10 Terrible Star Trek Episodes With Awesome Endings

Yes, we know. You're probably thinking we've all lost our minds too. It's the episode that's regularly voted as one of the worst of all of Star Trek. Even its lacklustre title feels like they'd just given up as The Original Series entered its third season. Budget cuts were going on, and, unfortunately, they began most literally with Spock's Brain.

So terrible an episode is Spock's Brain that it has often been used as a marker by which other terrible episodes are judged. For example, the 2008 reference book Star Trek 101: A Practical Guide to Who, What, Where, and Why gave out the 'Spock's Brain Award' to the worst episode of each of the then series. Leonard Nimoy is also on record as having been "embarrassed" throughout the filming of the episode, as he described the process in his autobiography I Am Spock.

There is no way of getting around the simply bonkers concept of Spock's Brain, but then maybe we don't have to. We can just lie back and enjoy its equally crazy ending in which Doctor McCoy downloads into his brain all the advanced surgical knowledge he needs (from 'The Teacher') to reattach Spock's brain. Halfway through, McCoy starts to lose this knowledge and has to reconnect Spock's speech centre so that his own patient, Spock, can help him with the rest of the operation. It's silly, it's fun, it's Star Trek. That's awesome enough for us.