3x01 Spock's Brain

[4.6/10] When something has a reputation for being “the worst ever” you tend to expect it to be blood-curdlingly, insanely awful. “Spock’s Brain” is not that. Make no mistake, it is still deeply stupid and dull, but it’s pretty well par for the course among Star Trek’s lesser lights, with only the ridiculousness of its premise to distinguish it.

Then again, the thought running through my mind is whether that premise was really so outlandish, or at least, whether it was out of character for the show. We’ve seen Kirk cloned, duplicated, and had his consciousness transferred into a glowing translucent orb. We’ve seen Spock trade consciousnesses with crazy men and killer robots. We’ve had Dr. McCoy figure out to do everything from cure a floppy, silicon-based creature to help a pregnant alien deliver her baby. And lord knows, we’ve seen more than a few primitive species organized by some wild, ancient computer.

So while it’s silly, to say the least, to have the latest scantily-clad alien woman blink onto the ship, harvest Spock’s brain, and deposit it into a 1960s coffee maker to run her society, it’s not dramatically sillier or all that different than the sorts of premises we’ve seen in the show before, in both great and terrible episodes.

What does make the episode truly a slog to get through is that the acting is bad from everyone. Maybe that stems from Leonard Nimoy speaking through a tape recorder rather than interacting with the other actors on set (at least as anything other than an essentially comatose living shell). He normally brings up the acting quotient for the whole show, but couldn’t muster anything here in his stilted expressions through the communicator.

But that’s true for pretty much everyone. I’m no great fan of Shatner’s acting, but he was particularly halting here. The same goes for McCoy (and I am a fan of Kelley’s acting), with there seeming to be long, awkward pauses between many of his lines. And the same goes for the variety of guest stars who, whilst going for childlike or officious, mostly hit the level of a school play.

The writing of the dialogue did the actors no favors though. I can understand the notion that writer Gene Coon (using the pen name, Lee Cronin) wanted to underline the fact that Kirk & Co. were being stymied because they could hardly communicate with the people who had taken Spock’s grey matter. But my god, “Spock’s Brian” has so many repetitive exchanges of “take me to your leader”/”we don’t understand what leader is” or “you have to restore Spock’s mind”/”no I refuse to do it.”

Nevermind the fact that this is yet another script with about half an hour’s worth of incident stretched out to double that length (which, perhaps, helps explain the repetitive dialogue). Every step of the process, from picking a planet, to finding the right cave, to speaking with the locals (Morgs and iMorgs) to finding Spock and getting his brain back in his head, includes a significant amount of fumfering around or not much happening. It’s one of those “you don’t need to write about it every time that Harry walks down a hallway, J.K. Rowling” episodes.

What I suspect is supposed to be the element that keeps the episode’s momentum up is the audience learning more about the Morg society. But we don’t really, since the episode is pretty confusing and opaque about what exactly the setup is or how it came about even after the reveal happens. The men (Morgs) live above where it’s cold and look like cavemen, and the women (iMorgs) live below in some ancient series of buildings where they have a childlike demeanor and have the usual Theiss-sewn outfits. Other than helping me understand what I assume is an amusing reference to this episode in the first season of Rick and Morty, “Spock’s Brain” doesn’t do much with that.

Kirk, of course, ends that arrangement, with his usual “we’re destroying the big computer thing and you’re going to live our way” speech to a reluctant local. There’s no society that Kirk can’t come in and “fix” with a grand sense of benevolent but haughty entitlement. I’m not saying the Morgs had the ideal arrangement, or that he should have sacrificed his first officer’s brain in order to preserve it (although there’s a utilitarian argument that could be made for that), but as usual, Kirk is awfully cavalier about totally upending another planet’s society.

Maybe that’s the thing that grounds “Spock’s Brain” into fan rage dust -- it’s a combination of some of Trek’s lamest tropes, employed with little flair or joie de vivre (beyond Kirk and Bones leering at their would-be hosts in a typically distasteful fashion). It’s another “superpowered alien” mystery, another primitive society with “backwards” ways, another grand old computer that needs to be neutralized one way or another. Repetition is nothing new on this show, but the episode really is a combination of several different things that have come before, with stultifying writing and performances to boot.

That, to my mind, is what really sinks this episode. Star Trek has done massively silly or outlandish episodes before, but if you inject enough fun or flair or even ham into them, they can at least be entertaining, even if they don’t rise to the level of greatness. “Spock’s Brain”’s biggest crime is that it’s mostly just boring. Even ignoring the implausibility of automaton Spock being guided around by remote control, or the salon hair dryer with doodads sticking out of it providing uber-advanced knowledge to build spaceship and perform brain transplants, the whole thing is just dull.

There can be a charm to bad episodes. Sometimes they are so wrong-headed or absurd that they wrap back around to being bold and captivating in their terribleness. “Spock’s Brain” never really gets there. It’s rarely bad in a roll your eyes or laugh or cringe sort of way; it mostly just makes the viewer want to change the channel, and for the most infamous episode in the whole series, I was hoping for something better in its awfulness.