Star Trek Volume 31
featuring the episodes Spock’s Brain and Is There In Truth No Beauty?
If there’s anything the fans wanted from another season of Star Trek, it was more Spock…but for Pete’s sake, did they want to get it like this? Perhaps the ultimate low point of the entire original series in the eyes of fandom (though personally, I thought there were worse episodes than this by far), Spock’s Brain has the venerable Vulcan in nearly every scene - well, okay, his magically-lobotomized body, at any rate. Using a big honkin’ remote control, Kirk and McCoy pilot Spock’s empty shell around and set out to retrieve his brain from the alien beauties who took it, and much hilarity ensues.
Diana Muldaur, the future Doctor Pulaski of Next Generation and already a Classic Trek veteran from second season’s Return To Tomorrow, returns in a different role in Is There In Truth No Beauty? This time, she’s a blind woman - with a prosthetic visual “organ” - carting around a hideous Medusan, an intelligent creature which has apparently consented to living in a box because the mere sight of it will drive anyone else mad. (Does every other race in the galaxy allow humans to give them a name related to Earth mythology?) And you better bet good money on Spock having to take a peek at it. Interesting for featuring a character who had a hand in the Enterprise’s design (who later goes nuts and sets the ship on a course for nowhere at highly improbable speeds), Truth is fairly typical third-season fare, maybe just a little above average.