All anyone has to do is ASK the writer, David Gerold who will gleefully tell you that he was under contract to write a third script, but that he didn't want to, so he wrote something he was "SURE" they would never film, and Gene R., being such an ass, filmed the episode to spite Gerold. And Also because they needed to film something... Roddenberry hated waste almost as much as he hated God, and monogamy.
We should be skeptical of writers claiming they meant to do that. For one thing the scifi influences are too obvious — The society is an inversion of the Eloi and Morlocks and the eponymous brain is the classic Brain in a Jar.
My feeling about this episode is at least stuff keeps happening. The pacing of some others can be so slow. And if they'd allowed the dilemma of leave-Spock-behind-or-threaten-whole-planet to be treated seriously, it could have been a compelling premise. (Perhaps more so if the aliens had just taken Spock's whole body, of course, and they didn't bring remote-controlled spock, who only ends up reminding us how useful robots would be to the crew.) Per Into Darkness and maybe other works as well, you could also have Spock insisting on not being saved, for the sake of the civilization. The story could be a quest to find an alternative to the brain, or to make the planet self-sufficient (with more than just a speech). It could even have ended with some crew member volunteering to get de-brained — hey, something similar happened at the end of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Ah well.
Edited by 216.99.32.44
I like to think this episode is Star Trek's equivalent to "The Great Vegetable Rebellion" from Lost In Space. The scriptwriter that week said to Irwin Allen, when questioned about the script's lack of quality, "I know it's awful, but I don't have another idea in my head!" Also, the bit where Spock guides McCoy in the later stages of the reconnection is probably the least unrealistic part of the episode; cranial surgery is normally performed under local anaesthetic, with the patient providing feedback to the surgeon.
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