In July 1969, 90-year-old Julius Bedford, Rory Kinnear, tells young Jim Alex Riddell the story of the first voyage to the Moon in 1909. He recalls meeting Professor Arthur Cavor Mark Gatiss in Apuldram, where Cavor has invented Cavorite, a substance that blocks gravity. Together they dream of turning a bold discovery into profit, building a cast-iron sphere that could carry them both to the Moon and back.
When they reach the lunar surface, they quickly learn that the Moon’s atmosphere is not what they expected—the oxygen is frozen into the ground and only released in direct sunlight, a detail that hints at the Moon’s strange, inhospitable nature. The explorers are captured with nets and taken underground by the Moon’s inhabitants. Upon revival, they are fed and try to communicate with the locals, but their efforts fail. A tense moment follows as they are prodded toward the edge of a lunar abyss, a threatening sign of the unfamiliar dangers that surround them.
Bedford’s greater strength leads to a devastating mistake: he unintentionally kills several Selenites. The two men split up, with Cavor staying behind to buy Bedford time to escape. Bedford navigates a maze of tunnels and eventually stumbles upon their spacecraft, which the Selenites had moved underground during the captivity. He climbs aboard and activates the controls, narrowly avoiding a disastrous collision with the Sun before a long journey ends with a seaside landing near West Wittering. His hope of rescuing Cavor falters when a passer-by named Chessocks Lee Ingleby climbs aboard and, with the hatch open, inadvertently launches into space.
Back on the Moon, Cavor remains a prisoner but makes use of his time to teach the Selenites English and some of humanity’s history, and he reveals the formula for Cavorite. The Selenites, warned by what they’ve learned about humankind’s warlike tendencies, decide to strike first, planning to use Cavorite to mount a pre-emptive attack with spacecraft similar to the one that brought Cavor and Bedford from Earth. In a desperate gambit, Cavor communicates his intentions to Bedford via Morse code and, later, releases all the Cavorite the Selenites have produced. The sudden release frees the Moon’s trapped atmosphere, causing it to escape into space and leave the lunar surface rendered a barren wasteland.
The desolate Moon is finally revealed as the Apollo era dawns, with the lunar landscape noted by the Apollo 11 astronauts. A lone Selenite watches the Earth spacecraft from a distance, a quiet, haunting image that lingers after the lights of history move on.
