Charlie's Choice

At about the 20-minute mark of "Charlie X," young Charlie Evans plays a very short, one-sided game of three-dimensional chess against Mister Spock. Charlie plays white, Spock black. Spock defeats Charlie in a couple of moves: "Checkmate." Charlie, who's not very mature because of his alien upbringing, throws a verbal tantrum, shouting irrationally, "No, it's not!" Spock, unflappable, walks out. 

A moment later, Charlie focuses his rage on the chessboard, using uncanny psychic powers to melt about half of the pieces. 

Despite having seen this episode probably a half-dozen times, this time I noticed an interesting detail: Charlie only melts the white pieces--his own pieces. He may have refused to acknowledge Spock's victory with words, but by melting his own pieces, Charlie shows the audience that he knows the truth; he lost because he wasn't smart enough to beat his opponent. By melting his own pieces instead of Spock's Charlie shows us that along with all his other emotional difficulties, he's prone to self-loathing. 

Throughout the episode, Charlie says he wants people to like him, but that somehow he always "gets things wrong." He doesn't understand human social mores, having spent the first 17 years of his life with benevolent but distinctly non-human, unknowable aliens--the aliens who gave him the powers Charlie needed to survive after he was marooned without parents on their world. The aliens who come to take him back to their world, not out of malice, but to protect the galaxy from Charlie, who has unlimited power but not the sense of responsibility to use that power wisely. 

"Charlie X" is already one of Star Trek's most tragic and moving episodes, and taking a closer look at that short-lived game of chess increases the pathos.