Charlie X

Netflix Summary: “Powerful teenage psychic Charlie beams aboard. Although wanting to be liked, he attacks others until the secrets of his powers are revealed to Kirk.” (Accuracy rating: 8/10)

In this episode, we meet a new friend! His name is Charlie and he was the only survivor of a shipwreck when he was 3!

He is not so good at waiting for his turn to talk.

Charlie makes friends with Yeoman Rand. She has a degree in basket weaving.  Apparently Charlie has never seen a girl before.

He acts like a creeper.

Charlie makes friends with Dr. McCoy (who the heck wouldn’t?). Bones is suspicious of Charlie but is, as always, charming.

Charlie acts like a creeper.

Everyone on the ship is super nice to Charlie, and Charlie is a creeper to EVERYONE. He’s like the creeper version of your 8 year old brother who always wants to tag along when you do grown-up things.

There’s some great Spock/McCoy banter…

…and Kirk manages to entrust the little angel to Bones’ care. Bones isn’t happy about it.

I took a snack break for the next ten minutes while Ahura sang a weird song and Spock played a weird harp. (I’m a viewer, Jim, not a musician!) It probably ranks in the top 5 Most Not Good Musical Moments of All Time Ever. Seriously. No chance of that song ending up on Spotify any time soon.

Kirk gets to try on his Daddy shoes and try to explain to Charlie why you can’t hit ladies on their bazonkadonks. Hilarity ensues.

Wait, what is THAT? Distress call from the ship that handed Charlie over to the Enterprise! It EXPLODES!

And guess what else? It’s Thanksgiving on Earth! And somehow the meatloaf turned into turkeys! And THEY explode!!

…Just kidding. (but that would’ve been AWESOME)

This concerns Kirky, of course, so he plays three level chess with Spock. (Kirk beats him.) Charlie wants to play with Kirky but Kirky wants Charlie to play with Spock (Spock beats him). Charlie throws a temper tantrum and mind-melts all the pieces. Way to go, Charlie. Now nobody can play.

Yeoman Rand, totally creeped out by Charlie’s creepiness, tries to pass him off on her teenage friend. (“Here, Janie, have my table scraps”). Charlie doesn’t care about the teenage friend (Sally? Suzy?) because he wants to express his undying love to Janice (it’s the hair, it drives men crazy. Apparently.).

Janice goes to Captain Kirk and tells him to get Charlie McCreeperson to stay away from her! She’s seen that look before! Apparently Janice Awesome-Hair gets professions of love every day! Kirk is Mr. Grownup to Charlie, but as everyone knows boys don’t solve anything with words- they have to FIGHT!

You know what that means…

Shirtless The Great Shatner in tights!

Charlie is understandably jealous of TGS, so he disappears the other guy working out with them. This was not totally unexpected- the guy was wearing a red shirt… kimono… top.

Whatever.

Time for a Bro Conference!

Decision: We have to go back!!! Charlie doesn’t like that so he electrocutes Ahura and gets Spock to recite poetry and takes control of the ship! It’s totally not funny!

Charlie O’Creeper has a tantrum! They try to put him in the brig, but he disappears the wall! And people’s FACES!

Charlie’s controlling the ship! What will we DO??

Jim wants to take him on! McCoy and Spock unite to stop him!

They compromise and turn on ALL the things to suck the power out of Charlie. It works!

...Something is coming! What could it BE??

It’s the Wizard of Oz! I mean, the Thasians… Theyshuns? Thespians? Thesaurusins?

…They’ve come for Charlie! And they brought back the disappeared people!

Charlie wants to stay, but he probably should’ve thought about that before he acted like such a creeper.

THE END

This one leaves a feeling of angst in its wake, so here’s my favorite line from the episode:

“Get out of my chair, Charlie. Get out of it now.”