The brain is (according to Wikipedia) “the center of the nervous
system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals.” The brain “acts on the rest of the body both by generating patterns of muscle
activity and by driving the secretion of chemicals called hormones. This centralized
control allows rapid and coordinated responses to changes in the environment.”
In cult-television history, however, the humanoid
brain has played a different kind of role.
It has survived death (often in jars filled with colored fluid), and it
has been the form of life evolved beyond the need of physical, biped
bodies.
In Star Trek (1966 – 1969), the
Enterprise encountered three individuals of highly-advanced brain creatures,
the Providers, on the distant world of Triskelion.
In the more notorious episode “Spock’s Brain,”
aliens in go-go boots incapacitate the crew and surgically-remove Mr. Spock’s
brain so that it can control the faculties of their underground complex on a
distant world.
In Space: 1999 (1975 – 1977), Moonbase
Alpha traveled through a region of space where a gigantic entity, a space
brain, dwelt, in an episode titled, appropriately “Space Brain.” This brain was capable of defending
itself with crushing antibodies and was found to be on a collision course with
the errant moon. A second season story, “Brian
the Brain” involved a malevolent robot brain, Brian, who had murdered his human
crew.
In the second episode of the short-lived series The
Fantastic Journey (1977), a group of travelers on an island in the
Bermuda Triangle come across a metropolis where a giant brain controls all the
city’s activity – including the capacity to send lost travelers home – in “Atlantium.”
The old trope of the brain in a jar has appeared on Doctor
Who, in the serial “Brain of Morbius” and in the Wonder Woman (1976 –
1979) episode “Gault’s Brain.”
In the former program, the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker)
and his companion Sarah-Jane Smith (Elizabeth Sladen) land on a world where a
mad scientist is seeking to place the brain of a Time-Lord renegade into a
Frankenstein-like body.
In the latter show, Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter)
tangles with Gault (John Carradine), a brain with frightening telepathic powers….
The X-Files
(1993 – 2002) featured an episode in its seventh season titled “Hungry” in
which a genetic mutant boasting qualities of a shark could survive only by
feasting on human brain.
"Brain Guy," (Bill Corbett) meanwhile, was a regular character on Mystery Science Theater 3000 in its Sci-Fi Channel years. A ghost-faced Observer, Brain Guy carried his brain around -- exposed -- in a pan.
The brain in a jar concept was used earlier in Dr Who in episode two of The Keys of Marinus. They were called the Morphotons and basically seduced people with hallucinations of what they most desired in order for them to do the work the Morphotons couldn't physically do.
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