.

I wonder if the writer stole the idea for Charlie from Stanger in a Strange Land. Charlie and his powers are very similar to Valentine Michael Smith, albeit a jackwagon douche version. Smith was always making people disappear.

Not sure why they thought that holding cell would do anything. They already know he destroyed the other ship which was far away.

What a dick! Poor old lady then faceless lady.


Reminded me of Twilight Zone the movie.

Right about now Piccard would have set self-destruct.

No real consistency with Spock from Where No Man. Spock was all about killing Mitchell as soon as possible. Here he doesn't even mention it. Sure they didn't want to kill a kid but given that is was just a few episodes ago that Spock wanted Mitchell dead at any cost, it is a bit odd he doesn't even suggest it here.


Big floating head saves the day.

I didn't like this one as a kid which is good. It means I didn't remember any of the episode.

Overall not a bad episode. Better than I remember.

One last note. Seems they repeated the story with a bit of a twist in a later episode.

quote:

---

One last note. Seems they repeated the story with a bit of a twist in a later episode.

---

Perhaps a reference to the lonely Squire of Gothos?

quote:

---

Same whinny ending.

---

Yeah, but William Campbell in the role - Star Trek's answer to Liberace.

quote:

---

As a kid I thought that was Liberace.

---

We'll defer this further until the episode comes around.

Back to Charlie X - the source material was a Jerome Bixby (again) story, "It's a Good Life" (filmed as a Twilight Zone episode in 1961).

Big Gene worked the story up as part of the initial pitch for Star Trek in 1964, calling his story "The Day Charlie Became God". The lovely and talented D.C. Fontana was tasked with writing the Star Trek script.

ETA: Another production note - Big Gene makes his only acting appearance in all of Star Trek - the voice of the galley chef informing Kirk about the "real turkeys".

*BALANCE OF TERROR*

One of my favorite episodes - in production order, the first true space battle in TOS. Staged and paced very much like a submarine battle, this episode is a template for the best of all the Trek films, "The Wrath of Kahn" - which is essentially the marriage of 2 great episodes - this one and "A Space Seed".

Mark Lenard makes his first appearance in TOS, and wears pointed ears, but he plays the first Romulan seen on screen in this episode.

The Romulan Commander is unnamed in the episode, but is very clearly supposed to represent an older, more experienced Romulan version of Kirk. The tactical battle remains gripping to me some 40 years after seeing it the first time.

We also get McCoy's best line in all of TOS.

quote:

---

In this galaxy, there's a mathematical probability of three million earth-type planets...and in all the universe, three million million galaxies like this one. And in all of that, and perhaps more, only one of each of us. Don't destroy the one named Kirk.

---

There are issues (phasers appear to be photon torpedoes - however, from a production standpoint, torpedoes hadn't been introduced yet. This is also the only time we see a weapons battery directed to fire in TOS.

Also a tender moment on the bridge between Kirk and Rand - almost an embrace - a wonderful bit of nonverbal acting on the part of Whitney and Shatner.

Racism is also directly addressed for the first time in TOS.

quote:

---

Leave any bigotry in your quarters. There's no room for it on the bridge.

---

quote:

---

There are also Cold War/WWII over tones with references to the past war and Neutral Zone.

---

No question this is a warning about the Cold War turning hot - it was just a couple of years after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Neutral Zone evoked the Iron Curtain, as well.

Romulans only factored in 3 episodes, this one, The Deadly Years and The Enterprise Incident - but those are all excellent episodes. Obviously, a lot more was done with the race in TNG and DS9, but I don't think the potential shown by Balance of Terror was ever fully realized. It seems that later efforts to make the Klingons (more overtly in the role of the Soviet/Chinese communist threat, at least initially) more 3 and 4 dimensional (and ultimately erstwhile allies of the Federation) was more of a priority and the Romulans remained (perhaps fittingly) at arm's length and more menacing.