“Spock’s Brain” is written by: Lee Cronin, a pseudonym
for Gene L. Coon, and is directed by Marc Daniels. It was filmed under production code 61, was
the 1st episode of Star Trek Season 3, the 56th episode
of Star Trek, and was broadcast on September 20, 1968.
Star Trek
was essentially up for cancellation at the end of Season 2, but fans Bjo and
John Trimble organized and executed a letter writing campaign to NBC to renew
the show. Gene Roddenberry took this opportunity
for some leverage with NBC that if they were to continue they’d maintain an
ideal timeslot of 7:30. However, this would not be the case as the third season
of Star Trek was shifted to the Friday night death slot of 10:00. Gene Roddenberry took a backseat, leaving
producer duties to Fred Freiberger, a producer who in science fiction circles would
become known as the show killer as he oversaw the cancellation of several
science fiction series, and script editing duties to Arthur H. Singer. Both Gene L. Coon and D.C. Fontana throughout
production on the season had falling outs with the team and their respective
story and writing credits would be replaced with pseudonyms, plus the budget,
already cut during production of the second season, was cut one final time and
the episode count decreased. As had become
tradition with Star Trek the episodes were aired out of order with the
season premiere being “Spock’s Brain”, an episode that is held in Star Trek fan
circles as the worst of the entire show.
So, of course, “Spock’s Brain” is an episode that is
bad, but not quite as bad as its reputation would suggest. The plot is utterly ridiculous and there is a
lot of sexism here, but in the same vain of “Mudd’s Women” there is this utterly
odd retro camp appeal that at least watching the episode you have some
enjoyment at the insanity. Leonard Nimoy,
however, is not served at all by this episode, the plot being that a child like
female humanoid alien boards the Enterprise, causes everybody to pass
out after Kirk immediately makes a pass at her (Shatner’s performance here is
incredibly over the top which is not good but is at least fun), and steals
Spock’s brain. This leaves Nimoy no real
opportunity to act, spending much of the episode just standing or walking
through the scenes, whenever his voice is heard coming from the stolen brain
Nimoy is almost phoning in the voicework because there really is no material to
work with. Coon’s script almost wants to
explore a society divided along lines of sex with the women living underground
as these naïve and rather stupid children while the men live above ground and
are savage and stupid.
There could be an interesting dichotomy there as Coon
seems to lead the episode to a resolution where the men and women have to live
together, except it’s mired in the sexism of explicitly claiming the gender roles
of men and women are objectively split along those lines. What further drags this down is not only
having this society being rather underdeveloped but the performance from Marj
Dusay as Kara is this almost insipidly high voice that’s meant to sound sweet and
innocent but just is incredibly grating.
The character is essentially viewed as having the mind of a child making
the sexual advances feel incredibly weird.
The society itself has a computer that Spock’s brain is needed to
operate that somehow gives intelligence in bursts, something to add tension to
the final act when McCoy has to perform surgery on Spock to put his brain back
in his head. And then the episode just
ends, it’s kind of a mess.
Overall, “Spock’s Brain” may deserve the reputation of
being quite a bad episode of Star Trek though there are a few moments with
some genuine care, largely the brief sequence of trying to trace the aliens
that took Spock’s brain, but the dialogue has this weird tendency to repeat,
the premise itself is ridiculous and over the top, and it’s clear that nobody
in the cast are actually getting material tot use their acting skills. This is an episode I don’t ever need to see
again. 3/10.
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