Disclaimer: Anyone not having seen this gem of a story before, or if you've seen only "Star Trek Discovery" (or any Trek apart from the original) and decided you want to see what the show was like 50 years ago... em, uh, erm, eh, uh-- well, there will be spoilers revealed. That and if you want to know more about the original series, please please please look into and try out "Day of the Dove" or "The Tholian Web" or "The Enterprise Incident" or "The Immunity Syndrome" or "Space Seed" or "Amok Time" or "A Taste of Armageddon" or "The Doomsday Machine" or "The Ultimate Computer" or at least 20 other stories instead of this one first because this "Brain"(less) episode is not one that anybody wanting to experience the 1960s original should dare to face until long after enjoying what TOS did when firing on all cylinders.
Having said that...
I'm not sure what compelled me to watch the season 3 premiere last night but I decided to.
The story starts out interestingly enough, actually, as the crew see an ion powered spaceship approaching. Especially Scotty with his new annoying haircut and propensity to get excited over all things technological in the same mildly disturbing way that Kirk spazzes out over the lady of the week.
Out of nowhere, an early-30s lady with a gaudy purple and pink dress go-go dances onto the bridge, knocks everyone out complete with the stock footage of Sickbay with Nurse Chapel trying to find a comfy place to lay down on, and then fondles Spock's head. Cue dramatic music and credits for some reason.
Yes, the pre-credits big hints at Spock's brain being (brainnapped).
What is surprising is that the intruder, who I think was in a Nancy Sinatra music video about boots, looks completely stupefied and blissful. On first viewing, this would obviously be seen as strange, but the explanation given toward the end at least explains the relative state of childlike naivety.
The crew have a proto-TNG meeting on the bridge, since all the money was put into the new rear-projection screen (used only in this story) as opposed to having a proper briefing room on the bridge. It's still nice to see, and long overdue, as it's genuinely compelling to get input from the crew. Chekov and Sulu provide their beliefs, but Uhura - even without her comm systems bleeping - reasons out why Planet VI (later called "Planet VII" by everyone, oops) is the correct option.
I must say, the rear projection unit adds an aura of authenticity that really holds up nearly 50 years later despite the sets being so angular and squarish.
So they beam on down. Lots of dead trees. So where's the atmosphere?
An obligatory, healthy fight occurs despite what must be a very thin oxygen supply. Up to this point, the episode - if taken at face value - is remarkably passable and even compelling. Indeed, there's some new CGI landscaping (courtesy of Terragen?) with a nice arctic-style terrain. Even the studio scenes where it's just polystyrene rock and blue background seem to have a couple additions, but I'm not entirely certain.
Unfortunately, in the fight, a caveman is caught and the expositiondump begins about the Morg and iMorg species, since Kirk - naturally, go figure - has to ask if there are women. "The givers of pain and delight" and "I don't understand what your words are, what is 'woman'?" are the only thing the guy says, despite perfect formal use of the English language. And painfully fake beard and orange recycled prison jumpsuit, which is what viewers must feel like they're wearing because nothing else good is on so they're stuck watching what is becoming an increasingly pedestrian episode.
If it helps, Kirk at least asks Losira "Are there men on this planet?" in a later season 3 story, which opens up so many avenues despite Kirk in no intentional way using it in the same context when he asks the local strange guy where all the women are. Kirk has quite the sex life, you think he'd be satiated for at least the duration of ONE episode... oh well!
Then they find the elevator, which leads to McCoy's quip about sending the elevator back from his stomach. At least we now know the food in there is used as a lure. The elevator, unlike the episode, hits rock bottom and the door opens. We see corridors recycled from seasons 1 and 2, in technicolor, and artificial rockface near the ceiling suggesting a tunnel system was mined and walls added. Note that the same sets will be re-used for later season 3 adventures, especially "That Which Survives".
Along with the rock sets we see a late-20s go-go dancer looking blissfully unaware. Kirk, as usual, gets to stop her before knocking them all out. McCoy gets to point out to Kirk she has the mind of a child--
So if anybody hadn't guessed it before the elevator door opened, it's another 60s "battle of the sexes" trope. Complete with subconscious 1950s style marriage jokes since "pain" has to do with the magic bracelets and as for the "delight", it doesn't take much to guess at this point what was being inferred but sadly not shown.
Somehow, Kirk's communicator picks up Spock talking. I'm not going to think about the technicality of it all, it's as equally stupid as Rose Tyler contacting the Doctor's TARDIS with her cell phone. Only at leas the Doctor did some brainless magic to the cell phone first.
The leader, in the purple/pink outfit, comes by and incapacitates all.
The next scene reveals everyone waking up in a room full of women, a couple guys, odd belts with giant green dials on their persons, and lots of go-go outfits (the lime green dress with the mint green boots is the best and most stylish color ensemble of the bunch, actually.) Kirk brings up the "pain" aspect, noting the seemingly pointlessness of it all if everyone could be given pain without the need of the Triskeleon-influenced belts at the time. Kirk keeps harping on about brains, leading Kara to throw a tantrum with "BRAIN AND BRAIN, WHAT IS BRAIN!!!" I'll get back to that later...
At this point, I'd rather re-watch "The Gamesters of Triskeleon" again as it managed to bring up several societal concepts by the 30 minute mark and was rather good with the material for everything it was trying to present about slavery and forced relationships and love and gambling and all that, whereas "Spock's Brain" just crawls along ever so slowly with its vaunted cliché about men and women being different and even then they're doing nothing with it. Sigh, it's like the story was made on a dare...
(Which it was. Gene Coon, who did not want his real name used as credit for this monstrosity of an episode, wrote it as a dare because he felt everyone took the show too seriously. Ironically, that's the saving grace of this story because if they made it as a conscious pantomime, people wouldn't have lasted the first 10 minutes. Much less up 'til now.)
Oddly, the crew's communicators, tricorders, and phasers are neatly laid out in the room they woke up in. It's guarded. Kirk almost goes panto in discussing the status of their property. Cue the new season 3 fight music. Weapons recovered. They walk out and look for where Spock is.
The controller with Spock in it is finally located. As I was watching, I noticed that there were no new CGI effects - unlike with the ion spaceship - to show off Spock's placid description of being connected via a series of light beams. Fiber optics not withstanding, I decided to do a little CGI of my own:
Now you can't say that's any worse than what they new f/x team did.
At least I kept in the NBC Camera reflection...
I'm kinda impressed by the dialogue as Spock, placidly, thinks nothing of his situation but that quickly fades as the sheer reality of the situation sinks in: He only describes the analogy of breathing to internal organs to controlling a glorified HVAC system with toiletry plumbing. This is supposed to be "the epic reveal"?? Honestly, what's up with the makers of this civilization 6000 years ago that they needed a compatible humanoid brain to run the joint? And an organic plop of a brain can be pickled for up to 10,000 years (but not one second over!!) inside this powered-by-Intel rig and not inside an organic body? That's almost as cool as the android outfit Uhura wanted her soft juicy brain to be put inside in "I, Mudd"!
Walter Cronkite cuts in with some breaking news: Spock is arrested. Doctor Spock, that is. For demonstrating against the Vietnam war. Thanks to the power of parallel dimensions, we can also see brainless Spock reading up on the news:
(Bet you didn't know that. Along with trying to be entertaining, I try to be a little educational.)
Purple Go-Go Boots returns and activates the green belts, instead of just knocking them out. Okay, maybe that's why they need the belts. Ability to control. So while everyone is wriggling on the floor like minnows removed from their aquarium and put on a dock, it's Marlboro Man Kirk who musters the energy to get at the control to make Spock move and incapacitate Purple Go-Go Boots.
Okay, "Purple Go-Go Boots"'s real name is Kara. Given that the only other named iMorg (one of many available accessories for your iPhone) is named Luma, why isn't she named "Chroma" instead?
Anyway, Kara reveals a concealed phaser (and as the other sci-fi cliché goes, don't ask WHERE she hid it) and admits the Teacher - the one that teaches them what to do, as instructed by the gods or forefathers or whenever the big machine goes "ding". So much of the story is wasted in corridor waddling that there's a lot being overtly ignored about the build-up of this society, but with 5 hours left nobody cares. We have to plug back in Spock's brain and hope it's PCI-e 3.0 x16 compliant.
...Yeah, I know they're "Morg" and "Eymorg" (no relation to Eeyore, sadly), but the episode is otherwise so incredibly plodding and dreary...
The Teacher - a modified hairdryer, with M-5's lighting system, and a big teal bowling ball for the hairdryer to sit on, isn't exactly inspiring as a prop.
Okay, as a concept, I like the basic idea of a civilization knowing it's going to go lamebrain so it sets up a unit in the future for its citizens to program them to do various repairs and tasks as needed, with the knowledge effectively "vanishing" when done. Remembering the proverbial story of Adam and Eve and their apple of sin, this post-industrial society was made in a way to have the best of both worlds - the apple... and if the apple didn't take place. So the same mistakes would not be repeated. What's truly sad is that I'm not sure that was Gene Coon's intent for "societal awareness" aspect of the story. Or is it, given how banal everything else about this 50 minute escapade was? I doubt it, even in 1968 society had simple electric thermostats and mechanical pumps to keep systems running. Nobody needed a brain in a fancy jar for a hundred centuries.
Kara not knowing about her own removing of Spock's brain makes it clear that the knowledge is temporary. She and everyone else, above and below, seem very uneducated indeed. Despite their fairly good use of verbal language. All this leads back to her "WHAT IS BRAIN!" tirade.
After minutes of melodrama, McCoy opts to put on the thing and hope he can get the information needed to save Spock. Even though Kara already pointed out that it's the machine that tells them what to do, so why would the machine let any unauthorized alien hook up and get precisely what's wanted without any authentication? Only 7 minutes left in the episode or something?
Dr McCoy starts to "lose" the knowledge shoved into his head by the hairdryer. Now this is interesting as the script set itself up to create dramatic urgency for McCoy in recognizing how humans have a different brain pattern and chemistry. Thankfully, before we start to ask how long Kara's knowledge of alien phasers might last or when she put on the hairdryer to hear the loud beeps demonstrating her being brainfed the information on how to use it, Spock chimes in despite his vocal chords not being fully reconnected and it's safe to say the shark jumped over the moon on a planet that's fourteen solar systems away at this point.
Ugh. This episode is so incredibly appalling, so to cheer myself up I'm putting in a previous edit of my CGI Controller project:
Yeah, that one's a bit more off-kilter and disturbing. Especially as I left the original 3 button array untouched. Yes, they're not properly aligned. I wonder if the middle button has a spring-loaded door that goes "boing!" to reveal the dead mushy brain inside...
So Spock talks his way into McCoy reconnecting all the nerve endings the same way you plug in those little translucent plastic pellets to make your Lite-Brite show a pretty picture.
So Kara is certain that the civilization will die because nobody bought a thermostat for $50 at the home improvement store. Kirk explains how both have to live together. Um, talk about sweeping it all under the rug, the surface is a barren cold wasteland with dormant (or dead after 6k years) trees. And now the subterranean caves will be uninhabitable as well once Spock's water pipes freeze up and burst. Even a tiny rewrite, having Scotty rig up something as a miracle worker to keep the HVAC and plumbing pumping, would have saved so many glossed over details but it's obvious even Gene Coon didn't take the story seriously from the get-go.
And the Morgs. I suppose, how do they all build up trust since the iMorgs would lure them, trap them, then before release them back to the surface make them feel pleasure and pai-- um, I honestly do NOT want to think about these details to any length of depth, much less wonder where the nursery is... not when this show was aired when Fred and Barney discussed the smooth flavor of cigarettes to the kiddies. Heck, if Lando Calrissian could sell cheap beer in a way that Keenan Ivory Wayans wasn't allowed to parody, then Fred should have more than a decade earlier too...
At the end of the story, McCoy cracks one about feeling regret over reconnecting his vocal chords. Okay, so the shark jumped over that moon 26 solar systems away at this point.
Having said that...
I'm not sure what compelled me to watch the season 3 premiere last night but I decided to.
The story starts out interestingly enough, actually, as the crew see an ion powered spaceship approaching. Especially Scotty with his new annoying haircut and propensity to get excited over all things technological in the same mildly disturbing way that Kirk spazzes out over the lady of the week.
Out of nowhere, an early-30s lady with a gaudy purple and pink dress go-go dances onto the bridge, knocks everyone out complete with the stock footage of Sickbay with Nurse Chapel trying to find a comfy place to lay down on, and then fondles Spock's head. Cue dramatic music and credits for some reason.
Yes, the pre-credits big hints at Spock's brain being (brainnapped).
What is surprising is that the intruder, who I think was in a Nancy Sinatra music video about boots, looks completely stupefied and blissful. On first viewing, this would obviously be seen as strange, but the explanation given toward the end at least explains the relative state of childlike naivety.
The crew have a proto-TNG meeting on the bridge, since all the money was put into the new rear-projection screen (used only in this story) as opposed to having a proper briefing room on the bridge. It's still nice to see, and long overdue, as it's genuinely compelling to get input from the crew. Chekov and Sulu provide their beliefs, but Uhura - even without her comm systems bleeping - reasons out why Planet VI (later called "Planet VII" by everyone, oops) is the correct option.
I must say, the rear projection unit adds an aura of authenticity that really holds up nearly 50 years later despite the sets being so angular and squarish.
So they beam on down. Lots of dead trees. So where's the atmosphere?
An obligatory, healthy fight occurs despite what must be a very thin oxygen supply. Up to this point, the episode - if taken at face value - is remarkably passable and even compelling. Indeed, there's some new CGI landscaping (courtesy of Terragen?) with a nice arctic-style terrain. Even the studio scenes where it's just polystyrene rock and blue background seem to have a couple additions, but I'm not entirely certain.
Unfortunately, in the fight, a caveman is caught and the expositiondump begins about the Morg and iMorg species, since Kirk - naturally, go figure - has to ask if there are women. "The givers of pain and delight" and "I don't understand what your words are, what is 'woman'?" are the only thing the guy says, despite perfect formal use of the English language. And painfully fake beard and orange recycled prison jumpsuit, which is what viewers must feel like they're wearing because nothing else good is on so they're stuck watching what is becoming an increasingly pedestrian episode.
If it helps, Kirk at least asks Losira "Are there men on this planet?" in a later season 3 story, which opens up so many avenues despite Kirk in no intentional way using it in the same context when he asks the local strange guy where all the women are. Kirk has quite the sex life, you think he'd be satiated for at least the duration of ONE episode... oh well!
Then they find the elevator, which leads to McCoy's quip about sending the elevator back from his stomach. At least we now know the food in there is used as a lure. The elevator, unlike the episode, hits rock bottom and the door opens. We see corridors recycled from seasons 1 and 2, in technicolor, and artificial rockface near the ceiling suggesting a tunnel system was mined and walls added. Note that the same sets will be re-used for later season 3 adventures, especially "That Which Survives".
Along with the rock sets we see a late-20s go-go dancer looking blissfully unaware. Kirk, as usual, gets to stop her before knocking them all out. McCoy gets to point out to Kirk she has the mind of a child--
So if anybody hadn't guessed it before the elevator door opened, it's another 60s "battle of the sexes" trope. Complete with subconscious 1950s style marriage jokes since "pain" has to do with the magic bracelets and as for the "delight", it doesn't take much to guess at this point what was being inferred but sadly not shown.
Somehow, Kirk's communicator picks up Spock talking. I'm not going to think about the technicality of it all, it's as equally stupid as Rose Tyler contacting the Doctor's TARDIS with her cell phone. Only at leas the Doctor did some brainless magic to the cell phone first.
The leader, in the purple/pink outfit, comes by and incapacitates all.
The next scene reveals everyone waking up in a room full of women, a couple guys, odd belts with giant green dials on their persons, and lots of go-go outfits (the lime green dress with the mint green boots is the best and most stylish color ensemble of the bunch, actually.) Kirk brings up the "pain" aspect, noting the seemingly pointlessness of it all if everyone could be given pain without the need of the Triskeleon-influenced belts at the time. Kirk keeps harping on about brains, leading Kara to throw a tantrum with "BRAIN AND BRAIN, WHAT IS BRAIN!!!" I'll get back to that later...
At this point, I'd rather re-watch "The Gamesters of Triskeleon" again as it managed to bring up several societal concepts by the 30 minute mark and was rather good with the material for everything it was trying to present about slavery and forced relationships and love and gambling and all that, whereas "Spock's Brain" just crawls along ever so slowly with its vaunted cliché about men and women being different and even then they're doing nothing with it. Sigh, it's like the story was made on a dare...
(Which it was. Gene Coon, who did not want his real name used as credit for this monstrosity of an episode, wrote it as a dare because he felt everyone took the show too seriously. Ironically, that's the saving grace of this story because if they made it as a conscious pantomime, people wouldn't have lasted the first 10 minutes. Much less up 'til now.)
Oddly, the crew's communicators, tricorders, and phasers are neatly laid out in the room they woke up in. It's guarded. Kirk almost goes panto in discussing the status of their property. Cue the new season 3 fight music. Weapons recovered. They walk out and look for where Spock is.
The controller with Spock in it is finally located. As I was watching, I noticed that there were no new CGI effects - unlike with the ion spaceship - to show off Spock's placid description of being connected via a series of light beams. Fiber optics not withstanding, I decided to do a little CGI of my own:
Now you can't say that's any worse than what they new f/x team did.
At least I kept in the NBC Camera reflection...I'm kinda impressed by the dialogue as Spock, placidly, thinks nothing of his situation but that quickly fades as the sheer reality of the situation sinks in: He only describes the analogy of breathing to internal organs to controlling a glorified HVAC system with toiletry plumbing. This is supposed to be "the epic reveal"?? Honestly, what's up with the makers of this civilization 6000 years ago that they needed a compatible humanoid brain to run the joint? And an organic plop of a brain can be pickled for up to 10,000 years (but not one second over!!) inside this powered-by-Intel rig and not inside an organic body? That's almost as cool as the android outfit Uhura wanted her soft juicy brain to be put inside in "I, Mudd"!
Walter Cronkite cuts in with some breaking news: Spock is arrested. Doctor Spock, that is. For demonstrating against the Vietnam war. Thanks to the power of parallel dimensions, we can also see brainless Spock reading up on the news:
(Bet you didn't know that. Along with trying to be entertaining, I try to be a little educational.)
Purple Go-Go Boots returns and activates the green belts, instead of just knocking them out. Okay, maybe that's why they need the belts. Ability to control. So while everyone is wriggling on the floor like minnows removed from their aquarium and put on a dock, it's Marlboro Man Kirk who musters the energy to get at the control to make Spock move and incapacitate Purple Go-Go Boots.
Okay, "Purple Go-Go Boots"'s real name is Kara. Given that the only other named iMorg (one of many available accessories for your iPhone) is named Luma, why isn't she named "Chroma" instead?
Anyway, Kara reveals a concealed phaser (and as the other sci-fi cliché goes, don't ask WHERE she hid it) and admits the Teacher - the one that teaches them what to do, as instructed by the gods or forefathers or whenever the big machine goes "ding". So much of the story is wasted in corridor waddling that there's a lot being overtly ignored about the build-up of this society, but with 5 hours left nobody cares. We have to plug back in Spock's brain and hope it's PCI-e 3.0 x16 compliant.
...Yeah, I know they're "Morg" and "Eymorg" (no relation to Eeyore, sadly), but the episode is otherwise so incredibly plodding and dreary...
The Teacher - a modified hairdryer, with M-5's lighting system, and a big teal bowling ball for the hairdryer to sit on, isn't exactly inspiring as a prop.
Okay, as a concept, I like the basic idea of a civilization knowing it's going to go lamebrain so it sets up a unit in the future for its citizens to program them to do various repairs and tasks as needed, with the knowledge effectively "vanishing" when done. Remembering the proverbial story of Adam and Eve and their apple of sin, this post-industrial society was made in a way to have the best of both worlds - the apple... and if the apple didn't take place. So the same mistakes would not be repeated. What's truly sad is that I'm not sure that was Gene Coon's intent for "societal awareness" aspect of the story. Or is it, given how banal everything else about this 50 minute escapade was? I doubt it, even in 1968 society had simple electric thermostats and mechanical pumps to keep systems running. Nobody needed a brain in a fancy jar for a hundred centuries.
Kara not knowing about her own removing of Spock's brain makes it clear that the knowledge is temporary. She and everyone else, above and below, seem very uneducated indeed. Despite their fairly good use of verbal language. All this leads back to her "WHAT IS BRAIN!" tirade.
After minutes of melodrama, McCoy opts to put on the thing and hope he can get the information needed to save Spock. Even though Kara already pointed out that it's the machine that tells them what to do, so why would the machine let any unauthorized alien hook up and get precisely what's wanted without any authentication? Only 7 minutes left in the episode or something?
Dr McCoy starts to "lose" the knowledge shoved into his head by the hairdryer. Now this is interesting as the script set itself up to create dramatic urgency for McCoy in recognizing how humans have a different brain pattern and chemistry. Thankfully, before we start to ask how long Kara's knowledge of alien phasers might last or when she put on the hairdryer to hear the loud beeps demonstrating her being brainfed the information on how to use it, Spock chimes in despite his vocal chords not being fully reconnected and it's safe to say the shark jumped over the moon on a planet that's fourteen solar systems away at this point.
Ugh. This episode is so incredibly appalling, so to cheer myself up I'm putting in a previous edit of my CGI Controller project:
Yeah, that one's a bit more off-kilter and disturbing. Especially as I left the original 3 button array untouched. Yes, they're not properly aligned. I wonder if the middle button has a spring-loaded door that goes "boing!" to reveal the dead mushy brain inside...
So Spock talks his way into McCoy reconnecting all the nerve endings the same way you plug in those little translucent plastic pellets to make your Lite-Brite show a pretty picture.
So Kara is certain that the civilization will die because nobody bought a thermostat for $50 at the home improvement store. Kirk explains how both have to live together. Um, talk about sweeping it all under the rug, the surface is a barren cold wasteland with dormant (or dead after 6k years) trees. And now the subterranean caves will be uninhabitable as well once Spock's water pipes freeze up and burst. Even a tiny rewrite, having Scotty rig up something as a miracle worker to keep the HVAC and plumbing pumping, would have saved so many glossed over details but it's obvious even Gene Coon didn't take the story seriously from the get-go.
And the Morgs. I suppose, how do they all build up trust since the iMorgs would lure them, trap them, then before release them back to the surface make them feel pleasure and pai-- um, I honestly do NOT want to think about these details to any length of depth, much less wonder where the nursery is... not when this show was aired when Fred and Barney discussed the smooth flavor of cigarettes to the kiddies. Heck, if Lando Calrissian could sell cheap beer in a way that Keenan Ivory Wayans wasn't allowed to parody, then Fred should have more than a decade earlier too...
At the end of the story, McCoy cracks one about feeling regret over reconnecting his vocal chords. Okay, so the shark jumped over that moon 26 solar systems away at this point.
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