The Plag attacks a sleeping Meridith.
The Control Voice: Outwards stretches the quest for truth. Stars without end, timeless infinities. A billion billion galaxies. Man's imagination reaches out and out, while betimes, the farthest reaches of knowledge are found in the smallest places.
A scientist recreates an alien planet in his laboratory, only to learn that the planet is inhabited by an evil entity.
The Control Voice: There is a theory that Earth and sun and galaxy and all the known universes are only a dust mote on some policeman's uniform in some gigantic superworld. Couldn't we be under some supermicroscope, right now?
Trope 359:
- All There in the Manual: The Plag is never named in the episode.
- Devil, but No God: Implied Trope. Meridith describes Dundee's Planet as "A place of indescribable malevolence, a place of death and hate, a place without a God". However, he's aware of the Plag and states that "This creature on Dundee's planet must be in some way responsible for what I see there." The implication is that if Satan ruled a planet, this is what life would be like.
- Genius Loci: The evil entity is the "spirit of the planet", if Meridith's speculations are to be believed.
- Goal-Oriented Evolution: The evolution on Dundee Planet closely resembles that of Earth, sped up a millionfold — even the planet's civilization develops very closely to Earth's history.
- In Spite of a Nail: The scientist explicitly says that the planet in the lab is dominated by evil, while Earth is not. Yet, as far as we can tell, the history of civilization on the tiny planet is identical to Earth's.
- Vampiric Draining: The planet's "spirit" drains life force from nearby living things, starting small — with an ant farm — and moving to progressively larger targets, until it attacks Meridith himself.
- Weakened by the Light: The being from the planet only operates in darkness, which is directly connected to its evil nature.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: Due to its tiny size, time on the planet evolves at a rate of eleven and a half days per second.note
