Stardate 3156.2: When Sulu is beamed back from the Earth-like planet Beta III, he is constantly smirking and talking about someone called "Landru" who has erected a paradise. Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down with a bigger landing party to investigate. They run into the "Festival", actually a riot of the younger people in the streets, and seek shelter in a house together with three older men called Reger, Tamar and Hacom. Reger suspects that Kirk and company might not belong to the "Body" and might be "Archons" - obviously related to the ship Archon that visited the planet a century earlier and vanished. The next day Hacom appears with two hooded men, "Lawkeepers", who kill Tamar for disobeying Landru. Kirk and his men initially manage to escape with Reger, but are taken prisoners some time later, while Landru attempts to make the Enterprise crash with a tractor beam. Lawkeepers enter and take McCoy to another room, from where he returns "absorbed", just like Sulu and everyone else on the planet. Fortunately Marplon, who works in an underground movement with Reger, saves Kirk and Spock from being absorbed as well. He leads them to a room where they find Landru - a computer that was programmed 6000 years ago to maintain peace and that has been controlling the inhabitants of the planet ever since. Kirk argues that Landru has violated its own rules, whereupon the computer destroys itself.

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