Spock's Brain

Season 3, Episode 1, Aired
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Episode Summary

Stardate 5431.4: The Enterprise is intercepted by a starship of unknown design and a woman from the ship beams directly into the bridge and uses a device to render the Enterprise's crew unconscious. She then walks over to Spock... When the crew awakens, McCoy summons Kirk to sick bay and informs him that the alien visitor apparently removed Spock's entire brain without even performing surgery. After Spock's body is fitted with a device that allows McCoy to control the Vulcan's motor functions with a remote control, Kirk starts a search for Spock's brain, hoping it can be recovered and somehow returned to Spock before his body decays.moreless
5.9
out of 10
EPISODE RATING: Mediocre
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Fan Episode Reviews (9)

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  • Oh the pain, the pain...

    1.0
    "Abysmal"
    By Gislef, Nov 20, 2011 Report Abuse
    (to borrow a line from another S.F. show's icon...)

    Caught this on the remastered run and if anything it's even worse then I remember. First up is the bad bad music cues. They beam Spock's body down to the planet, Kirk looks at in, zoom in on Spock's blank face, and... bombastic horror/music sting loud enough to rattle the windows. Cripes, the Horta didn't get this kind of musical buildup. Later when Kirk and the guys fight the Morg guards the music is equally blaring, and again there's an inexplicable cut to Spock's blank face for a "reaction" shot. Here's a hint, guys: there's no point doing reaction shots if the people you show don't have any reactions.

    I read Blish's short story adaptation and thankfully he omitted the whole remote-control windup Spock (which is noisier than the Tin Man from Oz: oil the joints, guys!). There looks like there are 10 buttons on the controller, and they keep hitting button number 1, so maybe they were rating this episode. One imagines Chapel helping McCoy perfect the mechanism.

    There's also a goofy cut to Sulu giving a supplemental log reading where he says... well, nothing we don't know already. The syndication cut even removes his finishing line about Chekov camped out on the planet.

    And of course at the end there's another god-like piece of technology that we'll never hear about again. Scotty even says he'd like a crack at it: why doesn't he or McCoy or the other 420+ crew just use it once each and dictate everything they know down. Then the Federation could be doing removals every week. Then again, we might get more episodes like this. Thankfully we were spared "Picard's Brain" in TNG. Although that's another bad thing about this episode: the title sounds like a bad 50s B-Movie. Also, if you're in the mood have a drinking game and take a shot every time they say "brain." Thankfully, you'll be passed out by the end of the episode.

    And there's cringeworthy moments like Kirk throwing himself on his knees to Kara to beg her for a chance to visit Spock. Ugh. And the unflattering torture belts. And the weird directorial touches like a camera shot through the helmet onto Kirk's face, or the dramatic frenzied-eye closeups of McCoy during the operation. Nobody does frenzied eyes like DeForest Kelley, check out "City on the Edge..." for another good example.

    Overall this definitely is a bad episode. All you can do is assume that everyone responsible for it knew it was a joke and wanted to pass that on the audience. Unfortunately, they seem a bit too sober-faced and you get the impression they really thought they had a winner on their hands. Oh well.moreless

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  • Gene L. Coon's script played straight and executed badly

    3.5
    "Bad"
    By desmond557, Oct 24, 2011 Report Abuse
    Spock's Brain was actually penned by Gene L. Coon who intended the show to be played as a comedy. Unfortunately, the season 3 producer of Classic Trek, Fred Freiberger, didn't quite like comedies and decided to play it straight...which resulted in this catastrophe. In season 3, there were few comedic scenes except at the end of an episode such as when McCoy asks Kirk if he wants to look like Vulcan officer for the rest of his captaincy in 'The Enterprise Incident' or at the end of 'The Tholian Web' when Kirk is puzzled that McCoy and Spock never consulted his emergency recordings--in case he was dead or missing (and the rest of the crew quietly laugh). These scenes usually happened after the tension in an episode was resolved, however.
    Freiberger was a 'serious' science fiction producer and even David Gerrold recognised this when he wrote or rather re-wrote'The Cloudminders'--an allegory on social inequality. By the way, in Herb Solow and Robert Justman's 1996 book 'Inside Star Trek: The Real Story', Bob Justman candidly admits that it was he who suggested that Spock speak to and guide Dr.McCoy through the brain operation. Oh well, at least he admitted that this mistake. But no one could counter Star Trek's clear decline in quality as a result of NBC's budget cutbacks in its final season.moreless

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  • Even the worst episode in TOS was better than the best episode in many others Sci-fi TV shows.

    3.2
    "Bad"
    By Neenach, Dec 11, 2010 Report Abuse
    I never really gave any Star Trek shows "1's" or "2's" because Star Trek at it's worst is better than any "best" episode of Lost in Space. Of course, Spock's Brain is teetering on Cat Women of the Moon stuff here with beautiful brainless women who capture neanderthal men and give them pleasure and pain. Plus, the ridiculous scene of Spock clearing his throat and guiding McCoy through the brain operation also teeters on making Star Trek more like TV sci-fi from the fifties. What so painful about this episode is that it's a hint how bad Star Trek may have gotten if it went on to a fourth season. Thus, the 3rd season is not as truly bad as some of have mentioned. But it does reveal a terrible direction that the series was headed. Like all Star Trek episodes, there are some diamonds in the rough here. I liked the scene with Sulu, Uhura, and Chevok all consolidating their scientific knowledge together (in Spock's absense) to determine where the alien ship may have left with Spock's Brain. I would say that Spock's strict mentoring has paid off. After all, the Federation has many starships and they just can't expect Spock to be the best science officer in the whole fleet.moreless

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  • Spock's brain is stolen, and Kirk and company try to retrieve it.

    4.0
    "Poor"
    By Celedorian, Dec 11, 2010 Report Abuse
    This third season opener is famous for being campy, and there certainly are some laugh out loud cheesy moments. But truth be told, most of it is rather boring and not even fun for laughs. The idea for this episode was an interesting science fiction premise by Gene Coon (who like Gene Roddenberry had left the show by the time the third season began, putting the show in the hands of Producer Fred Freiberger.) Coon thought it was interesting how we externally create devices that mirror how our brain internally handles our bodies: air conditioning and heating to regulate temperatures, communication systems to exchange messages, and sensors to gather information. Coon wondered what it would be like if a human brain was used to run a colony, controlling its functions as if it were a human body. It was an idea worthy of exploring, but the execution here is dreadful, with Spock's remote control body (complete with an unexplained clicking sound each time he moves) and disembodied voice adding to the ridiculousness of the sci fi idea gone awry.moreless

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  • An alien female beams aboard the ship and, after incapacitating the rest of the crew, surgically removes Spock's brain. Kirk and co. have just hours to locate and replace it before Spock's body dies. A truly terrible start to the final season...moreless

    4.0
    "Poor"
    By Jay-Spacedust, Dec 10, 2008 Report Abuse
    And so arrives the third season. The titles are now in blue instead of yellow (I never liked the blue, it felt 'cold'), the theme is slightly re-recorded again, and... err... Scotty has his hair slightly differently! That's about it. ...Except to say, the quality of stories fell dramatically in the third season. After many of the polished and thoughtful stories of the first and much of the second season, the third season saw a number of much weaker instalments. None more so than the infamously bad "Spock's Brain".

    "Spectre of the Gun" was actually the first episode to be produced for the third season, but the series seldom followed production order on broadcasts, and this episode was selected to air as the season premiere.
    Just as the second season began with the Spock-centric "Amok Time", the third begins with another Spock-based tale, seemingly to capitalise on Spock's huge fan base. But whereas "Amok Time" offered us an interesting glimpse of Spock's homeworld, "Spock's Brain" is one of the silliest and just plan bad episodes ever offered up by the Original Series.

    Leonard Nimoy has said that he really didn't like filming this episode, and William Shatner voiced similar thoughts; It's not hard to see why.
    This is often cited to be the worst episode of the series; just as 'The Next Generation' had "Shades of Grey" (terrible second season clip show), the Original Series had this.

    The whole plot device of McCoy controlling Spock's brainless body, like a robot, is one of the most ridiculous things ever seen in 'Star Trek'. It's hard to think that a series that had reached such heights with some other stories could sink to something as stupid as this.

    I confess to not fully grasping just why the alien woman tracked down Spock and stole his brain in the first place, nor the whole men-on-surface women-underground thing; by the explanation stage late in the episode, I was pretty much beyond caring.

    I hadn't watched this episode for many years until last night, when I re-watched it for this review. It was every bit as bad as I remembered!

    As I mention above, this is often cited as the worst single episode of the Original Series. It's defiantly in the Bottom 5, possibly out of the whole franchise.moreless

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Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions

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  • Trivia

    ADD TRIVIA
    • Kara says the knowledge lasts two or three hours, and McCoy says that's just enough time to do the operation. So... how did Kara earlier get the knowledge, go on an open-ended trip hoping to find a suitable brain, do the surgery on the Enterprise, and get back using the knowledge to pilot the ship? Edit
    • When Kara activates the belt-torture devices, it only affects the landing party even though the Morg slaves are wearing the same belts. She only has three buttons, so how does she get such precise control? Edit
    • Is Spock really so impressive that Kara stops with him and leaves with his brain? Maybe there's someone else on the next deck with an even better brain. Edit

  • Notes

    ADD NOTES
    • In the 2007 remastered version of the episode, the ship that Kara arrives in is changed from a 1960s missile/rocket design to a more modern advanced ship that looks nothing like the original. The ice planet also receives a makeover, showing ice and snow in the longer matte shots. Edit
    • For the first time, the main viewscreen image is rear-projected live during filming in order to allow the actors to interact with the display. Previous viewscreen images were superimposed after the scene had been filmed. Edit
    • The opening theme music now features a mix of a female soprano and a Theremin. Edit

  • Quotes

    ADD QUOTES
    • McCoy: I'll never live this down--this Vulcan telling me how to operate. Edit
    • Spock: While I might trust the doctor to remove a splinter or lance a boil, I do not believe he has the knowledge to restore a brain. McCoy: Thank you. Edit
    • Kirk: Readout, Mr. Chekov. Chekov: No structures, Captain. No mechanized objects that I can read. No surface consumption, no generation of energy. Atmosphere is perfectly all right, of course. Temperature, a high maximum of 40. Livable. Kirk: You have a thick skin. Edit

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