Taylor and two other astronauts come out of deep hibernation to find that their ship has crashed. Escaping with little more than clothes they find that they have landed on a planet where men are pre-lingual and uncivilized while apes have learned speech and technology. Taylor is captured and taken to the city of the apes after damaging his throat so that he is silent and cannot communicate with the apes.
Following the events of ''Planet of the Apes '', The sole survivor of an interplanetary rescue mission searches for the only survivor of the previous expedition. He discovers a planet ruled by apes and an underground city run by telepathic humans.
The world is shocked by the appearance of three talking chimpanzees, who arrived mysteriously in a U.S. spacecraft. They become the toast of society, but one man believes them to be a threat to the human race.
In a futuristic world that has embraced ape slavery, Caesar, the son of the late simians Cornelius and Zira, surfaces after almost twenty years of hiding out from the authorities, and prepares for a slave revolt against humanity.
Told as a flashback (continuity) to the early 21st century, with a wraparound sequence narrated by the orangutan The Lawgiver (Planet of the Apes) in "North America - 2670 A.D.," this sequel follows the ape leader Caesar (Planet of the Apes) years after a global nuclear war has destroyed civilization. Living with his wife Lisa (Planet of the Apes) and their son Cornelius, Caesar creates a new society while trying to cultivate peace between the apes and remaining humans. Caesar is opposed by a gorilla named Aldo (Planet of the Apes), who wants to imprison the humans who freely roam Ape City while doing menial labor.
Astronauts Alan Virdon and Pete Burke are thrown 1100 years forward in time to 3085 AD to find evolved apes have become the dominant species and humans their apathetic slaves. Feared by the ape authorities, their plight turns the head of a promising young chimpanzee named Galen, who adopts the heretical idea that maybe humans aren't a lower species and can co-exist with apes as equals. As the three struggle to survive life on the run, a bond of friendship grows between them like an intricate tapestry woven right before our eyes, a multi-threaded miracle born of compassion, respect, and the desire to replace fear with understanding. The series is loosely tied to the original movie series, reusing some footage and the ape makeup (albeit on a lower budget).
Return to the Planet of the Apes is a short-lived animated series, by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises in association with 20th Century Fox Television, based upon Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle. Boulle's novel had previously been adapted in a series of movies, beginning with the 1968 Planet of the Apes starring Charlton Heston. Unlike the film, its sequels, and the 1974 live-action television series, which involved a primitive ape civilization, Return to the Planet of the Apes depicted a technologically advanced society, complete with automobiles, film, and television; as such it more closely resembled both Boulle's original novel and early concepts for the first Apes movie which were changed due to budgetary limitations in the late 1960s.
In 2029, aboard the United States Air Force space station ''Oberon'', Leo Davidson works closely with primates who are trained for space missions. His favorite simian co-worker is a chimpanzee named Pericles. With a deadly electromagnetic storm approaching the station, a small space pod piloted by Pericles is used to probe the storm. Pericles's pod heads into the storm and disappears. Against his commanding officer's orders, Leo takes a second pod and goes in pursuit of Pericles. Entering the storm, Leo loses contact with the ''Oberon'' and crashes on a planet called Ashlar in the year 5021. He discovers that the world is ruled by humanoid apes who speak English, use Domestication of the horse for transportation, and treat human beings as slaves.
The incredible story of Caesar, a chimpanzee who assembles a simian army and fights for justice after an experimental drug gives him human-like intelligence.
Ten years after the pandemic of the deadly Rise of the Planet of the Apes, later called the Simian Flu, the worldwide human population was drastically reduced, with only about one in 500 genetically immune to the virus. Meanwhile, the apes, under the Common chimpanzee List of Planet of the Apes characters#Caesar, all bestowed with Genetic engineering Intelligence amplification by the virus, have long established a colony in the Muir Woods National Monument near San Francisco.
After the apes suffer unimaginable losses, Caesar wrestles with his darker instincts and begins his own mythic quest to avenge his kind.
Several generations in the future following Caesar's reign, apes are now the dominant species and live harmoniously while humans have been reduced to living in the shadows. As a new tyrannical ape leader builds his empire, one young ape undertakes a harrowing journey that will cause him to question all that he has known about the past and to make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.