Star Trek--Charlie X

I have to admit that while I used to watch Star Trek (and all of its spin-offs) avidly, as an observer of my culture, I am far more impressed with shows like The Twilight Zone, which portray the unique horrors, prejudices, and selfishness within the human soul in a way which, 5 decades later, is still disturbing. The second Star Trek episode to air--Charlie X--appears to have been an ode to a specific Twilight Zone episode, in fact: "It's A Good Life," the infamous episode which features a young boy with godlike powers who terrorizes the residents of a small town. The episode ends as it began--the town residents, desperate for relief, fail to stop the boy from creating whatever horrors he imagines, and life goes on, much as it had, with no hope in sight for man or beast. The same is true for the officers of the Starship Enterprise in "Charlie X"--with the exception that the godlike beings who give Charlie his fearsome powers show up at the end of the episode and rescue the ship from what must certainly be a slave existence to a teenager's ghoulish whims.

I like the theme of a young boy given supernatural powers who begins to use those powers irresponsibly because I think it demonstrates one of the basic truths evident about our race from the very beginnings of its existence: that we are selfish beasts who, with an ounce of real power, would wreak havoc and devastation on our brethren (and our universe) if we could. However, the problem with this episode is the same problem that I have with Star Trek as a whole--Roddenberry's optimistic futurism. Yes, the actions of a teenage boy demonstrate that human beings are not ready for the kind of power that they often wish they could possess, However, look at the power that the crew members on the Starship Enterprise themselves possess--the ability to break the space-time continuum to reach other solar systems in a matter of hours or days, the ability to dissolve others into atoms with the use of a phaser, the ability to transport out of their ship to a planet's surface using matter/energy conversion, the ability to produce synthetic food for themselves at will, and the ability to cure diseases that kill most of us in our century. Then we have the godlike beings who eventually take the boy back into their own custody--a subtle promise that perhaps the human potential is far greater than simple feats like warp drive and matter/energy transport.

Futurists like Roddenberry paint a picture of the human race as a continually improving species, constantly acquiring new powers and abilities until it reaches a godlike status . . . but history has shown that with each new "power" we gain, we seem to grow more beastlike in our ruthlessness toward others. World wars? Genocides? Economic oppression and enslavement? These 3 elements of human history would not have been possible without the Industrial Revolution. And who can forget the wondrous gains we made as a species after we split the atom? Forty years and 3 generations on the brink of nuclear annihilation, with grave repercussions for their descendants (as we have seen in recent years), and we have still not eliminated the possibility that the world could still go up in the flames of fission's fires. The fact is that human sin, human selfishness, will always result in beings who, at their heart, resemble the little boy in "It's A Good Life" far more than they will ever resemble the crew members of the Starship Enterprise. Roddenberry's subtle (and not so subtle) optimism is at odds with what every believer in Christ understands at his or her core--that we, without God, are damned to walk a dark existence, enslaving, exploiting, and exterminating our brethren. For all their technical accomplishments, the crew of the Enterprise cannot judge Charlie for his grisly actions aboard their ship--because in many ways, they are just like him. This is the fundamental flaw in the premise of optimistic futurism, and it is the fundamental flaw in what this episode of Star Trek aims to teach us about ourselves and the world.