El Enterprise transporta a un grupo de científicos que se disponen a poner a prueba el mayor experimento jamás imaginado por el hombre: la formación de vida en un planeta inerte.
Bill Denny es (George Segal) un escritor que se toma el juego muy seriamente. Charlie Waters (Elliot Gould) es un personaje despreocupado que antepone el juego a todo lo demás. Ganen o pierdan (y suelen perder), Denny y Waters reaccionan de manera diferente. Cuando ambos llegan a conocerse en un garito de Los Ángeles, sus contrastadas personalidades encajan a la perfección, y de común acuerdo se constituyen en equipo dispuestos a ir a por todas.
The U.S. submarine Anthony Wayne is underway for a top-secret mission. Onboard is a highly classified device that will give the Americans a decided nuclear advantage. The entire mission and the secret technology are threatened when the sub commander discovers his crew has been infiltrated by enemy agents. The commander is charged with trying to protect the device while ferreting out the enemy agents. Compounding matters is the state of the commander's physical and mental condition, which is being questioned by his crew.
In 1960, the ruins of an American bomber were found in the Libyan desert, but the remains of the crew were never located. In Guerdon Trueblood's teleplay, the ghosts of a bomber crew hang around their derelict plane, awaiting the day that their bones will be recovered and given a decent burial. The sole survivor, navigator Russell Hamner, has in the intervening 25 years become a General. He joins an investigation team that has come across the wreckage, while the ghosts, headed by Major Devlin, plot to expose Hamner as a coward who deserted his post and left his crew mates to die.
