Some questions about Charlie X

[ZapBrannigan]

I can easily forgive someone for having such a nice nature that they'll bend over backwards to find some way to think No Face Lady survived just fine in the corridor. We should be nice people. We really need to go with what they showed us though, to glean what their intent was. This was not meant to be an "everybody's fine" scenario. It was meant to horrify. They show us a woman whose face has been made into solid skin, struggling and failing to breathe. CUT.
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"But maybe an emergency team showed up an instant later!!" doesn't enter into it. It goes against the tone of what they show us.

You want to see nice? I'll show you nice.

Maybe Charlie put a smooth mask over her face that confused her for a few seconds, and then she gave it a tug and it came right off, no problem.

Also, he might have moved the Antares crew to a holding dimension for safe-keeping before their ship blew up. Then, after the Thasians had sorted through all of his actions, they returned the lost crew to a starbase.

This view preserves the intended ending in which we feel sympathy for Charlie, and that timeless Fred Steiner score is so moving. Otherwise, I'd want to hurl him into a firey pit.

 

[UnknownSample]

You want to see nice? I'll show you nice.

Maybe Charlie put a smooth mask over her face that confused her for a few seconds, and then she gave it a tug and it came right off, no problem.

Also, he might have moved the Antares crew to a holding dimension for safe-keeping before their ship blew up. Then, after the Thasians had sorted through all of his actions, they returned the lost crew to a starbase.

This view preserves the intended ending in which we feel sympathy for Charlie, and that timeless Fred Steiner score is so moving. Otherwise, I'd want to hurl him into a firey pit.

It was a "there but for the grace of God go I" story. If we'd been raised by incorporeal entities, ho human guides, and given godlike abilities, then freed and dumped into adolescence without warning, would we necessarily do any better morally?

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

She thought it was sleight of hand. Magicians do amazing things all the time...

Not like that.

Ordinary physics are irrelevant. The woman without a face was kept alive by Charlie's powers, so she could live on in mental anguish from her condition of having no face, at least until Charlie decided to do something else to her.

So the only certainty for her is......taxes.

I can easily forgive someone for having such a nice nature that they'll bend over backwards to find some way to think No Face Lady survived just fine in the corridor. We should be nice people. We really need to go with what they showed us though, to glean what their intent was. This was not meant to be an "everybody's fine" scenario. It was meant to horrify. They show us a woman whose face has been made into solid skin, struggling and failing to breathe. CUT.
--------------------------
"But maybe an emergency team showed up an instant later!!" doesn't enter into it. It goes against the tone of what they show us.

Agreed. The Thasian should have said ''mostly restored.''

 

[UnknownSample]

Well, I'm sure the Thasians revived her later, I'm just saying she had to die first in the corridor.

 

[urbandefault]

It's an episode of 50 year old TV show, never expected to be more than a throwaway. It really doesn't require any more explanation than that.

 

[Poltargyst]

I'm comfortable she suffocated to death shortly after we saw her but was then restored by Charlie's Daddy.

 

[PCz911]

This is from the script

THASIAN: I have taken my form from centuries ago, so that I may communicate with you. We did not realise until too late that the boy had gone, and we are saddened that his escape cost the lives of the first ship. We could not help them, but we have returned your people and your ship to you. Everything is as it was.

So, somehow , it would appear that faceless woman survived.

 

[johnnybear]

An earlier post explained this that she was kept alive by Charlie's powers almost as if in torture and that's why The Thasians were able to restore her afterwards so yes she was still alive!
JB

 

[Timo]

Everything of the sort is implied in that scene. There is ZERO mention from McCoy or anyone else that any of the crew are being treated for anything Charlie has done.

So it goes without saying, as it should. It boggles the mind that you should think some sort of a specific verbal reference would be required to indicate that a fellow crewmember saved the woman's life.

Any of the medical staff should be able to perform a tracheotomy. Spock probably could. Maybe Kirk has such training; we never find out about that. But why would all the crew know how to do that?

Because it's trivial. Or at least appears to be for those watching medical shows today, so everybody not suffering from a panic-inducing disorder would have a (literal) stab at it, no matter whether actually skilled or not. Heck, I know I would.

Is advanced emergency first aid on the curriculum for engineering, command, and the social science specialists?

Yes, in any military of today, for the above-given value of "advanced".

Would the geologists and physicists be expected to know how to perform one? Would the average yeoman?

Yes.

Although here it wouldn't come to that: a general punching of her face would do the trick.

I wonder if Janice and Sam were merely zapped into an alternate dimension for a brief time, and the Thasians zapped them back. The Antares crew, being blown to bits, likely couldn't be restored. I would think that Tina Lawton (the one turned into a lizard) could be restored, since she wasn't actually killed. But the woman with no face... I don't see how she could have survived.

By somebody taking the trivial step of saving her. Doesn't mean the Thasians didn't restore her to perfect health afterwards, or they probably would have said something about that, rather than just about the Antaresians...

And surely turning a lizard into a living human is a bigger trick than turning a corpse into one?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

An earlier post explained this that she was kept alive by Charlie's powers almost as if in torture...
JB

In a way, that's even worse.

It makes me wonder which bits or moments of the episode D.C. Fontana did NOT write. Was the facelessness her specific idea?

 

[UnknownSample]

She died. She was brought back.

 

[Timewalker]

So it goes without saying, as it should. It boggles the mind that you should think some sort of a specific verbal reference would be required to indicate that a fellow crewmember saved the woman's life.

Why? It's like the Borg baby in Voyager. No on-screen mention was made of what happened to her - whether she died, was returned to her people, or was adopted either by someone on Voyager or on a planet they visited. People have been arguing about it for 15 years.

You're assuming that just any passing crewmember would have immediately performed a tracheotomy, but you don't have any actual reason to assume that. I find it really hard to believe that someone whose department has NOTHING to do with either sciences or medical would have been trained to do that procedure.

Because it's trivial. Or at least appears to be for those watching medical shows today, so everybody not suffering from a panic-inducing disorder would have a (literal) stab at it, no matter whether actually skilled or not. Heck, I know I would.

So you think that just because you watch Grey's Anatomy or M*A*S*H, that gives you surgical knowledge? I hope that if I ever need surgery, I'd have someone around who had real medical training, instead of someone who would just randomly "punch my face."

Yes, in any military of today, for the above-given value of "advanced".

We are talking about a science fiction show made in 1966.

By somebody taking the trivial step of saving her. Doesn't mean the Thasians didn't restore her to perfect health afterwards, or they probably would have said something about that, rather than just about the Antaresians...

WTF are "Antaresians"?

And surely turning a lizard into a living human is a bigger trick than turning a corpse into one?

The point is that the lizard didn't asphyxiate and die from lack of oxygen. It's one thing to restore a dead body to life; what about the brain damage due to the lack of oxygen? It's not like they had Seven's magic nanoprobes to fix her, like they did with Neelix in one episode.

 

[Timo]

You're assuming that just any passing crewmember would have immediately performed a tracheotomy, but you don't have any actual reason to assume that.

Sure I do. Kirk's crew is made up of human beings. It would be inhuman, that is, wholly out of character for every single one of them not to save the woman's life. There is no basis for assuming that they did not.

So you think that just because you watch Grey's Anatomy or M*A*S*H, that gives you surgical knowledge? I hope that if I ever need surgery, I'd have someone around who had real medical training, instead of someone who would just randomly "punch my face."

The thing is, punching your face would save you, while not doing so would kill you. Sure, inept first aid sometimes kills people. But in sufficiently many cases it does not - it's almost automatically better than nothing.

It's not a matter of medical knowledge in the slightest, really. It's a matter of being human. A human being would not stand aside or turn away. And there's no way for you to convince me that anybody - you, me, or a 23rd century astronaut - would fail to at least try and make a hole where there should be one.

We are talking about a science fiction show made in 1966.

And? The heroes and sidekicks are from the 23rd century. And people saved people by cutting open their throats thousands of years ago already.

The point is that the lizard didn't asphyxiate and die from lack of oxygen. It's one thing to restore a dead body to life; what about the brain damage due to the lack of oxygen?

That makes no sense - the lizard would have "brain damage" by default, by human standards. And "body damage", of the worst kind.

We're still talking about the same scene, aren't we? Of a person getting her airways blocked in the very heart of a futuristic, high quality flying hospital (where brainless corpses get reanimated as a matter of course), amidst people who deal with the fantastically weird in a professional capability and have received military training of at least some sort. Were the poor woman decapitated, I might give your approach the benefit of the doubt - McCoy would have to be personally relatively nearby to save the lass. The scenario as given isn't particularly scary in the end.

...That is, unless there are hidden variables. This could be Saw XXIII, with a seemingly simple and obvious life-saving task making things worse by sadistic design. But I very much doubt Charlie would have cared that much. He just hated the face and got rid of it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timewalker]

Sure I do. Kirk's crew is made up of human beings. It would be inhuman, that is, wholly out of character for every single one of them not to save the woman's life. There is no basis for assuming that they did not.

You're assuming things we didn't see on-screen. Yes, it would make sense for them to try to save her, and she might even get lucky enough to be found by someone in the science department.

You're also assuming that every single one of those 430+ crew has surgical training. That's really grasping at straws.

The thing is, punching your face would save you, while not doing so would kill you. Sure, inept first aid sometimes kills people. But in sufficiently many cases it does not - it's almost automatically better than nothing.

I'm very grateful that the surgeon who performed the operation I had 15 years ago knew enough that she was supposed to use a scalpel instead of a closed fist.

It's not a matter of medical knowledge in the slightest, really. It's a matter of being human. A human being would not stand aside or turn away. And there's no way for you to convince me that anybody - you, me, or a 23rd century astronaut - would fail to at least try and make a hole where there should be one.

I'd do it if a more knowledgeable person told me what to do, or if I had access to instructions. I'd definitely holler for help. The thing is, I don't know how to perform a tracheotomy. Yes, I've seen it on TV several times... a very long time ago. That doesn't mean I retained any knowledge of it, and it also doesn't guarantee that what we saw on TV was accurate. After all, numerous medical professionals have spoken out about how unrealistic and just plain inaccurate many scenes are when people are doing CPR.

We're still talking about the same scene, aren't we? Of a person getting her airways blocked in the very heart of a futuristic, high quality flying hospital (where brainless corpses get reanimated as a matter of course), amidst people who deal with the fantastically weird in a professional capability and have received military training of at least some sort. Were the poor woman decapitated, I might give your approach the benefit of the doubt - McCoy would have to be personally relatively nearby to save the lass. The scenario as given isn't particularly scary in the end.

I was unaware that the Enterprise was a "futuristic, high quality flying hospital". I was also unaware that McCoy restored Spock's brain aboard the ship. I'd always thought he did it on the planet, after using the Teacher.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I was also unaware that McCoy restored Spock's brain aboard the ship. I'd always thought he did it on the planet, after using the Teacher.

No, you're right. Spock wasn't restored on the Enterprise, he had to be hooked up to the Teacher for the procedure to be effective.

 

[UnknownSample]

There was a MASH episode where Father Mulcahy had to give a tracheotomy in a jeep on the road. He needed blow by blow instructions from the doctors on walkie talkie to do it right. He didn't just whip out a knife and cut the man's throat.
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The biggest hurdle was actually beginning to cut. That's a very big barrier to cross. It goes against all instincts.
==========
Whether the hole is made in the throat or mouth, what would a passer-by cut with?

 

[FormerLurker]

It was Radar that performed the emergency tracheotomy, not Father Mulcahy. The good Father was the one relaying the instructions to Radar.

 

[Timo]

You're assuming things we didn't see on-screen. Yes, it would make sense for them to try to save her, and she might even get lucky enough to be found by someone in the science department.

So I'm assuming sensible things. What's your excuse for assuming senseless things?

You're also assuming that every single one of those 430+ crew has surgical training. That's really grasping at straws.

Every one of us here at TrekBBS would be inclined to create the hole that was obviously needed, directly or indirectly. Skill doesn't enter that picture, although training in taking action of some sort (say, first aid training or hand-to-hand combat training) might speed up things.

I'd do it if a more knowledgeable person told me what to do, or if I had access to instructions. I'd definitely holler for help. The thing is, I don't know how to perform a tracheotomy. Yes, I've seen it on TV several times... a very long time ago. That doesn't mean I retained any knowledge of it, and it also doesn't guarantee that what we saw on TV was accurate. After all, numerous medical professionals have spoken out about how unrealistic and just plain inaccurate many scenes are when people are doing CPR.

No doubt about that - people doing CPR as seen in the movies, or fighting wars that way, or enforcing the law, would be doing it wrong. But they would be doing it anyway. In a ship with 430 crew, hollering for help would quickly produce the guy or gal with the will (and never mind the skill) of punching the hole, so even your actions would save the faceless woman.

I was unaware that the Enterprise was a "futuristic, high quality flying hospital".

Then I recommend watching Star Trek.

I was also unaware that McCoy restored Spock's brain aboard the ship. I'd always thought he did it on the planet, after using the Teacher.

And? He reanimated the brainless corpse with little effort aboard the ship, as I said. Miracles happen within minutes; impossibilities may take an entire act.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Every one of us here at TrekBBS would be inclined to create the hole that was obviously needed, directly or indirectly.

Ideally, yes. In reality, there's always one Hitchens in every situation. (Not singling you out, TW.) I'd wager at least ten of us at BBS would freak out and turn tail.
And by the time we were unfreaked out, it'd probably be too late. Who wants lunch?

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

We're still talking about the same scene, aren't we? Of a person getting her airways blocked in the very heart of a futuristic, high quality flying hospital (where brainless corpses get reanimated as a matter of course)

Only in the third year, and only for regulars Kirk cannot do without.