Entertainment
Network Execs Hated The Star Trek Episode That Created A Great Guest Villain
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Star Trek is a franchise that most fans love to watch because of its heroes. It’s genuinely thrilling to see characters like Captain Kirk overcome insurmountable odds (he doesn’t believe in the no-win scenario), or Captain Picard overcome unstoppable villains (the line must be drawn here!). However, I’d argue that the villains of Trek are actually much more compelling. Characters like Gul Dukat, Q, and even Nus Braka steal every scene and leave us quietly rooting for the bad guys to finally win.
Believe it or not, this is a franchise tradition that goes all the way back to the beginning. In addition to those recurring baddies mentioned above, Trek has always had memorable guest villains played by actors who show up and immediately blow everyone away. The Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Charlie X” was one that the network absolutely hated, but fans came to love. Of course, most of that affection is because of one man: Robert Walker, whose method acting turned a frightened 17-year-old boy into one of the scariest villains the Enterprise crew ever encountered!
Get Out My Ship, Charles!
“Charlie X” is an episode where the Enterprise crew rescues a young man named Charlie (played by Robert Walker) whose ship had crashed. The crew tries to help the kid out, including Captain Kirk, whom he sees as a father figure. However, things take a sinister turn when the crew discovers that Charlie has the powers of telepathy and transmutation, which he uses for horrific acts like making everyone who annoys him disappear. Eventually, the godlike aliens who gave this kid superpowers show up to take custody of him, reasoning that he is now too dangerous to be raised among humans.
These days, “Charlie X” is considered a fairly strong episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. At the time, though, NBC really hated the episode because they thought Charlie’s presence made the story feel too much like a teenage melodrama. Plus, everything took place aboard the Enterprise, so the episode didn’t have any of the “strange new worlds” the show would become famous for. That second factor ended up being a blessing in disguise, though: postproduction was very easy on “Charlie X” (especially after they recycled some footage), so it became the second episode of Star Trek to hit the airwaves.
Boldly Going Where No Villain Has Gone Before
Fortunately, the episode didn’t need exotic locations to be memorable when it had a killer guest star. Robert Walker played a young man with fantastic powers, and he blew the cast and crew away with his acting talent. In The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy, Janice Rand actor Grace Lee Whitney explained that Walker was a method actor who deliberately avoided interacting with the cast between shots so that he could stay in character. She claimed that “it worked” and that “You can see it in his performance, a subtle yet persistent air of estrangement from the Enterprise crew, and indeed, from the rest of humanity.”
She gushed that Walker’s “careful effort to stay in character added a convincing dimension to his performance,” which helped the actor “[capture] the perfect balance, projecting vulnerability, innocence, and horrifying menace at the same time. A lesser actor could not have handled the range and depth of the character.” In a later interview with the Television Academy Foundation, “Charlie X” writer D.C. Fontana agreed, noting that Walker “was excellent as Charlie.” She also commended the then-26-year-old actor for successfully portraying a 17-year-old character, noting that “he looked young enough to pull it off.”
“Charlie X” was a Star Trek: The Original Series episode that NBC hated but that fans loved. They wouldn’t have loved it nearly so much, though, if Robert Walker hadn’t turned in such a chillingly perfect performance. He’s one of the best guest villains in the franchise, and his method-acting talents give us a one-off villain that fans love to hate. It’s an approach that would inspire later Star Trek actors, including Michael Dorn, whose own method acting made Klingon security chief Worf one of the most beloved characters in Star Trek history.
Entertainment
The Battlestar Galactica Episode Secretly Inspired By McDonald’s
By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated
Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica reboot is one of the most grim and gritty sci-fi shows ever created. Every bulkhead is absolutely brimming with drama, including simmering tensions between the civilian fleet and the soldiers protecting them. There’s also plenty of erotic tension, like the kind fueling every single interaction between Starbuck and Apollo. Making everything that much worse is the general premise of the show: that most of humanity has been wiped out by evil robots, and everyone who is left must constantly run, fight, and run some more to keep the genocidal clankers hoping to finish the job.
Long story short, the series is very dramatic, and it’s filled with one weird bummer of a moment after another. However, these are counterbalanced by moments of triumph and joy made all the sweeter by our characters’ constant struggles. A great example of this is “The Hand of God,” a Season 1 episode where the Battlestar Galactica crew finally took the fight to the Cylons and won a hard-fought victory. Understandably, it was an episode that made the fans quite happy. However, what most fans don’t know is that this episode had a nickname inspired by the pioneers of the Happy Meal: McDonald’s!
Big Mac, Big Bang
The premise of “The Hand of God” is that the Battlestar Galactica crew discovers an asteroid filled with tylium, which is necessary for faster-than-light travel. There’s just one problem: it’s being guarded by the Cylons, who are busy mining it for their own needs. Sick of running and hungry for the opportunity, Commander Adama orders the asteroid to be taken by force. This is a dangerous proposition, as the ship has only narrowly escaped earlier encounters with the Cylons. But thanks to a crazy plan from Starbuck and some hotshot flying from Apollo, the Galactica crew is able to score their first real victory against the toasters, boosting morale throughout the fleet.
Incidentally, the plot of this episode was written to boost morale among the viewers as well. As written in Battlestar Galactica: The Official Companion, “The Hand of God” started when co-showrunner David Eick was taking inventory of the kinds of episodes they had already made. “I had done an interior courtroom drama, we had done an inside-Baltar’s-head episode, we had done a torture room episode and a somewhat absurd episode, and I thought we needed to remind viewers why the show’s called Battlestar Galactica, he said. “So I asked David [Weddle] and Bradley [Thompson] to give us a ‘Big Mac’—a big combat show.”
Smoke’em If You Got’em
What made “The Hand of God” a “big combat show,” exactly? Basically, Battlestar Galactica didn’t have enough of a budget to show extravagant space fights in every episode. Frankly, that’s one of the reasons so much time is spent on Caprica and aboard the Galactica. Nonetheless, Eick and the other producers knew how much fans loved the show’s killer space battles. “Big Mac” was a fitting nickname, then, as it referred to giving viewers much more of the action (i.e., the meat) than they normally got.
In this case, David Eick’s instincts were perfectly correct: “The Hand of God” ended up being a crowd-pleasing fan-favorite, largely because of the ambitious outer space battles. After watching our heroes get their butts kicked for so much of Season 1, this victory over the dastardly Cylons felt downright cathartic. This was an episode that set the bar for such scenes quite high. Fortunately, the Battlestar Galactica writers and producers rose to the challenge, and the action on this show only gets better over time. If you’re as religious as Six, you might say this was because the series’ success was guided by the titular hand of god.
Or, quite possibly, the white-gloved hand of a darker, much more Eldritch figure: Ronald McDonald!
Entertainment
NYT Pips hints, answers for July 4, 2026
Welcome to your guide to Pips, the latest game in the New York Times catalogue.
Released in August 2025, Pips puts a unique spin on dominoes, creating a fun single-player experience that could become your next daily gaming habit.
Currently, if you’re stuck, the game only offers to reveal the entire puzzle, forcing you to move on to the next difficulty level and start over. However, we have you covered! Below are piecemeal answers that will serve as hints so that you can find your way through each difficulty level.
How to play Pips
If you’ve ever played dominoes, you’ll have a passing familiarity with how Pips is played. As we’ve shared in our previous hints stories for Pips, the tiles, like dominoes, are placed vertically or horizontally and connect with each other. The main difference between a traditional game of dominoes and Pips is the color-coded conditions you have to address. The touching tiles don’t necessarily have to match.
The conditions you have to meet are specific to the color-coded spaces. For example, if it provides a single number, every side of a tile in that space must add up to the number provided. It is possible — and common — for only half a tile to be within a color-coded space.
Here are common examples you’ll run into across the difficulty levels:
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Number: All the pips in this space must add up to the number.
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Equal: Every domino half in this space must be the same number of pips.
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Not Equal: Every domino half in this space must have a completely different number of pips.
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Less than: Every domino half in this space must add up to less than the number.
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Greater than: Every domino half in this space must add up to more than the number.
If an area does not have any color coding, it means there are no conditions on the portions of dominoes within those spaces.
Easy difficulty hints, answers for July 4 Pips
Number (2): Everything in this space must add up to 2. The answer is 1-2, placed vertically.
Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 1-2, placed vertically; 1-1, placed horizontally.
Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 2-3, placed vertically.
Equal (2): Everything in this space must be equal to 2. The answer is 2-3, placed vertically; 2-4, placed horizontally.
Number (4): Everything in this space must add up to 4. The answer is 2-4, placed horizontally; 0-3, placed vertically.
Medium difficulty hints, answers for July 4 Pips
Equal (2): Everything in this space must be equal to 2. The answer is 2-3, placed vertically; 2-4, placed horizontally.
Less Than (2): Everything in this space must be less than 2. The answer is 0-4, placed horizontally.
Equal (3): Everything in this space must be equal to 3. The answer is 4-5, placed horizontally; 4-4, placed vertically.
Number (4): Everything in this space must add up to 4. The answer is 4-3, placed vertically.
Equal (5): Everything in this space must be equal to 5. The answer is 0-4, placed horizontally; 4-2, placed vertically.
Number (10): Everything in this space must add up to 10. The answer is 4-5, placed horizontally.
Mashable Top Stories
Greater Than (4): Everything in this space must be greater than 4. The answer is 6-2, placed vertically.
Number (4): Everything in this space must add up to 4. The answer is 4-3, placed vertically.
Equal (1): Everything in this space must be equal to 1. The answer is 1-1, placed vertically.
Less Than (1): Everything in this space must be less than 1. The answer is 0-4, placed horizontally.
Hard difficulty hints, answers for July 4 Pips
Number (0): Everything in this space must add up to 0. The answer is 5-0, placed vertically.
Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 5-0, placed vertically.
Number (2): Everything in this space must add up to 2. The answer is 1-2, placed vertically.
Greater Than (0): Everything in this space must be greater than 0. The answer is 1-2, placed vertically.
Number (7): Everything in this space must add up to 7. The answer is 1-6, placed horizontally.
Number (4): Everything in this space must add up to 4. The answer is 4-6, placed horizontally.
Number (0): Everything in this space must add up to 0. The answer is 0-0, placed vertically.
Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 2-5, placed vertically.
Number (2): Everything in this space must add up to 2. The answer is 2-5, placed vertically.
Number (7): Everything in this space must add up to 7. The answer is 4-6, placed horizontally; 1-4, placed horizontally.
Number (4): Everything in this space must add up to 4. The answer is 1-4, placed horizontally.
Number (7): Everything in this space must add up to 7. The answer is 5-3, placed vertically; 2-4, placed horizontally.
Number (4): Everything in this space must add up to 4. The answer is 2-4, placed horizontally.
Greater Than (4): Everything in this space must be greater than 4. The answer is 6-5, placed vertically.
Number (7): Everything in this space must add up to 7. The answer is 3-1, placed horizontally; 6-0, placed vertically.
Number (7): Everything in this space must add up to 7. The answer is 6-5, placed vertically; 2-6, placed vertically.
Greater Than (4): Everything in this space must be greater than 4. The answer is 2-6, placed vertically.
Equal (3): Everything in this space must be equal to 3. The answer is 5-3, placed vertically; 3-1, placed horizontally; 3-3, placed vertically.
Number (4): Everything in this space must add up to 4. The answer is 4-4, placed horizontally.
Number (4): Everything in this space must add up to 4. The answer is 4-4, placed horizontally.
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Entertainment
Did An Overlooked TV Show Already Spoil The Third Superman Film?
By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated
Part of why James Gunn’s Superman was such a good movie is that it was a relatively self-contained adventure that still planted interesting seeds for future projects. One of those seeds was the surprise appearance of a party-loving Supergirl, which set her up for her own solo spinoff film. Lex Luthor’s arrest, meanwhile, set up his fun cameo in Peacemaker and his future appearance in Superman: The Man of Tomorrow. We also saw Superman’s evil clone disappear into a black hole, which some fans saw as the end of his story. However, many others are convinced that this is setting him up to be the Big Bad of a future DCU film.
For example, it’s possible that the clone ended up in a different universe. That universe may be the DCU’s version of Earth 2, a world ruled by an evil Justice League. If so, the clone may reappear as Ultraman, who is the leader of that evil league in the comics. However, there is a different theory: based on his outfit in Superman, the clone may eventually resurface as Doomsday, the villain capable of outright killing Superman. It’s a cool theory, but if James Gunn chooses to go this route, audiences will be unimpressed. Why is that? Simple: this exact plot already appeared in the TV show Superman & Lois!
Attack Of The Clone
Early on in Superman, we discover that our titular hero has, shockingly, gotten his butt kicked by a guy named the “Hammer of Boravia.” Who could actually go toe to toe with the Man of Steel? Eventually, we learn the surprising truth: the Hammer of Boravia is actually Lex Luthor’s pet clone of Superman, one who can be given remote commands during battle. It looks like the clone might actually beat Superman near the end, but he gets tossed into a black hole. But fans have long suspected he might have ended up somewhere in the multiverse, especially after Peacemaker confirmed the existence of other realities.
One theory is that he ended up on Earth 2, from which he will eventually lead an evil Justice League. However, other fans have theorized that he could come back as Doomsday. While the clone doesn’t have Doomsday’s rocky face, he did wear a suit and mask very similar to what Doomsday wore in the comics, right down to the goggles. While this would be cool onscreen, it would also be more than a bit derivative. In Superman & Lois, Bizarro was an evil Superman clone that Lex Luthor transformed into Doomsday. Should this happen in the DCU, it may cause some fans to worry that James Gunn is officially out of ideas.
A Classic Comic Villain Returns
Obviously, all new comic book media borrows from what came before, so the DCU was always destined to have some similarities to previous DC media. Nonetheless, a major part of this cinematic universe’s success has been surprising us with beloved characters who are very different from previous onscreen appearances. Superman & Lois was a great show, one that all DC fans owe it to themselves to watch. But if Gunn ends up stealing the show’s idea of turning an evil Superman clone into Doomsday, future DCU movies may bomb like Supergirl did. After all, why head to the theater for a “new” story when you can just watch the reruns they stole from?
Obviously, we don’t know what the future holds (if anything) for the evil Superman clone. Should he return as Doomsday, Ultraman, or even just as himself, it won’t be until the third Superman film at the absolute earliest. Of course, we’ll be lucky to have a DCU by then; with Supergirl being a critical and commercial flop, Warner Bros. may completely reevaluate its approach to future superhero movies. That may mean getting a new leader to bring this cinematic universe to life. Who will it be? One thing’s for sure: it’s not going to be a clone (evil or otherwise) of James Gunn!
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