TOS' worst episode.
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
I remember reading about this scene and couldn't accept it as I'd never seen it before back in the 80s until I realised it was one of the many chunks deleted by the BBC throughout their Trek screenings! First time I saw it was on the DVDs!
JB
The Cloud Minders is very similar to the state of the UK these days with the rich elite living in luxury and the poor toiling in the factories and warehouses and having their rights taken away from them! Only thing is we haven't got a hero figure like Captain Kirk to change the status quo!
JB
JB
The Empath commits the crime of being boring and repetitive, with a poorly thought out story, so gets my vote too.
Many of the other "bad" episodes mentioned (Alternative Factor, Mark of Gideon etc) at least have an interesting concept behind them, even if it wasn't best realised.
After yet more threads about this in the last 12 months, I definitely think Kirk was the Federation patsy in this episode. Or even if not, there's still plenty to discuss and throw around various theories (I do not subscribe to the holodeck solution, for example). A truly bad episode will offer none of this.I still tend to think the Federation/Starfleet was in cahoots with the Gideons. Kirk was on a holodeck recreation probably supplied by a secret Section 31 agent that was assigned to the Enterprise for the occasion!
Well, no, the message isn't pro-elite, but how likely is it that the nature of their society had gone totally unnoticed by the Federation government, until "now"? Yet we can't have a corrupt Federation in ST. That's the problem with the writing.
As far as I know, at the moment it's just TrekBBS speculation!
After a many year hiatus, I finally got around to watching "Spock's Brain" again. Such an impossible episode, but I do have to give it kudos for its surreal and macabre nature. As a kid, imagining the brain surgery from McCoy's perspective with an exposed brain and a fully conscious and literally blind patient talking a doctor through his own brain surgery is what nightmares are made from.
Yes, That ep only works if you're willing to let your imagination be stimulated, to see things they're not actually showing us. The surgery was interesting but less horrific to me, since we were being shepherded through it by Spock, who didn't seem all that concerned... Effective for horror purposes, for me, were the Sickbay scene and first appearance of Spock's body on the planet, because they told me there was no brain in that skull, and being an imaginative child, who had grown to trust the makers of Star Trek, I believed it. I needed no dark, scary music or underlighting or dry ice, I looked at that head and knew it was empty, and was horrified. Not so I wet myself or anything, but it was very willing suspension of disbelief.
I felt Spock's Brain has something to say about advancing technology might lead to dumbing down. Just think how with Wiki, Google etcetera one can find out things that only an expert would have known a few years ago. Anyone with a chess app on their mobile phone can 'play' chess as well as any human in history. If some accident like a solar electromagnetic event happened we might find that humanity had lost a lot of the skills that it once had. Then those with access to the few remaining computers might be considered as great sages of special power and the access to them might be highly restricted.
It's a glorious moment when McCoy says 'It's so simple a child could do it' referring to replacing Spock's Brain. So on the other hand the episode talks about the untapped power of the brain both human and Vulcan.
It's a glorious moment when McCoy says 'It's so simple a child could do it' referring to replacing Spock's Brain. So on the other hand the episode talks about the untapped power of the brain both human and Vulcan.
In my opinion(I don't know if anyone shares it) it's important to remember that Spock's Brain was written and shot as a comedy, albeit one with a macabre twist, and Fred Freiberger, as showrunner, wouldn't let them edit it to reflect that. If he had, we would all probably have more respect for it.
This is a complete fan myth. "Spock's Brain" was not written or ever intended as a comedy.
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