Stardate 3715.0: A landing party beams down to a planet with a rich nature, only to find that there are poisonous plants, sudden thunderstorms and explosive rocks that each kill one crewman as if the planet was defending itself. As the Enterprise is caught in a tractor beam, the landing party heads for a village, whose inhabitants worship and feed a creature named Vaal, obviously the machine that controls the planet. Because of Vaal there has been no progress in thousands of years, and the natives have no concept of love or sex either. While McCoy wants to end Vaal's rule to free those people, Spock objects that they are quite happy the way it is. But Vaal tells his people to kill the strangers, and they slay one more of the landing party. When the Enterprise does not manage to break free, Kirk tells Scotty to fire on Vaal's power source. Vaal is dead, and the people on the planet are free to develop their society on their own.

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