Science Fiction Theatre episode review — 1.7 — The Brain of John Emerson

Original air date: May 21, 1955
Director: Leslie Goodwins
Writer: Hendrik Vollaerts

Rating: 6/10

I decided that this will be my last episode, but it is also my favorite since the second. But I’m not convinced it’s an upturn for the series overall, because it’s still got all the problems the others have had. I just happened to like it a bit more than most.

After a police officer is shot in the head, he goes through brain surgery.

He comes out of it smarter, moving from an IQ in the 110’s to an IQ in the 170’s. Unfortunately, we don’t really see him be smarter, we’re more just told it. But it is squeezed into a half hour episode, so that’s sort of expected.

Most episodes so far have had an interesting premise like this, and just done nothing with it, filling out the rest of the half hour with boring talking. Here, we do get the boring talking, but there’s another level to the story, as it turns out his surgeon was trying to do this to conduct some kind of experiment.

And the episode doesn’t do a whole lot with that, but at least it’s there. It makes it fairly enjoyable, even if it’s a little dull.