Orson Welles, as judge Rauch, holds a lengthy trial against Jess Tyler, a caretaker deserted by his wife ten years before, who's accused of improper relations with his daughter Kady. Complications follows when Wash, father of Kady's baby, comes back to take her away.

Brent is an American astronaut, part of a team sent to locate missing fellow American astronaut, George Taylor. Following Taylor's known flight trajectory, the search and rescue team crash lands on an unknown planet much like Earth in the year 3955, with Brent being the only survivor of the team. What Brent initially does not know, much like Taylor didn't initially know when he landed here before Brent, is that he has landed back on Earth in the future, in the vicinity of what was New York City....