Worst Star Trek episode of all time....seriously! (Spock's Brain)
In almost every TV series which airs in any country at any given time - at least as far as I have seen, anyway - even the best of shows seem to have their off-par episodes and, sadly, even off-par seasons.
Take, for instance, the recently-canceled 24. It started out strong in the fall season of 2001 and was - for the most part - a pretty good series until its fifth season. Then, when it introduced James Cronwell as Jack Bauer's shady father and had him teaming up with villainous Chinese agents against his own son, the show ‘jumped the shark" and caused its most loyal fans to start wondering whether it had run out of creative steam.
And even during its great seasons, 24 had its fair share of eye-rolling moments. Who can forget Teri Bauer's bout with amnesia in the first season, or the nearly-deadly close encounter between Kim Bauer and a mountain lion in the second? (Not to mention all the moles who managed to infiltrate the happily fictitious Counter Terrorist Unit!)
In the 44-year-history of Star Trek and all its movie and TV spinoffs, there are many instances of episodes, films and even - in the sad case of Star Trek: Enterprise - complete series which did not really work out as well as Gene Roddenberry, his production team, his artistic heirs or Paramount Pictures hoped.
The Enterprise Runs Aground
Although it's hard to believe now, after six TV series (including Filmation's Star Trek: The Animated Series), 11 motion pictures (with a 12th one in preproduction as this is being written) and over 100 novels and non-fiction books published, but the show Gene Roddenberry pitched to the Big Three networks in the early ‘60s as Wagon Train to the Stars was not exactly treated well by the network which originally aired it, NBC.
Though much of Star Trek was tailored to meet NBC's requirements - the recasting for the second pilot, the emphasis on action in many episodes and the now-famous gold-red-blue "ship's department" uniform colors (required so that RCA, then owner of the network, could sell more color TVs) - the series was never really supported by the execs who ran the network.
Indeed, the rocky history of Star Trek's three-year run on NBC is part of the franchise's legend: never quite a ratings champ, it nevertheless was saved by its fans when a letter-writing campaign led by a woman named Bjo Trimble swayed the network from canceling it outright after the second season.
But even that fan victory was to be short-lived. The network assigned Star Trek to the "death slot" of Friday nights at 10 (when most of the young viewers who loved the show were out having fun on dates and what have you) and cut the show's production budget in what many people in and out of Roddenberry's team called a clear-cut attempt to kill the show.
In a doomed effort to get the network to place Star Trek in a viewer-friendly time slot, Roddenberry threatened to resign as line producer. NBC did not back down, and Roddenberry stepped down, keeping his Executive Producer hat but handing the reins of control to Fred Freiberger.
Whether Freiberger deserves the rap he got from fans as "the guy who killed Star Trek" is not for this reviewer to dwell on, but even though the series' third season has several good episodes, it was marked by Star Trek's weakest batch of episodes, including Spock's Brain.
If Spock Only Had a Brain.....
Written by Gene L. Coon (under the paper-bag-to-cover-his-head pen name of Lee Cronin) and directed by Marc Daniels, Spock's Brain was the third season's first episode and marked the beginning of the Freibeiger regime which oversaw the (temporary) death of the series.
Setting: Stardate 5431.4 (Earth date 2268, according to The Star Trek Chronology: A History of the Future)
While on its five-year mission of exploring space (in what later Star Trek series would label the Alpha Quadrant of the galaxy), the Starship Enterprise (hull number NCC-1701), with Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner) in command, encounters an ion-propelled spacecraft.
As a fascinated Enterprise crew stands by - especially a very pleased Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, played by the late James Doohan) - to make contact, the alien ship emits a transporter-like beam and a very attractive woman (Marj Dusay) materializes on the bridge.
Before anyone can even say "Hi," the newcomer stuns the entire bridge crew and inspects all its members, lingering significantly on First Officer/Science Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy). Moments later, just before the Star Trek main title, she is seen touching everyone's favorite half-Vulcan's head.
When the bridge crew wakes up, the sexy intruder is gone, and Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (the late DeForest Kelley) calls the captain from Sick Bay:
Captain James T. Kirk: [regarding Spock] You've got him on complete life support. Was he dead?
Bones: He was worse than dead!
You see, Kirk has just seen his second-in-command lying on one of the sick bay's diagnostic tables, and it doesn't look too good, for Mr. Spock, the personification of rational thought and logic aboard the Enterprise, is alive but brainless.
Apparently, the mysterious sexy intruder has somehow used superior medical techniques to make off with (obviously) Spock's brain, and the only reason the guy with the pointy ears is not dead is his Vulcan physiology. (According to this episode, Vulcans can survive without a brain for 24 hours, a plot point which 24's now unemployed writers probably would have seized upon for a crossover episode had that Fox series somehow been renewed.)
Of course, this day-long window of opportunity allows Kirk and his crew to follow the bread crumb trail left by the ion-engined craft on which Spock's brain abductor has flown, and they track it all the way to the Sigma Draconis system's sixth planet. (Nichelle Nichols' Lt. Uhura is the one who figures out which planet to go to. You go, Uhura!)
And, of course, Kirk and a landing party which includes Ens. Chekov (Walter Koenig), Dr. McCoy and a remote-controlled brainless Spock beam down to Sigma Draconis VI, where men are relegated to a harsh, caveman-like existence on the chilly surface while the women, known to the poor cavemen as the "givers of pain and delight," live in an underground city in relative comfort, only using the guys to reproduce.
Naturally, the whys and wherefores of the taking of Spock's brain are eventually revealed, and - this being the season opener - everything is set to rights by the final fadeout, so there is not a heck of a lot of suspense in this extremely silly and very embarrassing episode.
My Take: Though it is always good that a television series has its comedic, even campy episodes so that viewers, writers and the cast can have some irreverent fun and not take the whole thing so seriously, I can't help but wonder if Spock's Brain wasn't - in some way - Gene Coon's way to protest NBC's treatment of the series (and Roddenberry) by coming up with a story no one would end up liking.
That he used the name Lee Cronin as a byline certainly is significant; as a budding screenwriter myself I know if I write something I'm willing to stand behind I won't do so with a pseudonym. Coon was, by 1968, one of Star Trek's best writer-producers and had penned quite a few of the really great ones, so Spock's Brain's embarrassing storyline strikes me as his literary "flip of the bird" to NBC after the network placed the show in the Death Slot of Friday nights at 10 PM.
Sure, there is some of the "old magic" in Spock's Brain even though the episode is - even in its restored 2006 form in DVD and Blu-ray formats - excruciatingly painful to watch.
Despite himself, Coon/Cronin infuses the episode with the bonds of loyalty that bind Kirk, Spock and McCoy and makes them, as Harve Bennett likes to say, the Star Trek Trinity. Foreshadowing the events of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Capt. Kirk is set on finding and rescuing his first officer and friend.
And as in the better episodes, there's still the famous friendly duel of words between the acerbic and all-too-human McCoy and the outwardly-logical but inwardly-amused Spock.
McCoy: [after restoring Spock's brain functions, while Spock prattles on about the planet's civilization] I knew it...
Captain James T. Kirk: [puzzled] What?
McCoy: I never should have attached his mouth.
[Spock stops speaking abruptly and looks quizzically at McCoy]
Still, even in its 2006 digitally remastered version - which features a really cool-looking ion-powered spaceship and a bleak-looking ice world - Spock's Brain is clearly among the worst episodes - if not the worst episode - of Star Trek: The Original Series, even if the concept of a matriarchal society or the notion that a society will dumb itself down if too dependent on machines or a Big Government are intriguing.
Recommended: No
Take, for instance, the recently-canceled 24. It started out strong in the fall season of 2001 and was - for the most part - a pretty good series until its fifth season. Then, when it introduced James Cronwell as Jack Bauer's shady father and had him teaming up with villainous Chinese agents against his own son, the show ‘jumped the shark" and caused its most loyal fans to start wondering whether it had run out of creative steam.
And even during its great seasons, 24 had its fair share of eye-rolling moments. Who can forget Teri Bauer's bout with amnesia in the first season, or the nearly-deadly close encounter between Kim Bauer and a mountain lion in the second? (Not to mention all the moles who managed to infiltrate the happily fictitious Counter Terrorist Unit!)
In the 44-year-history of Star Trek and all its movie and TV spinoffs, there are many instances of episodes, films and even - in the sad case of Star Trek: Enterprise - complete series which did not really work out as well as Gene Roddenberry, his production team, his artistic heirs or Paramount Pictures hoped.
The Enterprise Runs Aground
Although it's hard to believe now, after six TV series (including Filmation's Star Trek: The Animated Series), 11 motion pictures (with a 12th one in preproduction as this is being written) and over 100 novels and non-fiction books published, but the show Gene Roddenberry pitched to the Big Three networks in the early ‘60s as Wagon Train to the Stars was not exactly treated well by the network which originally aired it, NBC.
Though much of Star Trek was tailored to meet NBC's requirements - the recasting for the second pilot, the emphasis on action in many episodes and the now-famous gold-red-blue "ship's department" uniform colors (required so that RCA, then owner of the network, could sell more color TVs) - the series was never really supported by the execs who ran the network.
Indeed, the rocky history of Star Trek's three-year run on NBC is part of the franchise's legend: never quite a ratings champ, it nevertheless was saved by its fans when a letter-writing campaign led by a woman named Bjo Trimble swayed the network from canceling it outright after the second season.
But even that fan victory was to be short-lived. The network assigned Star Trek to the "death slot" of Friday nights at 10 (when most of the young viewers who loved the show were out having fun on dates and what have you) and cut the show's production budget in what many people in and out of Roddenberry's team called a clear-cut attempt to kill the show.
In a doomed effort to get the network to place Star Trek in a viewer-friendly time slot, Roddenberry threatened to resign as line producer. NBC did not back down, and Roddenberry stepped down, keeping his Executive Producer hat but handing the reins of control to Fred Freiberger.
Whether Freiberger deserves the rap he got from fans as "the guy who killed Star Trek" is not for this reviewer to dwell on, but even though the series' third season has several good episodes, it was marked by Star Trek's weakest batch of episodes, including Spock's Brain.
If Spock Only Had a Brain.....
Written by Gene L. Coon (under the paper-bag-to-cover-his-head pen name of Lee Cronin) and directed by Marc Daniels, Spock's Brain was the third season's first episode and marked the beginning of the Freibeiger regime which oversaw the (temporary) death of the series.
Setting: Stardate 5431.4 (Earth date 2268, according to The Star Trek Chronology: A History of the Future)
While on its five-year mission of exploring space (in what later Star Trek series would label the Alpha Quadrant of the galaxy), the Starship Enterprise (hull number NCC-1701), with Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner) in command, encounters an ion-propelled spacecraft.
As a fascinated Enterprise crew stands by - especially a very pleased Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, played by the late James Doohan) - to make contact, the alien ship emits a transporter-like beam and a very attractive woman (Marj Dusay) materializes on the bridge.
Before anyone can even say "Hi," the newcomer stuns the entire bridge crew and inspects all its members, lingering significantly on First Officer/Science Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy). Moments later, just before the Star Trek main title, she is seen touching everyone's favorite half-Vulcan's head.
When the bridge crew wakes up, the sexy intruder is gone, and Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (the late DeForest Kelley) calls the captain from Sick Bay:
Captain James T. Kirk: [regarding Spock] You've got him on complete life support. Was he dead?
Bones: He was worse than dead!
You see, Kirk has just seen his second-in-command lying on one of the sick bay's diagnostic tables, and it doesn't look too good, for Mr. Spock, the personification of rational thought and logic aboard the Enterprise, is alive but brainless.
Apparently, the mysterious sexy intruder has somehow used superior medical techniques to make off with (obviously) Spock's brain, and the only reason the guy with the pointy ears is not dead is his Vulcan physiology. (According to this episode, Vulcans can survive without a brain for 24 hours, a plot point which 24's now unemployed writers probably would have seized upon for a crossover episode had that Fox series somehow been renewed.)
Of course, this day-long window of opportunity allows Kirk and his crew to follow the bread crumb trail left by the ion-engined craft on which Spock's brain abductor has flown, and they track it all the way to the Sigma Draconis system's sixth planet. (Nichelle Nichols' Lt. Uhura is the one who figures out which planet to go to. You go, Uhura!)
And, of course, Kirk and a landing party which includes Ens. Chekov (Walter Koenig), Dr. McCoy and a remote-controlled brainless Spock beam down to Sigma Draconis VI, where men are relegated to a harsh, caveman-like existence on the chilly surface while the women, known to the poor cavemen as the "givers of pain and delight," live in an underground city in relative comfort, only using the guys to reproduce.
Naturally, the whys and wherefores of the taking of Spock's brain are eventually revealed, and - this being the season opener - everything is set to rights by the final fadeout, so there is not a heck of a lot of suspense in this extremely silly and very embarrassing episode.
My Take: Though it is always good that a television series has its comedic, even campy episodes so that viewers, writers and the cast can have some irreverent fun and not take the whole thing so seriously, I can't help but wonder if Spock's Brain wasn't - in some way - Gene Coon's way to protest NBC's treatment of the series (and Roddenberry) by coming up with a story no one would end up liking.
That he used the name Lee Cronin as a byline certainly is significant; as a budding screenwriter myself I know if I write something I'm willing to stand behind I won't do so with a pseudonym. Coon was, by 1968, one of Star Trek's best writer-producers and had penned quite a few of the really great ones, so Spock's Brain's embarrassing storyline strikes me as his literary "flip of the bird" to NBC after the network placed the show in the Death Slot of Friday nights at 10 PM.
Sure, there is some of the "old magic" in Spock's Brain even though the episode is - even in its restored 2006 form in DVD and Blu-ray formats - excruciatingly painful to watch.
Despite himself, Coon/Cronin infuses the episode with the bonds of loyalty that bind Kirk, Spock and McCoy and makes them, as Harve Bennett likes to say, the Star Trek Trinity. Foreshadowing the events of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Capt. Kirk is set on finding and rescuing his first officer and friend.
And as in the better episodes, there's still the famous friendly duel of words between the acerbic and all-too-human McCoy and the outwardly-logical but inwardly-amused Spock.
McCoy: [after restoring Spock's brain functions, while Spock prattles on about the planet's civilization] I knew it...
Captain James T. Kirk: [puzzled] What?
McCoy: I never should have attached his mouth.
[Spock stops speaking abruptly and looks quizzically at McCoy]
Still, even in its 2006 digitally remastered version - which features a really cool-looking ion-powered spaceship and a bleak-looking ice world - Spock's Brain is clearly among the worst episodes - if not the worst episode - of Star Trek: The Original Series, even if the concept of a matriarchal society or the notion that a society will dumb itself down if too dependent on machines or a Big Government are intriguing.
Recommended: No
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