On September 20, 1968, Star Trek launched its third season with perhaps the most notorious episode of all TOS:
Both Shatner and Nimoy rip this episode pretty hard in their respective memoirs. It's actually pretty rare you hear anyone say anything nice about it. Which on one hand is understandable. Like more than a few Season 3 episodes, it's a fairly ridiculous concept and is filled with presumably unintentional hilarity.
On the other, it's terrifically entertaining. It might help matters if you're familiar with 1950s sci-fi. Such as:
or
or
Even if you haven't, you're probably not the type of person who needs to be told what sort of tropes are common to these sort of things. The pics (and posters) make it clear enough, anyway.
Such things are parodied explicitly in 1987's Amazon Women of the Moon. Which, if you came of age in the era of video stores and late-night-UHF, is a real flashback.
Gene Coon (who wrote this episode but under his pseudonym, Lee Cronin) was certainly familiar with such things, and I can't help but wonder if he was sending up the genre. It makes a lot of sense to read the story that way. Unfortunately, Gene died shortly after leaving the show, so his opinion on what "Spock's Brain" was all about was never recorded. Perhaps it's just a crazy coincidence that it succeeds so well on that level.
Before we continue, here's Phish performing their song of the same name. Not a bad little tune, but I can't for the life of me figure out how any of the lyrics relate to the goings-on on Sigma Draconius VI. (Or VII, as both Sulu and Kirk refer to it erroneously in a couple of spots.)
Whenever I have such a question and the internet can't answer it, I ask my buddy (aka "Rhode Island's awesomest mediocre musician") Kevin. He's a little like the rock trivia A-Team in that respect. Here's what he told me:
"Its debut was 5/16/95 in Lowell, along with MANY other debuts. An epic one set show.
The
audience voted on the title, it was multiple choice. I don't know
what's going on with the words too much! Sorry I can't help with that
part. I don't detect a whole lotta Star Trek in there myself."
Script / Story: (4.5 / 7 of 10/10) Despite such brilliantly memorable lines as "Brain and Brain! What is Brain?" or "You are not Morg. You are not Ey-Morg." or the "This gentleman is keeping us from our property" exchange between Kirk, Bones, and Scotty, I can't really say the script is particularly good. It does a decent job staying one step ahead of a ridiculous premise is about the best I can say about it.
As for the theme, if it's a parody of "The Planet of Strange Women!" sort of stuff, then it's pretty wild. It's hard to see how it couldn't be, to be honest, but I've certainly never heard anyone involved in its production ever corroborate that. So perhaps it's one of my whimsical interpretations.
Which raises the in-my-mind unlikelier scenario, that this was meant sincerely. No tongue in cheek, no parody, just hey, Spock's brain, it is what it is. Who knows. If that's the case, then you can certainly learn more from watching this episode about what feminists were reacting against in the 60s and 70s than from a daily Jezebel-dot-com habit. But I'll leave that up to you.
A mysterious woman appears on the Enterprise and renders everyone unconscious.
Her planet long ago divided into females (EyMorg) living in comfort, below, with
the males (Morg) on the surface, as servants/ breeders/ workmen. The standard Morlocks/ Eloi arrangement.
Unfortunately, the ladies have forgotten how to run their machines so they hatch a plan to kidnap Spock's brain.
McCoy's able to keep Spock's brainless body alive while they follow the lady's ion trail to the 7th (or 6th) planet of the Sigma Draconius system. There they discover the "pain and delight" of the Eymorg, the matriarchal society behind the brainnapping.
Using the "teacher," a brain machine built by the EyMorg's ancestors, McCoy gains the (temporary) knowledge of how to put Spock's brain back into his head.
Surgery successful, the Enterprise leaves, the Morg/Ey-Morg civilization a wreck in its wake. But hey! Got Spock's brain back! Day seized.
That's basically it. It's amusing to consider the title (1 of 3) as if it's a metaphor, i.e. all of this is a representation of what it's like to be Mr. Spock, or something, (a Herman's Head scenario) but it's probably not.
Kirk and the Gang: (35 of 10). First of all, any episode that has Shatner charging down the hall saying "There she is! She's the one! What have you done with Spock's brain?" is going to get at least 10 points just for that. Maybe even 100. You're insane in the membrane if you don't do the same. Jaysus.
Second, all this stuff:
They get zapped with the Eymorg pain gizmos three different times. This is the first, right after the bit quoted above.
This is the second. Screencaps don't convey the amount of time Shatner's antics consume, here.
Finally, this last time. Extra points for Scotty and Bones, here.
Kirk finds a way to attack Kara with the remote control Spock.
I always wondered how Kirk's able to maneuver Spock so specifically. (Not to mention why Kara can't seem to elude the very, very slow-moving automaton.) Meh.
Third:
Spock must have liked the colony jumpsuit so much in "This Side in Paradise" that he kept it. McCoy must have went to his quarters and dressed him in it, for some reason. (Awkward.)
Despite getting his name in the title, Spock doesn't have much to do in this episode. He describes it in I Am Spock as... "There was little acting challenge in walking around pretending to be brainless; I just let me eyes glaze over, and functioned in automation style. But frankly, during the entire shooting, I was embarrassed - a feeling that overcame me many times during that final season."
Hey, to each his own. I un-ironically love "Spock's Brain." (But... do I love it for its brain or its body?)
Guest:(3 of 3) Kara is played by Marj Dusay:
aka Alexandra Spaulding from Guiding Light
Luma is played by Sheila Leighton, of whom I could find very little besides her imdb.
"And then they were like ker-pow, ker-pow!"
"And I was like 'Blaaaow...'"
And Alan Moore plays one of the Morg:
Visual Design: (2.5 of 3).
No stellar cartography for them.
The remastered version nicely touches up the planetside sequence to make it all look more glacial.
Season 3 plays around with montages and overlays in a way the other seasons didn't.
Okay, come on now. One overlay too many.
Internal Logistics: (0 of OMG). So yeah, this episode makes very little sense either in the Trekverse or the regular ol' universe. This section could easily be several dozen paragraphs. Just a couple of quick points:
- How exactly does Kara fall for the "Scotty pretends to faint" trick while under the influence of the same machine that enables Bones to perform brain implant surgery?
- What happens to the Morg and EyMorg after the Enterprise leaves?
- Shouldn't Spock's hair be just a little mussed up after his cranial surgery?
You get the idea.
Still:
Memorability: (5 of 5). Is that too low? Probably. But let's say 5 just the same.
We continue Sexual Perversity in Outer Space Week (TrekSexNado!) with:
Yes, I did previously indicate I wouldn't be covering this one. I ended up watching it again and realized I needed to include
it. I've always liked it; that was never why it was left off my
desert-island-TOS list. See, I figured if I was in that scenario - and I'm 100% serious about this - I'd be jonesing to see the episodes that I didn't have with me after so much time away from them, so I wanted to leave myself some fun ones to catch up on once I was rescued. Not just the Mudds, "Turnabout Intruder," etc.
If postponing Trek gratification to maximize entirely hypothetical pleasure strikes you as crazy, or really sad, I sympathize, but it's probably why my Trek Rail Pass is stamped "Unlimited Pass" (with License to Phaser stenciled in Trek-font underneath it) instead of "Good for One Use Only." I ain't complaining.
"I don't think you folks belong on this train."
Script / Story: (7 / 8.5 of 10/10). As Eugene Myers noted in his and Torie Atkinson's Tor re-watch of this: "one of the oddest things about this episode is its unusually high level of sexual innuendo." He goes on to reference Kirk’s aside to Bones: "I’m looking forward to a nice period of rest on some
lovely... (gazes longingly at a passing yeoman) ...planet."
First at episode's beginning (above)
then recalled at episode's end.
Bookmarking (or framing) all in-between, if you will, with:
The Male Gaze.
Oldie but goodie.
This is certainly notable. But neither he nor Torie elect to go much further. (The latter refers to it as reminding her of the "hilarious vaginal imagery from The Motion Picture," but that's about it. That seems unfairly dismissive, but hey, you say tomato.) Myself, all of the innuendo is a signpost pointing us to a different read on things altogether.
If we take this episode strictly literally, it's an interesting sci-fi story and a good characterization episode. Actually, not just good, a great characterization episode, particularly for McCoy and Bones -"Shut up, Spock, we're rescuing you!" "Why thank you... Captain McCoy." Kirk plays exceptionally well off them, as well. This is a go-to for the interpersonal dynamics of our TOS holy trinity.
Images from Marvel's Negative Zone by Byrne and Kirby.
But what Myers and Atkinson allude to imbues the episode with something else altogether. It could just be an abundance of birth imagery, sure - if so, then I'm more negative on the script, as there's no excuse for it. Put it to you this way: if I'm watching a naval adventure movie where all the seamen are impotent and are always polishing the cannons and firing the water hose and they keep describing every situation they find themselves in with vaginal imagery, I'd better be assured the writers are aware of what they're putting across, metaphorically. If not, I get aggravated. A script can't be less self-aware than its audience, although it often is. (Probably more often, it's the other way around.)
Is that the case here? I don't think so. But I'm also not quite convinced the writers here (Robert Sabaroff, with revisions by the Genes and DC Fontana) are putting across what I'm about to get into.
For what it's worth, here is my attempt to reconcile "The Immunity Syndrome"'s plot mechanics with its abundance of suggestive dialogue:This is either a story about men wrestling with the unknowability of the clitoris, or it's about conception-to-birth from the perspective of the sperm. "Brace yourselves...
the area of penetration will no doubt be sensitive."
From the men figuring out the clitoris angle, it's mainly a matter of a few lines. To penetrate the "zone of darkness," the crew must overcome increased fatigue with endless stimulants. To escape it requires maintaining repeated and strenuous forward thrusts with excessive attention given to the penetration of an outer boundary layer. ("Its outer protective membrane, relatively insensitive to interior irritation.")
A final thrust and the membrane is ruptured, and they are thrown clear. Whereupon, presumably, the Enterprise falls to one side, exhausted, and lights a cigarette.
Do I think the Genes would put such tongue in cheek stuff in here? Absolutely. Am I convinced it's what they were doing? Not really. It'd be a silly thing to hang the episode on, to be sure, but I mention it because it's pretty amusing to watch this with that in mind. But the Adventures in the Birth Canal read holds together a bit more compellingly. Consider the beginning as the overwhelming disorientation of initial orgasm.
"Orgasm is," after all, "a little death," as someone once said. (Sounds better in French.)
From this point on, the Enterprise, so "discharged," is racing into the "Zone of Darkness."
Massive thrust...
Here we go again!
Inside the Birth Canal
They survive the initial rush to the nucleus and fertilize it, whereupon the rest of the story (right down to the dynamics among the crew and especially Kirk, Spock and McCoy) is the saga of the Enterprise's gestation and ultimate birth, mirrored by the organism itself, which is set to reproduce and must be stopped at all costs. i.e. The Enterprise must triumph over all the other sperm and alone emerge from the zone of darkness.
When asked, McCoy recommends "Survival." Either the most useless recommendation ever given in the galactic history of recommendations or the mission statement of every sexually reproducing organism.
This take on things also makes the leering at the end and beginning more sensible: despite the near-death and trauma, Kirk can't wait to do it all over again. Such is humanity.
The human adventure-comedy proceeds apace.
Chekov
is especially important to this reading, as he's Kirk, Jr. forced all at once to learn about the
birds and the bees. In all its sticky, cosmic glory.
"It has found us!"
Now, (title (2 of 3) if this episode had been named "Space Seed," I'd say we were really onto something, here. But it isn't, and what it is named positions all the suggestive dialogue in a biological direction. The Enterprise is trapped inside an amoeba, a cosmic petri dish, and must break free; that's probably all that's going on. This is a much less satisfying explanation for all the thrust/ penetration/ sensitive membrane/ birth canal talk going on. Message confusion. But it fits the biology-quiz-run-amok theme quite well.
What can I say: I prefer my own take. It reconciles these elements better.
Guest: (4 of 5) I defy you to find a better performance from a gigantic single-cell organism.
Visual Design: (4 of 3) I have to hand it to both the original fx and the remastered fx crews. Both episodes look exceptionally cool, then or now.
Original
Remastered
The remastered editions really make the colors pop. This episode in particular heightens the pop-art sensibilities of the lighting and costumes.
Tic Tac Kirk.
Kirk and the Gang: (25 of 10). A good ensemble story, as well as one of Deforest Kelley's best arcs and performances.
Lt. Kyle subs in for Sulu (absent from this ep due to Takei's filming The Green Berets) but Kirk calls him "Cowell" throughout. Probably just a bit of welcome-to-the-bridge hazing.
Internal Logistics: (1.5 of 3) Considering that this episode begins with the traumatic shock of so many Vulcans dying, it ends on kind of a light note, doesn't it? This is common to many Season 2 episodes, not just this one.
Kirk must not have sent in his log for this adventure. When the Enterprise-D becomes trapped in its own zone of darkness in "Where Silence Has Lease," Picard asks Data to check the computer banks for similar occurrences, no matches are found.
This cracked me up: when Spock gets the shuttlecraft assignment over McCoy, the Doctor walks him to the shuttlebay, whereupon he stops the Vulcan from opening the door so he can snark at him a little bit.
Only problem is...
was Spock really about to enter a room that wasn't pressurized?
I had help for this one. Thank you, Phil Farrand.
Memorability: 4.25of 5. I give this one a "4" but am adding a quarter-point because of the Information Society song. The "Pure Energy" sample therein is actually from "Errand of Mercy," but I've heard from enough people that they think it's from "that one organism episode, the space amoeba" for me to be on the lookout for that now whenever that song comes up.
