After a UFO inexplicably destroys itself less than two miles from Moonbase, a mysterious crystal rock is recovered, and it causes the person in its vicinity to hallucinate. The man on Moonbase who found it thinks Mexican bandits have taken over Moonbase. It gets transferred to Straker's office, and he hallucinates that SHADO is simply a set for a TV series, he is an actor named Mr. Burns, Moonbase can be reached by stepping through two doors from the main control room at SHADO HQ, and "Mr. Straker" is not available. Straker breaks the hallucination by jumping in on the scene while the "character" Gen. Henderson is doing a close-up of the line they were doing when the hallucination began.

A mysterious dome is found under the sea, that at first looks like the Moon crashed into the ocean. Inside the dome, they find duplicates of SHADO HQ personnel, using non-alien technology - cassette tape recorders - to imitate SHADO instructions to Moonbase and Skydiver.