THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH

Thomas Jerome Newton is a humanoid alien who travels to Earth from a distant planet. Landing in New Mexico, he appears as an Englishman. Newton has arrived on Earth on a mission to take water back to his home planet, which is experiencing a catastrophic drought. Newton swiftly uses the advanced technology of his home planet to patent many inventions on Earth. He acquires tremendous wealth as the head of an Arizona technology-based conglomerate, World Enterprises Corporation, aided by leading patent attorney Oliver Farnsworth. Newton needs the money to construct a rocket to ship water back to his home planet.

While revisiting New Mexico, Newton meets Mary-Lou, a lonely young woman from Oklahoma who works an array of part-time jobs in a small town hotel to support herself. Mary-Lou introduces Newton to many customs of Earth, including churchgoing, alcohol, and sex. She and Newton move into a house together which he has built close to where he first landed in New Mexico.

Dr. Nathan Bryce, a former college professor who had sex with his female students, has landed a job as a fuel technician with World Enterprises and slowly becomes Newton's confidant. Bryce senses Newton's alienness and arranges a meeting with Newton at his home where he has hidden a special X-ray camera. When he takes a picture of Newton with the camera, it reveals Newton's alien physiology. Newton's appetite for alcohol and television (he is capable of watching multiple televisions at once) becomes crippling, and he and Mary-Lou fight. Realizing that Bryce has learnt his secret, Newton reveals his alien form to Mary-Lou. She is unable to accept his true form, and flees in panic and horror.

Newton completes the spaceship and attempts to take it on its maiden voyage amid intense press exposure. However, just before his scheduled take-off, he is seized and detained, apparently by the government and a rival company. His business partner Farnsworth is murdered. The government, which had been monitoring Newton via his driver, holds Newton captive in a locked luxury apartment, constructed deep within a hotel. Toward the end of Newton's years of captivity, he is visited again by Mary-Lou. She is much older, and her appearance has been ravaged by alcohol and time. They have mock-violent, playful sex that involves firing a gun with blanks, and afterwards occupy their time drinking and playing table tennis. Mary-Lou declares that she no longer loves him, and he replies that he does not love her either. His captors keep Newton sedated with alcohol (to which he has become addicted) and subject him to rigorous medical tests, cutting into his human disguise. One examination, involving X-rays, causes the contact lenses he wears as part of his human disguise to permanently affix themselves to his eyes. Eventually Newton discovers that his "prison", now derelict, is unlocked, and he leaves.

Unable to return home, a despondent and alcoholic Newton creates a recording with alien messages, which he hopes will be broadcast via radio to his home planet. Bryce, who has since married Mary-Lou, buys a copy of the album and meets Newton at a restaurant. Newton is still rich and young-looking despite the passage of many years. However, he has also fallen into depression and continues to suffer from alcoholism. Seated on the restaurant's outdoor patio, Newton inquires about Mary-Lou, before collapsing in a drunken stupor on the chair.

Thomas Jerome Newton is ultimately captured and imprisoned, his attempt to save his home world thwarted as he succumbs to addiction and isolation on Earth.

The ending underscores the tragedy of Newton’s mission: even advanced knowledge and good intentions cannot overcome human greed, institutional power, and personal weakness. Newton’s captivity and addiction serve as a bleak metaphor for alienation—both literal and existential—leaving him stranded in a world that misunderstands and exploits him.