YMMV / Star Trek S3 E1 "Spock's Brain"

• Awesome Music: One of Fred Steiner’s eeriest scores would be put to much better use when tracked into subsequent episodes.
• Critical Backlash: People viewing Star Trek with fresher perspectives today certainly see this episode as the farce that it is, but not quite as the "worst Star Trek episode ever made." But that's mostly because it now has a similar reputation to Plan 9 from Outer Space — it's simply too entertaining and unintentionally funny to be that bad. It looks even better next to later episode "The Paradise Syndrome," which has aged like milk. During the 50th Anniversary celebrations in 2016, fans were polled to pick the 10 worst Star Trek episodes ever made, and for the above reasons of unintentional hilarity, "Spock's Brain" was more or less left off the list. Instead, fans chose "These Are The Voyages..." from Enterprise as the all-time worst.
• Ham and Cheese: Dear God. William Shatner isn't the only one catering this particular buffet.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: McCoy risking his life (and Kirk would do the same) to save Spock would be done to far greater effect in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, but the sweet sentiment is still there.
• Hilarious in Hindsight
  Bones: Take him where?
  Kirk: In Search of... his brain, Doctor.
• Ho Yay: Spock talks of the distinct pleasure he gets from hearing Kirk's voice again.
• Les Yay: Everyone looks at Kara in awe when she arrives on the bridge. Including Uhura.
• Narm: The whole damn episode. Special mention goes to "Brain and brain! What is "brain"?"
  • Even for a show where Orchestral Bombing was the norm, having every single cut to a new shot be accompanied by a loud, dramatic sting might have been a bit much.
  • And then there's that damn "BOING!" sound effect.
  • A brainless Spock, walking around, by remote control. That is a thing that happens.
• Narm Charm: In response to Bones' famous line "His brain is gone", the camera cuts back to Kirk, who mouths the words "His... brain?". This is actually a pretty plausible reaction to being told something so absurd, but the aforementioned deafening musical sting, accompanied by Shatner's trademark overacting (only he could over-sell a line like that without actually speaking) puts it right in that overlap of awesome and hilarious. It actually comes across less as Kirk's reaction to what just happened to his friend and more like Shatner having a WTF reaction to the script itself.
• So Bad, It's Good: The episode is so awesomely bad that, when you approach it the right way, it becomes one of the funniest Trek episodes ever made. Rumor has it that the script originated as a prank at the expense of Gene Roddenberry. Edward Gross points out in The Fifty-Year Mission that "What audiences fail to appreciate today is the fact that organ transplantation was very much in the zeitgeist when the series was being produced, with the first successful heart transplant taking place in 1967," so this may have been what Gene Coon was thinking of; but that doesn't excuse the crappy storyline, dialogue, or anything else.
• Took The Bad Episode Seriously: Nowhere else does DeForest Kelley exemplify this ethos more than he does here (except perhaps the equally absurd Star Trek V: The Final Frontier). He delivers what is perhaps the most ludicrous dialogue ever written ("He was worse than dead! His brain is gone!") with intensity and conviction. It is truly a sight to behold. (And somehow, seeing him throw so much gravitas into this episode just makes it even sillier.)
• Visual Effects of Awesome: For the time anyway, the switch in how the viewscreen was portrayed so that people could walk in front of it was quite impressive. So much that the first scene has as many people walk past it as possible.