Star Trek:Original Series - Worst. Episode. Ever.

Star Trek: Worse. Episode. Ever?

While the original Star Trek series was ground-breaking, there's no denying that a number of the episodes were, frankly, real dogs. Remember the two guys with their faces divided into a black side and a white side? And the guy with the black on the left hated the guy with the white on the left? Ew. Really stinky.

That said, there are, in my opinion, two episodes from the third season that stand out in wretchedness. I waver back and forth between which one I think is the absolute worst, so I present them both for your loathing. Is it only serendipity that these episodes were the first and last of the season?

Spock's Brain

At the end of Star Trek's second season, it appeared quite likely that it wouldn't be back for a third, since ratings were only lukewarm. Fans mobilized a then-unprecedented letter-writing campaign to persuade NBC to produce a third season. Surprisingly, this campaign succeeded, and Star Trek: the Original Series lived another year.

When the third season led off with the dreadful 'Spock's Brain', however, it was clear that the writing was on the wall.

The plot involves mysterious aliens who infiltrate the Enterprise and hijack ... well, Spock's brain. Following their backtrail, the crew of the Enterprise discover a strange split culture, with the primitive males living on the surface, with little interaction with the 'givers of pain and pleasure', which turn out to be the advanced women who live a life of high-tech ease in underground palaces. The women have appropriated Spock's brain to serve as the central controller of their computer system, which is the means to their advanced way of life.

Of course, they are forced to give up the brain, which is surgically returned to Spock, and the women are faced with the prospect of having to re-merge their lives with those of the other gender on the surface.

Worthy of derision. Worthy of the title Worse. Episode. Ever.

Turnabout Intruder

The third season started with a dog, and it ended with a dog, with this hideous little example of late-sixties male chauvinism.

The story concerns a bitter woman, Dr. Janice Lester, who feels that her gender kept her out of command positions, who switches bodies with Captain Kirk. Lester, appearing to the crew to be Kirk, proceeds to alter course; she wants to dump Kirk, who appears to be Lester, so that she can keep command of the Enterprise without his/her interference.

Spock and McCoy quickly cotton to the switcheroo, with Spock's Vulcan mind meld coming in handy yet again. And here's where the chauvinism is at its most heinous. They have to try to figure out how to switch the two back into the correct bodies, not only because it's the right thing to do, but because as long as he inhabits Janice Lester's body, Kirk can't command the Enterprise! Never mind that it's his mind that graduated from the Academy and has all the experience; as long as he is physically in a female body, he's unfit for command.

The switch back is, of course, effected, and as Janice Lester is taken off to be tended in some insane asylum, Kirk delivers the moral: if she'd only been satisfied with her gender, "her life could have been as full as any woman's." The fact that this line does not read "her life could have been as full as anyone's" earns this episode my eternal contempt.

Also worthy of the title Worse. Episode. Ever.

Your Least Favorites?

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