Pacing. Yes Pacing. That is what makes this and other first year Trex episodes seem real. Yeah! Real! Like you are really there. Like, You are a person in our time privileged to see into the future. It may seem trivial, but that is what so many of the modern Treks lack. They don't give you the feeling you are in the future or in space or anything. Just a PC college campus at Halloween. The right pacing makes the people come alive as real - like me and you. Makes Charlie seem like any other teenager until his -well- quirks show up. And it makes it a real tragedy when they have to get rid of him. A real boy, one of me and you, has to get sent to hell. And we really don't want to do it. And it makes us ask were we like Charlie when we were teenagers? This is a great episode and it is why Star Trek lives forty years later.
