The threat which Kirk and the Federation face here is nothing less than the complete annihilation of our entire universe - surely the gravest cosmic problem encountered in Trek's history. It's one of those wild cosmic concepts more prevalent on the TNG series, not restricted to a quadrant or even just our galaxy, but everything. However, the execution of this story and the faulty pace of this episode is rather deplorable. There's way too much repetition throughout: Kirk and some crew beam down to a planet's surface, they go back up to the Enterprise, then back down to the planet, over & over, it seems, with no results; Lazarus falls off a cliff a 2nd time...or is it a 3rd? Much of the attempted efforts to explain the dangerous cosmic effect come off as gobbledygook - is it a doorway in space? A hole between two universes? A corridor with explosions at both ends? Say what? There's also confusion on whether Kirk is dealing with a time traveler here or hopping to parallel dimensions (better realized in "Mirror,Mirror" early in the 2nd season). I finally gathered in the end that the threat revolved around matter and anti-matter of two duplicate objects coming together; but, boy, what a headache to get there.
Kirk, Spock and the others encounter a weird guy named Lazarus on a barren planet following a 'winking out' of all existence. He rants on about his nemesis, an enemy which looks humanoid but is a monster. By the 2nd act, we realize this Lazarus is insane, but Kirk & especially McCoy aren't so quick on the uptake, while Spock just calls him a liar. After a few very spacey phrases by this Lazarus, I would think they'd realize the guy's not all there when Lazarus says "Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!" Yet, as in a few other weak episodes, an obvious nutcase like this one is given free reign within the Enterprise and this causes problems later (I think Kirk did assign security at some point, but they lost Lazarus a minute later). Then we get that 'cosmic effect' and negative images in slow motion for the 4th or 5th time, meant to convey a struggle between - wait for it - two Lazarus dudes! And as we all know, two into one won't go. This episode gets my vote for the worst one of the first season, a precursor to all those really bad, boring ones in the third season. I do give it more stars than those due to a genuinely chilling denouement at the conclusion.
