Charlie X always reminds me of the boy in the "Twilight Zone" episode "It's a Good Life".

Sukhi, thou art mistaken, my friend. In "Where No Man..." Kirk beats Spock and nothing is said about any illegal move. Spock says "His next move should have been the rook.", but nothing about an illegal move. Actually, I do not know of any canonical reference to your "background". concerning the history of Kirk & Spock's chess. Where did you get it?

It's not canonical, but I went ahead and deduced it as a likely scenario.

The idea that Spock, the guy that programmed the computer to play winning chess, could not see a mate in one flies right in the face of common sense. Back when I was younger, I played quite a bit of chess. I reached the point where seeing a position where one of the possible moves is checkmate was automatic. I was better than average, but any certified master player easily wiped the floor with me. (I considered it a major victory if I could extract a draw from a chess master.) I have no doubt that Spock played at a master level. His thinking, as is written, is uncluttered and would not be distracted by the pyrotechnics of, say, Emanuel Lasker. I refuse to believe he would be "surprised" by any legal move that an opponent made. He should be able to easily calculate all possible countermoves to a given move and, at a bare minimum, make sure none of them are checkmate.

So, given that it is extremely unlikely that Spock would habitually fail to notice an opponent's checkmate in one moves, there must be an alternative explanation.

Kirk, who who infamously reprogrammed the Kobayashi Maru test, has been known to operate outside of the conventional set of rules.

In "Where No Man..." it is very likely that moving the rook was the only legal move available to Kirk. (Fortunately, I don't know the rules to 3D chess, so my mind is free to speculate into whichever direction it feels.) If that were the case, then Spock was correct. He should have moved the rook. Being the rule breaker he is, he chose not to. Both Kirk and Spock knew he cheated. There was no reason to be so gauche as to openly state it.

Kirk wasn't playing chess. Kirk was playing "test the Vulcan's claim of lacking emotions."

@wonder2wonder said:

Charlie X always reminds me of the boy in the "Twilight Zone" episode "It's a Good Life".

Yeah, but I think Charlie was, at least initially, trying to do the right things. He genuinely wanted to assimilate. The "It's a Good Life" boy was a complete sociopath.

I thought the crew actually did a pretty crappy job of welcoming Charlie aboard. He was constantly criticized for every social faux pas even though he had no idea of how he was supposed to behave. I'd get frustrated, too, in his shoes.

Actually, the chess game was just another allegory (or something) to show the superiority of human intuition etc, against the cold logic (at that time, at least) of the Vulcans. The actual rules of chess, etc, including that a master player such as Spock would never be taken in by such moves, were irrelevant.

@First off I totally agree with Knixon's reply ..as Jet pointed out Kirk did not do any illegal move...he made a move that Spock genuinely wasn't expecting .

So as Knixon wrote the point of the scene is simply to show that logic does not always guarantee you the upper hand...on the contrary

In your OP sukhi you wrote:

He very specifically wanted Yoeman Rand to like him and to do all sorts of things to him that had only been done to him in his adolescent imagination.

@Charlie was living with a bunch of incorporeal beings and he had never seen a female in his life ..he had no conception of the relationship between our two sexes... how could he imagine what he would have liked a woman to do to please him ? He had no idea the sensations opposite sexes experience as kids, youths, when they see and are close to each other etc..

@Knixon said:

Actually, the chess game was just another allegory (or something) to show the superiority of human intuition etc, against the cold logic (at that time, at least) of the Vulcans. The actual rules of chess, etc, including that a master player such as Spock would never be taken in by such moves, were irrelevant.

That was, of course, probably the intent of the writers.

But one should keep in mind that art is not a one way street. An artist has a point of view and presents it the world. An observer will bring his/her knowledge, prejudices, experiences etc. to the table as well and the two perspectives meld. In an ideal scenario, completely new ideas will emerge from the process.

@sunshine62 said:

@First off I totally agree with Knixon's reply ..as Jet pointed out Kirk did not do any illegal move...he made a move that Spock genuinely wasn't expecting .

So as Knixon wrote the point of the scene is simply to show that logic does not always guarantee you the upper hand...on the contrary

In a combat situation or in negotiations, it is of course true that logic will not always guarantee the upper hand. In a real life situation, there are too many unknown factors at play. Intuition is an essential quality for achieving a desirable outcome.

In a game like chess, however, the rules are cut and dried. There are a finite and easily predictable number of counter responses to any move that is made. A totally logical being such as Spock would consider every possible response to a move and not fail to see something as obvious as a checkmate in one.

---

In your OP sukhi you wrote:

He very specifically wanted Yoeman Rand to like him and to do all sorts of things to him that had only been done to him in his adolescent imagination.

---

@Charlie was living with a bunch of incorporeal beings and he had never seen a female in his life ..he had no conception of the relationship between our two sexes... how could he imagine what he would have liked a woman to do to please him ? He had no idea the sensations opposite sexes experience as kids, youths, when they see and are close to each other etc..

Charlie had access to memory banks and claimed that he used them to learn how to speak. I would assume that such tapes included basic information on human biology, including illustrations.

Illustrations?....you mean Charlie XXX?

@Rudd-12 said:

Illustrations?....you mean Charlie XXX?

Or at least Charli XCX

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl7AodU2p60

@sukhisoo said:

@sunshine62 said:

@First off I totally agree with Knixon's reply ..as Jet pointed out Kirk did not do any illegal move...he made a move that Spock genuinely wasn't expecting .

So as Knixon wrote the point of the scene is simply to show that logic does not always guarantee you the upper hand...on the contrary

In a combat situation or in negotiations, it is of course true that logic will not always guarantee the upper hand. In a real life situation, there are too many unknown factors at play. Intuition is an essential quality for achieving a desirable outcome.

In a game like chess, however, the rules are cut and dried. There are a finite and easily predictable number of counter responses to any move that is made. A totally logical being such as Spock would consider every possible response to a move and not fail to see something as obvious as a checkmate in one.

---

In your OP sukhi you wrote:

He very specifically wanted Yoeman Rand to like him and to do all sorts of things to him that had only been done to him in his adolescent imagination.

---

@Charlie was living with a bunch of incorporeal beings and he had never seen a female in his life ..he had no conception of the relationship between our two sexes... how could he imagine what he would have liked a woman to do to please him ? He had no idea the sensations opposite sexes experience as kids, youths, when they see and are close to each other etc..

Charlie had access to memory banks and claimed that he used them to learn how to speak. I would assume that such tapes included basic information on human biology, including illustrations.

It's a shame Charlie was so single-minded, Yeoman Rand was saving herself for Kirk, but I bet Yeoman Tina Lawton would have been happy to do all those things to him.

by sukhi: In a game like chess, however, the rules are cut and dried. There are a finite and easily predictable number of counter responses to any move that is made. A totally logical being such as Spock would consider every possible response to a move and not fail to see something as obvious as a checkmate in one.

@I understand what you are getting at. Lucklily, my grandpa taught me how to play when he was 8 ..we played just for fun , no master mind playing or timing involved.

In playing chess one is taught that there are rules ..moves to do and others to avoid depending at what stage the game is at.

Spock would obviously have followed the rules of the game because he was driven by logic..on the other hand Kirk was a person that didn't always follow the rules .actually he was one that liked to find out of the box solutions, defying logic often.

Kirk played “by his own rules” and that was why Spock found it irritating . The game would have been very disorientating for Spock…moves that seemed illogical and absurd to him would easily have been classified not dangerous /harmless hence he would fail to give them the proper attention ..this attitude would have turned out often to be a disadvantage to Spock further on in the game.

Kirk didn’t win the game in question..Spock said he would checkmate Kirk in one move but Kirk instead came up with a solution that permitted him simply to escape his trap.

Kirk's moves were hardly predictable and this was what gave him often the upper hand with Spock, who didn't always give the proper value to moves he felt were illogical and of no threat . Also not playing by the rules forced Spock to reconsider his game/tactics too.

Charlie had access to memory banks and claimed that he used them to learn how to speak. I would assume that such tapes included basic information on human biology, including illustrations.

@Well we all known ,Charlie was prone to lying . I always thought that it was kinda convenient ..the crash was so devastating that the whole crew died ..crew members would have been in different parts of the ship so if they all died the ship must have been quite a wreck yet the computer files were okay....unlikely.

When Charlie was saved he was an enfant ..I found it more plausible that he would have learnt to speak the language of the Thasians growing up … and instead he (and the Thasians) learnt / assimilated the English language thanks to their godly powers and not via the computer.

I think the whole point of Kirk was that he could annoy Spock therefore proving that Spock still had some human emotions,not whether the move he made was illegal or not.

@Nexus71 said:

I think the whole point of Kirk was that he could annoy Spock therefore proving that Spock still had some human emotions,not whether the move he made was illegal or not.

I agree that was one of the points.

The other point they were trying to make, as noted by Knixon and Sunshine, is that human intuition is inherently superior to Vulcan logic. I feel that their using Chess for this was a poor example.

As @sunshine62 noted, there are moves available to the opponent that are easily overlooked. For example, I once moved my knight into an aggressive position, but in doing so exposed it to attack from an enemy pawn. The other player certainly never considered that. As a result of his taking the knight, his pawn structure was weakened enough that I made a successful attack on his king, ending the game a few moves later. (I was not so skilled that I could calculate an exact checkmating sequence. I intuitively felt I had a chance at victory by sacrificing the piece and rightfully thought it would be fun to try.) When playing against experts and masters, such moves were made against me, ending in an easy victory for them. It was deflating. I would argue, though, that missing such moves was a result of using too much human intuition and not enough cold impartial logic. I cannot picture Spock overlooking such moves, so I mentally rewrote it so that Kirk made illegal moves. The Charlie X example was my exploring how it would work within the larger story.

Perhaps chess was the wrong example but then again in DS9 the Vulcans beat Sisko&co in a game of baseball how believable would that be?