Some questions about Charlie X

[the60sguy]

There are a few things i am curious about regarding the TOS episode Charlie X.
1. My biggest question would be who was the actress who played the woman with no face? it looks like Barbara Baldavin, but i am not sure. Anybody who has any information regarding this, i would be very happy to know!
2. What happened to those men laughing? In the same scene where the woman has her face removed, you see all the shadows of partying crewmembers instantly freeze. What exactly happened to them?

 

[The Old Mixer]

Bumping to the TOS forum.

 

[johnnybear]

I don't think it was Barbara Baldavin to be honest and the laughing guys just got frozen I've always thought!
JB

 

[EnsignHarper]

I don't think it was Barbara Baldavin to be honest and the laughing guys just got frozen I've always thought!
JB

It COULD have been - also, I have always thought that Charlie had done the faceless thing to them as well.. (between that and turning the young crew woman into an old lady scared the spit out of me as a young 'un.)..

 

[Spock's Barber]

At least Trelane was just mischievous. Charlie was a bad boy.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

The dark and scary aspects of "Charlie X" reflect a strong influence from The Twilight Zone. What Charlie did to his victims is a lot like what Billy Mumy did to people in "It's a Good Life." An awful lot. It was more chilling, more horror-oriented, than Star Trek would be when it settled on its own voice.

Off the cuff, I can only think of the technician's death in "The Lights of Zetar" for a comparable bit of ST horror.

 

[gottacook]

I just learned that Barbara Baldavin was (and is) casting director Joe D'Agosta's wife, so if he did cast her as the faceless woman, was it perhaps a private joke between them (i.e., he finally got to shut her up)?

What I always wondered was, how did the faceless crewwoman BREATHE? (If she couldn't, she surely wouldn't be able to walk upright or make sounds. Did she breathe through her ears, or what?) Perhaps it was too difficult, in terms of makeup, to make her merely mouthless...

Also, one of the frozen crewmen's silhouettes can be seen in profile, and he does seem to have a face:

 

[Spock's Barber]

I just learned that Barbara Baldavin was (and is) casting director Joe D'Agosta's wife, so if he did cast her as the faceless woman, was it perhaps a private joke between them (i.e., he finally got to shut her up)?

Kirk's line in 'Requiem for Methuselah' comes to mind....

"He has created the perfect woman....."

 

[UnknownSample]

I've come to think of s1 as Twilight Zone -like, but maybe in particular because of this episode. It's pure ST to me, of a kind I wish we'd seen much more of.

It's usually safe to assume that if they didn't show us information onscreen, they intend for us not to know. How could we? It's a mystery to us what Charlie did to the men in the corridor. Whatever it was, it was BAD. Worse than we can imagine, it's implied.
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How did the faceless woman breathe? She couldn't, obviously. How do you breathe without a face? You know that. That was the point. She staggered a few feet, then after the camera was off her, she asphyxiated and died. That's why it was horrible.
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Anyone deprived of air can stagger around for a few seconds.

 

[In_Correct]

There are a few things i am curious about regarding the TOS episode Charlie X.
1. My biggest question would be who was the actress who played the woman with no face? it looks like Barbara Baldavin, but i am not sure. Anybody who has any information regarding this, i would be very happy to know!
2. What happened to those men laughing? In the same scene where the woman has her face removed, you see all the shadows of partying crewmembers instantly freeze. What exactly happened to them?

The two men could have been turned into statues. Or he probably skinned them. The woman's face was completely removed which means that she could not breathe and died.

It is possible that they were all restored at the end of the episode. including the woman that was turned into a reptile and the woman that aged rapidly. and the crew that vanished into thin air. The non-corporeal beings that took Charlie away said that the crew on the other ship were lost and could not be saved, but The Enterprise and her crew were.

 

[gottacook]

If she couldn't breathe, she couldn't make the sounds she did, because she couldn't have inhaled first. It wasn't logical, which is central to why it was frightening as hell. (Likewise, what happened to poor Dan Hollis in the TZ version of "It's a Good Life" wasn't logical. In the Bixby story, Anthony thinks Hollis "into something like nothing anyone would have believed possible" before sending him under the cornfield, which is a great choice on Bixby's part - letting the reader imagine - but this couldn't be successfully done in a TV adaptation.)

 

[johnnybear]

It COULD have been - also, I have always thought that Charlie had done the faceless thing to them as well.. (between that and turning the young crew woman into an old lady scared the spit out of me as a young 'un.)..

There were a lot of scary things in Trek! Like The Salt Vampire, Mitchell's eyes, The Talosians, Charlie's victims, The zombie guy on Miri's world, Balok the child, even Lethe looked weird!
JB

 

[UnknownSample]

If she couldn't breathe, she couldn't make the sounds she did, because she couldn't have inhaled first. It wasn't logical, which is central to why it was frightening as hell.

Hold your hand over your mouth and nose. You'll find you're able to do a bit of desperate grunting.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

The brain and throat didn't disappear. If only.

This episode isn't as dangerous as WOLF IN THE FOLD, but in five or six ways it's far scarier. Charlie keeps lashing out at the non-Janices, and ''takes out'' Janice into limbo when she rejects him. Poor Uhura gets Charlied twice, and the second time she's all but electrocuted by her own expletive-deleted console. I'd have never touched that sucker again. I guess she figured she had no real place to go anyhow.

 

[UnknownSample]

I figure there was a lot more mayhem than we saw onscreen, many deaths.

 

[johnnybear]

There were no deaths as such! Spock and Kirk confirmed this while planning on how to take Charlie out in the conference room! Maybe the woman with no face hadn't really lost it but had an extra few layers of skin plastered over her face instead?
JB

 

[PCz911]

There were no deaths as such! Spock and Kirk confirmed this while planning on how to take Charlie out in the conference room! Maybe the woman with no face hadn't really lost it but had an extra few layers of skin plastered over her face instead?
JB

Interesting. Frankly I just assumed she died

 

[johnnybear]

Well without a face as such of course you'd believe that!
JB

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

There were no deaths as such! Spock and Kirk confirmed this while planning on how to take Charlie out in the conference room! Maybe the woman with no face hadn't really lost it but had an extra few layers of skin plastered over her face instead?
JB

That thought is as optimistic as it is disgusting.

To paraphrase Allen Asherman's opinion of the episode: no nose, no mouth, no way.

 

[UnknownSample]

There were no deaths as such! Spock and Kirk confirmed this while planning on how to take Charlie out in the conference room! Maybe the woman with no face hadn't really lost it but had an extra few layers of skin plastered over her face instead?
JB

I forget the sequence of events, but there was plenty of opportunity for deaths after the conference room scene, if they said there had been no deaths up until then. And they were wrong if they said so, since Charlie had made that guy in the gym go to the cornfield already. Oblivion counts as death, and Kirk and Spock certainly took it pretty seriously.
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When we talk about the woman having no face, we mean the front part of her head was covered over with skin so that it's not a face any more. I don't see how that makes it non-lethal. As opposed to what? Her face wasn't removed... we didn't see a skull.
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"No deaths as such"! I kinda like it, but no idea what it means!