Mirrorgirl GROUP: Members POSTS: 15692  |
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Jul. 25 2009, 9:52 am
Just came across this on LiveJournal - tos Rewatch Community and thought I would share it.
Of all the original series episodes, the final scene of Charlie X is the one that always makes me cry; Charlie final pleas to be allowed to stay always breaks me up. So when I read this I thought it was lovely, and a really beautiful piece.
Elegy for Charlie
by Antonia Vallario
My sleep was disturbed by a weeping star and a voice that I shouldn't have heard for the galaxy drifts in the coldness of space where dark is incredibly far,
(and a voice cannot come from a star)
O secretly grown, all alone child - flower plucked from an alien soil beneath an alien sun, who wanted most what we could not give forgive our helpless humanity; we watched you taken from the bridge forever lost to a human love and a life you were not meant to live.
The entire universe stretches beyond, and
I have no answers to give save the words that I send to the galaxy's end to comfort a weeping star,
(for Charlie, wherever you are)
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Jepoy2 GROUP: Members POSTS: 322 |
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Jul. 25 2009, 10:06 am
Yes. I remember reading this from a Bantam book (I think). Kinda hair raising to me
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Jamaca GROUP: Members POSTS: 518 |
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Jul. 25 2009, 11:00 am
Aww, so sweet. That part was so sad.
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Edgeways GROUP: Members POSTS: 2542 |
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Jul. 25 2009, 1:09 pm
Poor old Charlie. Was the name inspired by Charles Manson? The Manson family murders happened around that time. A character who could seemingly control others, and was of course, mad with power, and in this case, suffered from extreme "alienation."
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kanig8 GROUP: Members POSTS: 1120 |
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Jul. 26 2009, 1:45 am
Hello and thanks for that.
Charlie Evans was gifted with this special power, but was still too immature to use it properly. He just needed more time to grow up. The climax of that episode was one of the most stand out scenes in all of TOS - poor Charlie pleading to be left with his fellow humans, but then slowly vanishing while his echoing voice cries out "Please! I want to stay, stayyy, staaayyy, staaaaaayyy, staaaaaaaaayyy......" as the alien Thaisians taken him away. This same sort of thing happened on other TOS episodes, such as "The Squire of Gothos" and "Who Mourns For Adonais?". By the way, Charlie Evans returned as a middle-aged adult in the online production STAR TREK: OF GODS AND MEN.
Robert Walker, Jr. was a great actor. What is he doing nowadays?
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Khoufu_Khorushu GROUP: Members POSTS: 3694 |
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Jul. 26 2009, 1:46 am
That's sweet, loved it.  |
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kanig8 GROUP: Members POSTS: 1120 |
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Jul. 26 2009, 1:57 am
| Quote (ohnoodo @ July 26 2009, 1:45 am) | Manson was a few years later, but as should be done with all of TOS, consider the time period when CX was aired. ¿The generations were at war with one another as never before. ¿The older generation (+30) was in shock and awe of the younger sets rebelious behavior. ¿The younger set realized for the first time the power it held and wasn't afraid to use it. ¿This scared the britches off of the oldsters, just like CX's youthful power scared the adults in ST.
If that entire generation could have been beamed to another planet by the seniors I believe they would have done it in a heart beat. |
That sort of thing kind of did happen in the TOS episode "And The Children Shall Lead", in which kids are bestowed with magical powers by a malevolent alien entity, and are left alone on another planet, with the bodies of their dead parents laying all around. However, the situation was not hopeless. The children's true love for the older generation is brought out when they realize that "You don't know what you've got till it's gone" and weep in mourning for their deceased parents, thus releasing the alien's hold on them. |
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Jamaca GROUP: Members POSTS: 518 |
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Jul. 26 2009, 2:14 am
| Quote (ohnoodo @ July 26 2009, 1:45 am) | Manson was a few years later, but as should be done with all of TOS, consider the time period when CX was aired. ¿The generations were at war with one another as never before. ¿The older generation (+30) was in shock and awe of the younger sets rebelious behavior. ¿The younger set realized for the first time the power it held and wasn't afraid to use it. ¿This scared the britches off of the oldsters, just like CX's youthful power scared the adults in ST.
If that entire generation could have been beamed to another planet by the seniors I believe they would have done it in a heart beat. |
Very interesting analogy, so true. |
Nyackjohn GROUP: Members POSTS: 5570 |
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Jul. 27 2009, 5:28 pm
| Quote (ohnoodo @ July 26 2009, 1:55 am) | | Quote (kanig8 @ July 25 2009, 10:45 pm) | | Charlie Evans was gifted with this special power, but was still too immature to use it properly. |
Exactly, that's what I was trying to say in my awkward way, ¿substitute "Charlie Evans" with "the 60's youth movement" |
Sadly, having lived through that time period, the sixties "youth movement" resulted in ... nothing. Such a waste of potential - so many lofty goals, so little follow through... but they did have some awesome weed and a lot of nookie. It seems people think they shouldn't have been scared of Charlie... excuse me - how many people did he MURDER?? Not to mention torture and mutilate? Yes, the Thasians supposedly brought back the two he had killed on the Enterprise (Rand and Sam Ellis, though we do not see Ellis, and there is no proof that the faceless people, frozen people, aged people, iguanas (which might as well be murder, since she couldn't have been human any more and there was no brain sufficient to support a human personality) were returned to normal, they never showed that) but they could not save the entire crew of the other ship. What were they supposed to do? Be sorry for Charlie the mass murderer? Yeah, he whined and moaned about being taken away and being lonely, but he was not at all interested in learning to live with other non-gifted humans. It may not have been "his fault" but that still does not mean he was fit to live with other humans. He had been raised to survive in the environment he was in - NOT in the company of other humans. He was by all standards an adolescent Thasian, not an adolescent human. (And I felt this way about Charlie BEFORE I was an adult - saw this one as a kid when it first aired... I'm afraid any sympathy I have for Charlie is tempered by far more sympathy for those he destroyed without even thinking about them - I have as little sympathy for characters like "Carrie"... ooooh, someone said something mean about you, so they deserve to die a particularly horrible and lingering death? Grow up Charlie, you pathetic weasel! |
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Mirrorgirl GROUP: Members POSTS: 15692 |
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Jul. 28 2009, 12:01 am
Exactly NJ. I have never thought of Charlie as any sort of hero, but he is a tragic figure nonethless. I totally agree that he could not ever live with humans. No matter how well he was educated and socialized, it would only take one tantrum to destroy all those around him. And all of us even as adults find times when our anger over-rides our sensibilities.
Of course Charlie had to go back, but that does not diminish the sadness I feel for him. To never know the peole of your own species, and as a human to never know the human touch, is just so very sad. Poor Charlie was a victim of epic proportions.
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Nyackjohn GROUP: Members POSTS: 5570 |
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Jul. 28 2009, 12:03 am
Tragic? Yes, that one I'll definately give you MG, definately. The only way he COULD survive was to teach him things his own species was not ready to learn, but by teaching him that the Thasians made it impossible for him to ever re-join his species, and you are correct, tragic is the word.
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Mirrorgirl GROUP: Members POSTS: 15692 |
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Jul. 28 2009, 12:07 am
And definitely scary. His treatment of the crews of the Antares and the Enterprise is despicable.
I also find it interesting that Kirk has such a hard time relating to Charlie. However I love the scene where they discuss how humans cope with the emotional hardships of life.
KIRK: Charlie, there are a million things in this universe you can have and there are a million things you can't have. It's no fun facing that, but that's the way things are.
CHARLIE: Then what am I going to do?
KIRK: Hang on tight and survive. Everybody does.
CHARLIE: You don't.
KIRK: Everybody, Charlie. Me, too.
CHARLIE: I'm trying, but I don't know how.
Again more wonderful script-writing from TOS.
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thereR4lights GROUP: Members POSTS: 2643 |
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Jul. 28 2009, 12:10 am
all this said.. he was still a b!tch
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Edgeways GROUP: Members POSTS: 2542 |
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Jul. 28 2009, 1:59 am
Charlie seems rather rational to me--considering he was raised by unfeeling, unloving aliens with no physical form--and he was probably going through puberty at the same time. Can anybody relate to this? Of course you can't. Whatever your childhood was like pales in comparison to Charlie's. Can you say you wouldn't end up as crazy as Charlie? Doesn't sound to me like a spoiled child or a generation thing, more like a character driven mad by an insane universe.:logical:
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Mirrorgirl GROUP: Members POSTS: 15692 |
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Jul. 28 2009, 5:14 am
| Quote (Edgeways @ July 28 2009, 3:59 pm) | | Charlie seems rather rational to me--considering he was raised by unfeeling, unloving aliens with no physical form--and he was probably going through puberty at the same time. ¿Can anybody relate to this? ¿Of course you can't. ¿Whatever your childhood was like pales in comparison to Charlie's. ¿Can you say you wouldn't end up as crazy as Charlie? ¿Doesn't sound to me like a spoiled child or a generation thing, more like a character driven mad by an insane universe.:logical: |
Yep, I'd totally go with this. I don't find him a metaphor, I find him a tragic character, as you say driven insane by the circumstances of his life. |
