50th Anniversary TOS Episode Discussion Marathon

[NAHTMMM]

Sorry, I was going to rewatch Thursday but other stuff kept coming up.

From what I remember, there's an undercurrent of Kirk and the crew failing Charlie. Obviously Kirk didn't know at first how special Charlie was, and he had a ship to run and Charlie was just another passenger, but in the context of the episode Kirk doesn't look very empathetic. (In fact, looking at the transcript, Kirk tries to push the task of an initial father figure off on Bones.) I know it was '60s TV, but seriously:

Well, um, er, there are things you can do with a lady, er, Charlie, that you er. There's no right way to hit a woman. I mean, man to man is one thing, but, er, man and woman, er, it's, er, it's, er. Well it's, er, another thing. Do you understand?

No. Nobody's going to understand that.

I wonder (if I may take this into a weird meta space) how a later Kirk might have handled Charlie, during the second season for example, when the character was more familiar to the writers and Shatner. Could the episode have gone in a different direction, with Charlie and the crew finding some understanding of each other, only for Charlie to be taken away at the end despite showing promise? Would that be more or less effective?


Oh, and the fiver is very good.

Charlie: Is that a girl?
Kirk: No, those are the transporter controls. This is your first time around other people, isn't it?

Classic parodic lines. And the Star Wars jokes are wonderfully over-the-top.