Exo III
Exo III is the third planet of the Exo system. It was remarkably like Earth until its sun began dimming 500,000 years ago. The planet has a slightly higher surface gravity than Earth. The civilization that existed here moved underground adopting a mechanical lifestyle.
In or shortly before 2261, famed medical archaeologist Roger Korby led an expedition to this planet, consisting of at least himself and his assistant, Dr. Brown. Korby sent messages through 2261, and then ceased to communicate.
In 2266, the USS Enterprise, under command of Captain James T. Kirk, traveled to Exo III to learn the fate of the Korby expedition. Against the odds, Korby had survived.
Korby revealed that the civilization of Exo III had fled the surface as the planet began to cool, eventually exchanging their open, free society for an increasingly mechanistic one. He also found the immense android Ruk, still tending the machines of the ancient civilization, a people Ruk called the Old Ones. Even Ruk no longer remembered how long he had been doing this work.
Among the machines of the Old Ones, Korby discovered a still functional android duplicator. He planned to use this technology to slowly replace living people with androids. His idea of utopia held that androids could be programmed not to experience any of the negative feelings or express any of the negative behaviors of living beings. Korby claimed that such androids were superior to the living beings they replaced, but the observations of Kirk and Christine Chapel suggested that Korby was incorrect in this view.
Speaking to Ruk, Kirk learned what had happened so long ago. The Old Ones had built better and better androids, but became fearful of them and began to turn them off. Their survival threatened, these machines exceeded their programming and murdered their builders.
It was ultimately revealed that all of the survivors of the Korby expedition, including Korby himself, were androids. In various conflicts that developed between the androids, all were destroyed. (TOS: "What Are Little Girls Made Of?")
