L. Ron Hubbard built a career as a pulp science-fiction writer before founding Scientology, and this Channel 4 profile traces both halves of that life through archive interviews with Hubbard himself and with former members of his organization. It follows him from his writing years into the founding of Dianetics and the church, using footage that shows him lecturing and holding court with followers rather than a narrator's summary of the man. The film goes into his mood swings and drug use, including drugs given to family members, and into his relationship with his son Quentin, whose homosexuality Hubbard resented and who later took his own life. It also tracks the church's legal troubles in Europe as Scientology expanded and drew government scrutiny. Rather than settle on one version of Hubbard, the documentary sets his own recorded words against the accounts of people who left the organization, letting the contradictions between them carry the story of how the church came to be.