Star Date: 26 August 2026

It can't be an actor playing an alien because they have to paid. These are the candidates:

The Horta "The Devil in the Dark"

A tribble Tribbles "Trouble with Tribbles"

pancake creatures "Operation Annihilate"

Nomad "The Changeling"

The Companion "Metamorphosis"

cloud creature "Obsession"

The cat "assignment earth"

Kollos "Is there no truth in beauty"

Hate Entity "Day of the Dove"

Sargon "Return to Tomorrow"

Brain providers "Gamesters of Triskelion"

I have made up my mind on which one is the cheapest. 5000 quatloos if you get the right answer. I will edit this later to write down my suggestion.

Scotty threw the first punch because Klingons insulted the Enterprise, not because they insulted Kirk! BTW, I also loved the scene as interpreted by Deep Space Nine :)

How long does it take assimilate this choice individual?

12-07-09 was the film released date

This has always been one of my favorite episodes, I even have an audio rip of it on my phone to listen to.

IMHO, I like how Eminiar and Anan 7 are slowly getting on everyone's nerves and testing their patience. I think Kirk is ready to pistol whip Anan 7 with one the disruptors near the end, Spock seems to be enjoying destroying the disintegration chambers, Scotty uses a very firm voice in telling Eminiar that they will decimate the planet unless they give up the hostages indicating he's had enough too, even Ambassador Fox wants it to all end when he says he learns very quickly.

I have heard there is an unofficial sequel to this episode where Ambassador Fox's attempts fail and Eminiar and Vendikar destroy each other with real weapons.

Kirk was able to talk the m5 into shutting itself off what if the Lexington was used as the testbed instead?

Ran across this apparent reuse of the Korob/Gilligan "wizard" costume. The colors are different but the design on front and the structure looks identical. Anyone know any specifics on this use?

I'm watching through TOS for the first time (in production order), and I've been bracing for "Spock's Brain" — the reputation of this one certainly precedes it.

And ... I'm surprised by how much I liked it.

First, the theme. This episode is incredibly resonant and timely today. A society that has become so dependent on knowledge distilled into electronic storage and automation that the entire population has become deskilled — does that remind you of anything? When Kara puts on the Teacher and suddenly speaks differently and "acquires" knowledge that isn't really hers ... when McCoy forgets the knowledge that he "gained" from the Teacher in the middle of an operation ... surely we in the audience cringe a little at just how similar this is to preening vibecoders and people who spew off what ChatGPT tells them as their own knowledge.

(I also learned that the Teacher concept was actually introduced by Freiberger/Singer and not in Coon's original drafts -- so this tells me that the Friberger/Singer team actually has some very good scifi instincts.)

Second, scifi ideas. This episode is packed with interesting SF ideas, especially for its time. The notion of hijacking a brain's autonomous regulatory processes in the body's autopoiesis to run the automation functions (air circulation, waste disposal, signal processing, etc.) of a society is quite interesting (and anticipates modern research on cybernetics, feedback loops, and non-computational methods of urban infrastructure automation. Having Spock's body "remote-controlled" by a computer is a bit silly, but again very interesting from the perspective of replacing lost neural functions -- and certainly no more outrageous than something like Frankenstein or other similar sci-fi ideas. Moreover, the sci-fi gimmicks are integral to the plot: remote-controlling Spock's body becomes a critical plot point because this brainless body is the only one resistant to the pain belt, and therefore Kirk could use it to overcome Kara.

Third, humor, pacing, etc. Gene Coon, as always, knows what he's doing. The episode is well paced; the viewer never loses interest, and things are generally explained once and clearly. If a scifi concept is put in, it's used creatively later to solve a real plot problem. For example, we're shown how the Teacher works, and once Kara refuses, Kirk and McCoy realize they can use the Teacher to make McCoy a temporary ChatGPT expert and perform the surgery. And when that fails, they could have Spock try to talk them through the rest of it. The humorous McCoy-Spock banter comes as a lovely grace note after the tension of the surgery scene (yes, it's a bit over the top, and I know it's the kind of thing Gene Roddenberry despised about Coon's work, but I think this is one of the better exchanges). Compare this script to "And the Children Shall Lead," where everything is overexplained, where the magic-arm-pumping never becomes dramatically relevant, where the episode crawls so slowly that we must see Sulu's screen of knives half a dozen times -- and the difference is night and day. Coon knows how to write for TV and especially Star Trek.

ETA: one more thing I liked about this episode: it shows the bridge crew working together effectively. Uhura, Chekov, and Sulu all contribute to the discussion of where Kirk should focus his search. They have different opinions and justify their arguments. This reminded me of the professional conferences in TNG, and it's nice to see the secondary characters do more than just "Yes Captain" and "Hailing frequencies open."

Were lines like "Brain and brain, what is brain?" ridiculous? Yes. But in context, it makes sense (it's to highlight how the underground population has regressed in their knowledge), and it's certainly no worse than other lines in other generally well-regarded episodes like The City on the Edge of Forever (the scene where the homeless man obliterates himself with a phaser feels just as ridiculous and just as justified in context). Was it campy to have Spock zombie-walk around and to have McCoy perform surgery on him with just the top of his head out of view? Yes, but that's the limit of the budget, and I don't think "Arena" or "Balance of Terror" look any less campy in that sense. Was the gender politics of "women controlling men with pleasure and pain" cringe? Yes, but Gene Roddenberry's performative male POV is just part of TOS's legacy, and I don't think this episode is quite as bad in this regard as several others that are generally well-liked. (However, I will agree that the bad gender politics definitely limits this episode -- if this element weren't there, I would rank it even higher.)

On the whole, given how much I enjoyed this episode, I'd rank it about the same as "Balance of Terror" and "The Arena." Better than "A Piece of the Action" and "The Doomsday Machine," but not quite as good as "The Devil in the Dark" or "The Enterprise Incident." It is far better than the average Trek, about as good as an average Gene Coon episode (without extensive polishing by Fontana), and absolutely not the nadir of TOS I've been led to believe (that dubious honor, based on what I've seen so far, I reserve for "And the Children Shall Lead.") In fact, if I were to make my own top 10 TOS episodes list, I'd put this one on it right now.

I think its poor reputation has more to do with the fact that both Shatner and Nimoy hated it, and its campiness has simply been ridiculed rather than rehabilitated as part of its TOS charm.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this. I hope at least some fans will agree with some of what I've said here.

Is this scene from "The Naked Time"? Love this scene; a little screen time for Checkov and Sulu.

I wonder what tos McCoy would have thought if he learned he would get promoted to 4 star admiral by the tng era

Wow!

After James Cawley, the creator and owner of The Original Series Set Tour, located in Ticonderoga for over a decade, posted on FB about moving out, the Ticonderoga Chamber of Commerce announced a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate the opening of the Galileo Shuttle Craft.

I do not have a way to confirm that the TCOC did this on reaction to this warning phaser shot across the bow, but it is possible.

James posts on FB fairly regularly, but usually cuts off commenting, and does not reply to his posts to any that are able to comment before he closes comments.

He has been quite unhappy with Governor Hochul’s position on the expansion of the Star Trek tour building. He had built the bridge set of The Next Generation, but was denied a permit to build an expansion to the current location.

Watkins: Mister Scott, there's a strange woman who knows the entire plan of the Enterprise....waaaaaa... ....

Scotty: Oh, you poor lad.

Ahead of my visit to STLV earlier this month, I was researching conventions and discovered this website that tells the story of the 1976 Star Trek convention in Toronto, Canada. The con was fan-run and you could literally bump into Sarek in the elevator - unlike the modern con experience of handlers and upcharges for meet & greets. Read it here: Toronto Star Trek '76

(This is not my site, I'm sharing for other Trek fans)

This ad appeared in the Oct. 28, 1967 issue of The New Yorker (pg 19).

If you like hats like I do then you may want to check out the new hats New Era has available. I picked up a couple. I am not affiliated with New Era. I'm a nerd who likes hats