Set in the then-distant year of 2020, Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet depicts a future where humanity has successfully established a permanent foothold on the Moon. This lunar base, known as Lunar City, serves as the primary staging ground for the colonization of the solar system. The narrative follows a multi-ship expedition to Venus, which the film envisions not as the high-pressure greenhouse known today, but as a misty, prehistoric wilderness teeming with reptilian life and carnivorous flora.

Earth functions as the administrative and political heart of this era, though it remains largely off-screen. The societal dynamic is defined by a technocratic optimism where international cooperation (implied by the original Soviet footage, though Westernized in this edit) facilitates massive engineering projects. A key technological pillar is the use of John the Robot, a bulky humanoid machine capable of performing heavy labor and surviving environments lethal to humans, reflecting a 1960s vision of robotics as a literal extension of human muscle rather than an autonomous AI.

The film’s 2020 vastly overestimates the pace of space colonization, specifically the existence of a functioning moon base and manned missions to Venus. While its depiction of Venus as a "prehistoric planet" was already being debunked by contemporary probes like Mariner 2, the film accurately anticipated the use of hover-skiff technology (analogous to modern hovercraft/drones) and the necessity of integrated video communication between orbiting stations and ground teams. Because this film was heavily re-edited from the 1962 Soviet film Planeta Bur, the technological vision is a hybrid of mid-century Eastern and Western sci-fi tropes.