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Dr. Simon Kress's (Beau Bridges) research for the government on Martian life is aborted because one of his specimens almost escapes into the natural environment. However, Kress does not agree with the abandonment of the project and decides to continue his experiments in his barn. He strongly believes that the insect-like species is actually sentient. He steals some sand containing Martian eggs from his lab and creates a makeshift incubator to hatch more of the Martian lifeforms. In the meantime, Kress deals with growing discord with his wife (Helen Shaver) over financial troubles, his obsession with work and the stress of concealing the stolen Martian lifeforms from his former supervisors at the government lab. Kress comes to believe that he is a god to his sandkings when they erect sand structures that resemble his face. Bitten by one of the sandkings, his obsession peaks as he alienates his wife, son, father (Lloyd Bridges), and kills his former supervisor by throwing him in the sandking incubator, where the creatures—already starved by Kress as an experiment—quickly devour him. In the end, Kress attempts to destroy all the sandkings but fails. In the epilogue of the episode, a colony of sandkings is shown surviving in the wilderness.

In the future, humanity is losing an interstellar war against a technologically-advanced race. Major John Skokes, a prisoner of the aliens, is thrown into a cell, where he encounters another captive - a young female cadet. She reveals that their captors are apparently grafting alien skin onto her body a bit at a time. Skokes tries to escape from their cell through an overhead vent, but his attempt fails at first when he is attacked by something lurking in the vents. Skokes makes a second attempt to escape through the air ducts, but an alien guard severs his hand before Skokes is knocked out. As their situation appears bleak, Skokes attempts to raise his fellow prisoner's spirits by telling her of a top secret plan to launch a sneak attack that might turn the tide of the war. Suddenly, a guard enters the cell, and she willingly leaves, revealing that she is really an alien spy who is actually being slowly transformed back into her original form.

Jay (Jason London) and Hannah (Alyssa Milano) are in love, but she wants to stay celibate until marriage. An object falls into Hannah's room and an alien entity merges with her. The alien needs her to have sex, but random males morph into her body during the intercourse. Thinking that Jay is in danger while in her presence, Hannah shuns him. Jay and his professor start an investigation regarding her. As more men vanish, the police pursue Hannah, who is "caught in the act" devouring a man. A cop shoots her, but the wound quickly heals. When the lovers are reunited, Jay, convinced that the alien needs something more than sex, makes love with Hannah and pupated alien finally rises from her body, and leaves.

Dr. Link is working on the central memory of a robot, Adam, when it suddenly activates and attacks him. A lab assistant enters the room in time to see Adam smashing up the laboratory before crashing through a window and escaping, while Dr. Link is left dead. Later, a police officer finds Adam in a back alley, and Adam, apparently remembering nothing of the incident, asks the officer to contact Dr. Link. Adam is taken to a cell and preparations are made to disassemble it. Mina, Dr. Link's daughter, contacts a lawyer, Thurman Cutler (Leonard Nimoy), who pushes for a murder trial, insisting that Adam is his client and not simply a machine. A court hearing begins, and the prosecutor pushes for dismissal of the case on the grounds that Adam is just a machine. Cutler argues that, although Adam is clearly not human, it possesses intelligence and will, and, on that basis, deserves a trial. Cutler begins to look into Dr. Link's financial records and finds that he was working for a defense contractor, eventually discovering that Dr. Link was working to turn Adam into a weapon. Cutler argues, with supporting evidence of financial accounts and company memos, that Dr. Link was forced into attempting to rewrite Adam's central programming, effectively lobotomizing it, and that Adam reacted in the way any human might when faced with death. The court eventually finds that Adam is a person and will stand trial for the murder of Dr. Link. As it is being led away, Adam sees the prosecuting attorney in danger of being run over and rescues her, sacrificing its own life in the process.

FBI agent Jamie Pratt (Michelle Forbes) investigates a series of murders spanning a period of forty years that were all committed with the same gun. The gun is traced to Dr. Theresa Givens (Amanda Plummer), a former employee at a top-secret government project. Mysteriously, Givens was only five years old at the time of the first murder, and the gun had not even been manufactured yet. Jamie eventually learns that Givens has invented a time machine that she uses to travel back in time and assassinate men who would later in their lives commit acts of rape & murder towards women. In her final trip to the past, Givens brings Jamie along with her, and they arrive at the time and place Givens was abducted and assaulted. The man is killed before he can harm the young Givens, but Givens herself is fatally shot & dies. When Jamie returns to the future, she finds that the rape and murders Givens had prevented have all been undone – one such victim being Jamie’s best friend. She visits the now adult young Givens, who has lived a happier life and asks her if she still invented the time machine. Jamie then travels back in time before her friend’s death and shoots her murderer.

A geneticist, Dr Martin Nodel (Ron Rifkin), is a researcher looking into introns, mysterious sections of DNA that he believes hold the secret to future evolution. He develops a formula that he believes will activate them, and tests it on himself. After developing the serum that acts on the intron, he tests the serum on himself. He begins experiencing strange symptoms, including a sort of map that grows on his back and a pattern that grows on his hand. Shortly after he begins looking for students that are suitable candidates. They have to have a high IQ, never had surgery, and are free from imperfections such as tattoos or glasses. They also have to be in a certain age, weight, and height range. After finding the needed candidates, he reveals the map. The area is discovered to be a hidden military area not on any normal map and, along with Nodel's son (Ryan Reynolds) and his girlfriend, the group travels to the area. Inside that area, is a spaceship-type device, with symbols matching the ones on the Doctor's hands. It activates, and a message from an apparent alien race is played back. The Doctor, and the students, decide to enter the ship on a journey to the home planet. Despite his son and son's girlfriend not qualifying, the Doctor says that they'd need someone like the two of them. The ship takes off.

Becka Paulson (Catherine O'Hara) accidentally shoots herself in the head while watching a soap opera. The bullet lodges in her brain, and begins to have some strange effects. In a stroke of 'luck', the bullet does not kill Becka, but her severe brain damage causes her to begin to hallucinate that the picture of a tuxedoed stranger on top of the TV (Who calls himself 'The 8 By 10' Man; in the original story it was a picture of Jesus) is talking to her. Under the advice of the 8 By 10 Man, Becka eventually decides to kill her worthless husband (John Diehl), and in a bit of 'damaged savantry', rigs up the television (under the 8 by 10 Man's instructions) to deliver a fatal electrical pulse to whoever touches the knob. Becka in the end tricks her husband into touching it, but as he begins to be fatally electrocuted, she finally realizes just what she has done and tries to save him. All she does is alter the circuit by touching him, and the two fall dead, the victim of a tragic quirk of fate that was in the end far from lucky.

Joshua Hayward (David McCallum) & his daughter Sarah awake one morning to find a four-block section of their suburban neighborhood surrounded by a mysterious energy barrier. Sarah finds a badly disfigured alien, Adrielo, who tells her that her neighborhood has been grabbed & moved by another race of aliens, the Triunes. He shows her a way through the energy barrier to his own captured realm and begs her to help him save his people. Meanwhile, Joshua finds a way through the barrier and comes face-to-face with their captors, a slothful race who feel physical activity is beneath them. The Trinues explain that all of the inhabitants of Joshua's neighborhood have been taken as part of a feasibility study into the suitability of humans for slavery, and, if they are found able to survive in the alien's native environment, the rest of Earth's population will also be enslaved. Adrielo's people are dying from a disease that is turning them to stone, and Sarah accidentally becomes infected. Joshua eventually finds her, and she pleads with him not to touch her, so he may not become infected. They return to their own neighborhood, and Joshua explains the purpose of the energy barrier to the other residents, wondering what choice they have other than to serve as slaves. Joshua explains the disease his daughter has been infected with, and suggests they deliberately infect themselves to save Earth from enslavement. After discussing it, all join hands in the church to sacrifice themselves and prove that humans are unsuitable as slaves.

The genetic rejection syndrome (GRS) monster children are now adults who commit murders. Detective Ray Venable (Gary Cole) has a "secret" son with GRS, Dylan, who is harassing Ray's family. Ray injects himself with a serum to temporarily enhance his sensory abilities (more like GRS people) in order to hunt him. Ray does this successfully, only to find out that it was a plot by his son, who placed the serum so that Ray would find it. Ray's son forcefully injects more of the serum into his dad, so that Ray now has irreversible GRS, and Ray transforms into a monster. Ray kills Dylan, but Ray's family is afraid of him because he now looks like the other GRS monsters.

When NASA astronaut Theodore Harris was in space the first time on September 16, 1963, it did not go quite as planned. Alone in his Mercury capsule, he panicked and aborted the mission when a mysterious violet light penetrated the cockpit & began enveloping his body. In the investigation that followed, no evidence could be found to support his story, leaving a blot on Harris' NASA record & his life in ruins. Now, at age 63, he knows he can never make amends with his estranged wife Madelaine, but he feels that he could clear his name if he could just get back to where he saw the light. When NASA turns him down, Harris is recruited by Carlton Powers (Barry Corbin), a self-made billionaire who plans to privatize space travel & thinks Harris' presence on the inaugural flight of his new Daedalus spaceship will help him sell the service. Harris & Powers are joined on the flight by Martin Reese (Mackenzie Gray), a skeptical tabloid reporter, Lil Vaughn (Andrea Martin), an eccentric fashion mogul, and Ty & Barbara Chafey, young newlyweds who won a contest to travel on the space plane. However, none of the Daedalus passengers know that Harris has reprogrammed the flight plan to take the flight to the site of the close encounter that shattered the young man's life.

Aaron (Saul Rubinek) is an American lawyer of Polish ancestry who is obsessed with what happened to his family at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and is sure that Robert Greene (Jan Rubeš), aka Karl Rademacher (Alex Zahara), was the commanding SS officer in charge of his part of that camp. Aaron is able to do little to prove who Greene really is or prosecute him, until a mysterious man, Nicholas Prentice (Alex Diakun), starts giving him evidence: a jacket, a notebook & other items which he obtained by going back in time to 1944. Prentice had witnessed Rademacher shoot someone at the beginning of the episode, and he is from the late 21st century, where time travel has been perfected. Even with the evidence provided to him by the time traveler, Aaron has difficulty proving his case. Greene insists that he is not Rademacher, and, near the end of the episode, Greene plans to leave for Argentina in order to avoid prosecution. Aaron goes to Greene's house with a gun, demanding a confession. Prentice follows him there, telling Aaron that he is his great-grandson, and that if Aaron kills Greene & goes to prison that he will cease to exist. Aaron does not to shoot Greene. Instead, Prentice & Aaron go back to 1944 as two members of the SS, with Greene dressed as a camp prisoner. Greene meets & tries to tell his younger self who he is, but Rademacher shoots him, thinking that the old man is just another Jewish prisoner. Aaron sees his father & half-sister Hannah walking by, and, seeing his chance, he rushes forward, snatches Hannah & orders his father to be taken to a labor camp to save him from being executed. Aaron demands that they take Hannah with them and Prentice eventually relents. Later, Prentice informs Aaron that since his sister was believed to have been killed, the Tribunal in the future will allow her to remain with Aaron & his wife. He takes Hannah to their father who breaks down crying upon realizing who she is, embracing her.

Notes: 1) At the end the episode was a note from Sam Egan: "Dedicated to my father who survived Auschwitz... and to his wife and daughter who did not."

• "The Sandkings"
• "A Stitch in Time"
• "Simon Says"