1/2
I suppose the biggest complaint I have of this episode story-wise is that it tries to do too much. Is it about a planet ruled by telepathic zombies or a benevolent religion gone haywire? Is Landru so evil it must be destroyed or could it just have been altered? And why no follow-up to the storyline of the missing ship, the Archon? Or, for that matter, the interstellar rumspringer that is freaky to watch (“Festival! Festival!”) but really isn’t relevant to the plot? In the end, Kirk destroys a supercomputer with logic. Won’t be the last time that happens. Design-wise, this is truly a marvelous exercise in laziness, as the production was obviously shooting on whatever sets were laying around. The planet looks like turn-of-the-Century California, until you see the prison, which is a medieval dungeon. But the rooms leading off from this have that vague, angular, “space look.” And then there’s the shot of the away team running from mayhem: a hurled rock clearly bouncing (!) off a Redshirt’s head. Spock does wear a cool black robe, though.
While I agree on some points, for some reason its one of my fave TOS episodes and I have no idea why.
The idea for festival was that the creators or Landru himself knew that humanoids could not be totally controlled all of the time. Festival was for the release of those uncontrolled energies. That was the premise. Whether it worked or not is hard to say. But it was silly the way they filmed it in that the planet would be a complete mess if they did that too many times and what about the babies that would happen therein?