BTW as a trekkie the funniest thing you can do is find someone who isn't and try to explain Spock's Brain to them.
"so trek got canceled after two seasons, but fans launched a massive letter-writing campaign and got it renewed. First time that'd happened in the history of TV, I believe. They came back with an episode called Spock's Brain."
"interesting. So what's the plot?"
"aliens steal Spock's Brain"
"no that's pretty much it. His brain gets stoled. They have to go find it."
"huh. Why do the aliens steal it?"
"they need a computer to run their society."
"and they decide to use Spock's Brain?"
"yep! So the Enterprise crew rigs up a remote control device for Spock's body so they can drive it around like a toy car, and go looking for his brain."
"wait. They don't leave it behind in, like, medical stasis?"
"nah they're worried they won't be able to get the brain back to his body in time. So they bring it along. As a remote controlled body. They've got a little remote with like 5 buttons. Walk forward, turn left, turn right, Kung-fu attack, and so on"
"yeah they have to fight off the aliens at one point. With Spock's body."
"the best part? The ultimate moral of the episode seems to be against gender segregation"
"yeah see the aliens who stole Spock's Brain are a bunch of cavemen living on the nuclear-winter surface and a bunch of women living below ground, with PAIN RAYS. the women steal Spock's Brain to run their society, because they're not smart enough to run their machines."
"yeah a bit. So at the end when they get Spock's Brain back, they solve the society's problems by convincing them to reintegrate the sexes and work together on solving their problems. Also Kirk says something like 'in time you'll learn that women can provide not only pain, but pleasure!' to the cave men"
"... Do the women have pleasure rays too?"
"no. He's not talking about that. Anyway this is all skipping over the fact that when they meet up with the alien woman they saw steal Spock's Brain, she doesn't know how to put it back in. Or take it out. She doesn't know what a brain is."
"yeah she was sent on this mission by the old computer that was failing, and it used a Teacher Machine to temporarily give her SUPER SURGERY skills to get the brain out."
"so she went from not knowing what a brain is to being able to do neurosurgery?"
"yeah. And here's the thing: McCoy can't put the brain back in either. It's too compilated for him."
"so they went searching for Spock's Brain, knowing that they had no way to put it back in?!"
"exactly! So McCoy gets taught how to do Super Brain Surgery by the Teacher Machine, and he starts putting Spock's Brain back in his body, but the skills wear off before he can finish"
"yeah you only get them for a few hours. So he has the brilliant idea of hooking up Spock's vocal cords so that Spock can walk him through hooking up the rest of his brain."
"there are so many reasons why that doesn't make sense"
"YEP! THAT'S SPOCK'S BRAIN!"
"so this was a guest writer who never worked before or again, right?"
"no, it was Gene Coon. He wrote like 15 episodes, most of them pretty good, and went on to do some other scifi films. He's the guy who created Khan."
"why do you like Star Trek again?"
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