The Enterprise is lured to a planet by a repeating distress call. Capt. Pike and the crew find the aged survivors of a crashed spaceship. However, the crash and the survivors turn out to be illusions created by an advanced race of beings, with mysterious motives. They capture Capt. Pike and watch as they put him through false imagined adventures. But, the same woman keeps appearing in all these adventures with him. Can Capt. Pike learn what the beings' motives are, and can the Enterprise crew rescue their captain in time?