Trek On: SPOCK’S BRAIN

Title: Spock’s Brain

Airdate: 9/20/1968

Plot Summary

In Spock’s Brain. the Enterprise is intercepted by a small ship that beams aboard a go-go girl. She stuns the entire ship and takes Spock’s brain. Kirk, Scotty, and Chekov investigate to find a weird society where the women live underground and the men live above like Neanderthals. It turns out the society is run by a central computer and uses Spock’s brain to continue running the underground but the inhabitants know none of the skills that their ancestors knew.

Risk Is Our Business

Shatner needs some sort of kudos for being so earnest every time he has to say “Spock’s brain.”

Logical

Spock spends most of the episode as Bone’s meat puppet. He also helps Bones connect his brain on the operating table through trial and error.

He’s Dead Jim

Bones can make a device that has what I would assume to be user-programmable buttons. He has the “step forward, turns 90 degrees, and then stare menacingly into camera” button, the “walk forward, grab woman’s arm, move one finger to hit the free the prisoner’s button on her wristband” button. Quite amazing.

Bones does a reversal on Kirk with a variation of the “Risk is our business” speech by insisting he tries to use the teacher, even though it might fry his brain.

Helm Sluggish Captain

Sulu tracks the ion trail well enough. He also suggests the planet with the highest technological progress, even though it couldn’t have made that ship. He also takes the center chair while the command crew looks for Spock’s brain.

Nuclear Wessels

Chekov suggests the lower developed planet even as it has the most population to search for Spock’s brain. Chekov also beams down to the planet to take Spock’s role in investigating the planet.

Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar

Uhura finds the energy signature on the glaciated planet, as well as asks the primary question: What would someone want with Spock’s brain?

My Wee Bairns

Scotty is very impressed with technology of the place and correctly identifies that there’s no way the people that run it could’ve built it. He pulls off the sick routine quite nicely for Kirk to grab the phaser. For some reason, he tucks in his tunic into his pants and looks really weird throughout the entire episode.

Canon Maker

The third season changes the credits from yellow/gold to blue. So now just by watching the opening the credits you can identify an episode’s season. 1st was yellow but no Deforest Kelly. 2nd was yellow with Deforest Kelly, and the third was blue credits.

This is the second time they have to reunite Spock’s mind and body. It will not be the last.

In the Deep Space Nine episode The Magnificent Ferengi they are able to control a vorta’s dead body much the same way they do Spock, so I reluctantly call McCoy’s dial-a-Spock canon. But I’m not happy about it.

Canon Breaker

Ion drive is supposedly way beyond the technology of the 23rd century however there are other stories that mention how ion drives are used by pre-warp civilization as they are considered a more primitive method of propulsion. They have reconciled this as Ion Propulsion which can go faster than light was considered theoretical and something that could never be done but for sub-light it’s not nearly as useful.

Uhura is able to find the energy signature on the planet though why the comm officer would find this instead of Chekov as acting science officer is beyond me.

Man It Feels Bad To Be A Red Shirt

No deaths!

Technobabble

Bones has a gadget that can remote control Spock. Life support on the Enterprise can keep people alive indefinitely but Vulcans not so much. Chekov brings out the phaser space heater again by heating up some rocks.

I Know That Guy:

Marj Dusay plays Kara and will probably go down in history as the girl who hysterically asked on Star Trek what is a brain? She actually had a pretty good career in various guest shots in TV shows throughout the 70s and 80s as well as some regular work on some daytime soaps. She started a golf charity to raise money for abused children in her home state of Kansas in 1984 that’s apparently still going today. So good on her.

Shelia Layton played Luma and James Daris played the Morg.

What It Means To Be Human – Review

BRAIN AND BRAIN! What is BRAIN?

Spock’s Brain is considered the worst episode of Star Trek and while it is suitably terrible, I can’t say it’s the worst. It’s unintentionally hilarious and incredibly sexist in all the most entertaining ways. Having a girl in go-go boots exasperatedly scream about “what is brain” is timeless comedy and I don’t care what anyone says. Calling women the bringers of “pain and delight” is the lesser-known but just as funny bit of sexism as well.

But really I can’t call this episode good, no matter how much “so bad, it’s good” entertainment value I get out of it. The worst is still The Alternative Factor as it’s not memorable in any way. Spock’s Brain may be a lot of things, but you can’t say it’s not memorable.

But as I said, it’s ridiculous. The idea of an atrophied society isn’t terrible and various b-movie plots over the preceding decades certainly did worse. But it’s still insane in its execution. The women and men just take it? Once you learn from the teacher, wouldn’t the priestess at least know something that she could retain? Maybe question this empty life at some point?

How they were able to keep a straight face every time they had to say the phrase “Spock’s brain” was impressive, though I bet there was a much deeper pile of outtakes on the cutting room floor than other episodes.

Ok you’re able to keep Spock alive on machines. I can buy that. I cannot buy a multi-colored random button box that can remote control Spock like an Aibo. The specific actions they were able to do with his body was ludicrous beyond any belief.

Bones uses the teacher to figure out how to put Spock’s brain back in his body but needs Spock to play connect the wire to see if an arm works, or a finger, etc. Wonder how they tested his bowel movements or his anus control. Really the amount of involuntary systems controlled by the brain, how did he know which ones to connect? Then Spock just sits up like nothing happened. Didn’t even need to cut his hair.

The only redeemable moment is the little bit of sleuthing Kirk, Chekov, Sulu, and Uhura do on the bridge trying to figure out which planet to investigate, given the ticking clock. Sulu and Chekov are both wrong but Uhura asks the pointed question and finds the weird energy signature. It’s a nice moment between Kirk and characters other than Bones and Spock.

Really, a terrible start to the third season, one that would prove to be a sign of things to come. It is funny though and probably is more entertaining than you might think, though definitely not intentionally.

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