Spock's Brain

Spock, the First Officer of the Great Bird of the Galaxy, loses his brain.

A guy like Spock, I dlon't have to tell you, a guy who relies on logic, pure emotionless logic ("Enough of your damned green-blooded logic, Spock!" cries Dr. McCoy, who may be able to tolerate green blood, or pure logic, but, for chrissakes, not BOTH embodied in one Vulcan); well, a guy like that cannot dispense with his brain. No siree Bob! Not gonna fly, at Warp Speed, or any other damned speed.

(I think the writer of this episode may have been on speed.)

An alien babelicious beams aboard the bridge and starts zapping. She stuns the entire crew before pawing all over the Science Officer and stealing his ever-loving gray matter right out from under his nose. He ends up in Sick Bay, his body lingering on because of McCoy's heavy, high-tech medical know-how. Kirk is furious. He has to find that damn brain, and quick!

Vulcans, apparently, have only twenty-four hours (Earth hours, or Vulcan hours, one wonders; it's never stipulated) to live without their brains, but their bodies can be mobilized like organic robots, and, to that end, Spock is fitted later on with a sort of wraparound head doohickey that looks a little like it was borrowed from the Bespin Cloud People in The Empire Strikes Back (most likely the other way around).

Original Star Trek TV Series Trailer S03E01 Spock's Brain Preview Trailer

The Enterprise travels to Sigma Draconis VI, a cold, inhospitable arctic world where Kirk and the Away Team are attacked by 1969 Russian Space Cossacks who babble on about "the givers of pain and delight." All of whom, by the way, wear thigh-high leather boots and miniskirts.

Anyhoo, James T. and the gang go deep, deep down into the underground world of spooky, coffin-shaped doorways and rocky corridors, and do battle with a rather simple-minded woman who leads them to her taker.

Said taker being Kara, played by Marj Dusay.

"Brain and Brain! What is Brain?"

So exclaims a thoroughly incensed Kara that looks on in wonder at the crew from the Enterprise as they try to explain to her exactly why they're there, and, well, "Could you please give us Spock's so-valuable Vulcan brain back to us?"

She gets testy and refers to everyone as "Morgs." I guess that means "men" or maybe even "outlanders."

Spock's brain, you see, has been appropriated by the underground Amazons (the menfolk are all consigned to freezing to death above ground) so they can use it to power their underground civilization. There's a kind of bubble-with-tubes affair it seems to be encased in. We can hear Spock's confident, calm, utterly patient, and always bemused disembodied voice as, at the end, Bones uses a device called "The Teacher," which is like a device that beams knowledge into your brain, like that Teacher Machine the Psychlos had in Battlefield Earth over a decade later.

But there's just one problem: McCoy can't seem to hold on to the knowledge as to how to restore Spock's brain to his body, which is laid out in front of him on a table. He starts to forget mid-operation, and damned if DeForest Kelley doesn't do an incomparable job of playing a totally crashing McCoy, desperately trying to recall the brain surgery he thought was child's play just minutes before.

Thankfully (or later, regretfully), McCoy manages to reattach Spock's vocal cords so the ever-calm and tranquil, and oh-so-logical Vulcan mastermind (har-har) can guide him as he stumbles through reattaching the Vulcan mind to the Vulcan body, so that mind meld and nerve grip become possible again.

Some people rate this the "Worst episode ever!" (Images of Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons abound.)

My reply to them is: Has a race of Amazonian warrior babes from an underground civilization ruled by a disembodied computer voice stolen your brain? Or, as Bones McCoy might exclaim, "Are you out of your Vulcan mind?"

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