The Enterprise scans a lifeless planet and, finding nothing, prepares to leave. However, a sudden low budget visual effect invades the screen causing the planet and everything else to fade out of existence for an uncomfortable few seconds. 
Rechecking the ship’s instruments, Spock discovers a living creature now on the planet below. Bloke on a planet? Hardly Star Trek’s most exciting moment, Nonetheless, it’s reason enough to investigate.
A landing party of Kirk, Spock and four security men beam down and find a tiny spacecraft and a bearded man. Or is it a tiny man and a bearded spaceship. I forget. Either way: man and spaceship.
It would seem that the effect which faded everything out of existence centered around the planet. Starfleet sends out a red alert warning that the effect affected all quadrants of space. Kirk and the Commodore believe it could be the start of an invasion. It’s worse than that, Jim. It’s so much worse than that.
The bearded man, Lazarus to his bearded friends, helpfully explains that his race was killed by a ‘thing’, a monster that looks like a man. However, Kirk seems suspicious. Another party beam down to the planet in search of the monster. Things get all ‘effecty’ again, and we are ‘treated’ to a negative image fight sequence. Things wobble.
Lazarus says “The ‘thing’ is all white / black!”. Must be a penguin.
In sickbay, McCoy observes that Lazarus has healed ludicrously quickly. We see him convulse and the effect happens again. Lazarus’ scar returns. How strange. I certainly don’t expect that Lazarus and the ‘thing’ are the same person. Nope, I don’t expect that at all. Anyway, let’s see how this plays out…
A source of radiation is detected on the planet. I wonder what it is. Oh look! It’s a rip in the universe. Does anyone have a stapler?
Lazarus learns that dilithium crystals can be used to trap the enemy and sneaks into Engineering to pilfer a couple of them.
Lazarus’s beard is sometimes thick and sometimes thin. His scar is sometimes there and sometimes not. The effect keeps showing up with irritating regularity. Let’s hope it’s all part of the plot or it’s likely the production team have a continuity guy with a drink problem.
Eventually, Lazarus tells Kirk everything that’s going on. The radiation comes from a parallel universe, which in turn causes the effect. We also discover that Lazarus is really two men! Hence the changing scar and beard. Didn’t see that coming. One version of Lazarus is made of matter. The other is made of anti-matter and if the two ever exist in the same universe, it will result in the annihilation of everything, everywhere. That’s bad. The universe is where I keep my stuff.
So we have two Lazarus’s. One good. One bad. The bad one wants to destroy everything in existence. Think about that for a second. Everything in existence. Kirk asks the Good Lazarus why. It’s a fair question. The answer? Because Evil Lazarus is mad. Really? That’s the best you can come up with? He’s mad?!
Anyway, it ends up with both Lazarus’s (Lazari?) being dragged into corridor between universes. Trapped together in a fight forever and ever.
The end.
It is the fact that Lazarus is not a particularly likable character that makes this episode difficult to invest in. Although the concept of matter and anti-matter is a new spin on the Good Twin / Evil Twin storyline, this concept has been realised in Star Trek many times over using characters we actually care about. Compare this to The Enemy Within and the overall story is not too dissimilar, but the Enemy Within is an exciting and absorbing plot where the characters are shown to be in peril. In this story, they are effectively in greater peril but the threat is over the top to the point of nonsense (the entirety of existence is under threat?) We never really see the crew showing any worry about this fact. I normally love Star Trek and look for the best in all stories, but even I struggled to find the merit in this one. Perhaps, in a parallel universe, this is the most celebrated episode ever made. Sorry, that’s my evil twin talking.
Cast & Creative Staff
Cast:
William Shatner as James T. Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
DeForest Kelley as Leonard H. McCoy
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
Guest Cast:
Robert Brown as Lazarus A and B
Janet MacLachien as Lt. Charlene Master
Richard Derr as Commodore Barstow
Creative Staff:
Director: Gerd Oswald
Written By: Don Ingalls
