STAR TREK: "SPOCK'S BRAIN" (1968)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, sociological*


Not many critics have used the word "good" to describe any aspect of STAR TREK's third-season opener, "Spock's Brain." I will note that I use the term to describe only the episode's mythic discourse, which is in my mind a thing apart from such loony lines as:

"Brain and brain! What is brain?"

Structually speaking, "Brain" is one of the strongest episodes by Gene L. Coon (writing under the name of Lee Cronin). What kills the episode is not its structure but its verisimilitude: the moment the viewer learns that the story is all about Mister Spock's brain being literally removed from his head by a sexy girl alien, the episode loses any and all claim to being taken seriously. It's one thing to see a brain removed, stuck in a jar, and exerting mental control over people, a la DONOVAN'S BRAIN. It's quite another thing to have Kirk and other Enterprise go on a "search for Spock's brain," a line from the episode which coincidentally resembles Nimoy's later TV-effort IN SEARCH OF. But even if that show had never existed, there's just something incredibly comical about a brain being pulled out of someone's head and being put in some other body or machine.

I sometimes wonder if "Brain" would be so poorly regarded had the brain-thieves in the story not taken Spock's literal brain, but some energy-matrix associated with his intellect, like the so-called "katra" that incarnates Spock's spirit in STAR TREK: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK. Had Coon not chosen to make the brain-drain literal, viewers might have been less inclined to laugh at the sight of the Enterprise's resident Vulcan literally walking around without a brain in his head.

Had Coon opted for an approach more spiritual than visceral, critics might better appreciate how the episode plays upon common Roddenberry themes, even during Roddenberry's absence from the producer's chair. Then the emphasis would have been upon the story's interesting bifurcation of gender. Thanks to one of TREK's many ancient designers of alien worlds, on Sigma Draconis an ice age separates the female gender, called "Eymorg" from the male gender, the "Morg." The latter live on the planet's surface like dispossessed Morlocks, while the women are like a gang of Eloi who live underground and control all the technology of the hyper-advanced ancestors. Though the script makes clear that the separated sexes still conjoin to some extent-- the Morg call the Eymorg "the givers of pain and delight"-- Coon remains silent on the subject of how they propagate, though something along the line of the old Amazon solution may have been contemplated (i.e., male babies are sent to the surface, female ones are raised underground). When Kirk and company first show up on Sigma Draconis in pursuit of the brain-thieves, the star-sailors are regarded as being a little too feminine to be guys, given their less than brutish size and their lack of facial hair.

Given how often the masculinist Roddenberry pictures men as being naturally more assertive and dominant toward women, it's interesting to see Coon portraying a society in which women have been dominant for a really long time, using super-weapons to give them the advantage over male muscles. However, because the technology needs one good brain to run it, Kirk's recovery of the Vulcan cerebrum spells the end of the bifurcated society. When one of the Eymorg wails at having to leave their technological Eden to join the men in the cold cruel world on the surface, Kirk helpfully informs her that he thinks they'll find other ways to bend men to their will, heh heh.

Even with a flawed concept, no one was Coon's equal in creating genuinely funny dialogue for the Classic Trek characters, and "Spock's Brain" manages some humorous moments in which the audience is laughing with the characters, rather than at them.