Human Interest Story story
Reporter Bill Everett interviews a distressed man who claims to be a Martian named Yangan Dall. Yangan tells Bill how all the other Martians just vanished one day, and when he investigated, found a machine that transported him to Earth, inside a human body. When the kind-hearted Yangan suggests telling everyone his story, Bill kills him. Bill is also a Martian, but part of an invasion force trying to take over Earth. Directed by: Norman Lloyd. Story by: Fredric Brown.
14 total · 5 major · 9 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| attack from outer space | major | The grand revelation of the story is that the Martians were quietly planning to take over the Earth. |
| delusion of being someone one is not | major | The viewer is led to believe that Howard was suffering from the delusion of thinking he was a Martian named Yangan. But it is later revealed that he, in fact, was. Alfred Hitchcock pretended the same in the epilogue. |
| journalism | major | The story regarded the newspaper reporter Bill and his job. |
| Martian extraterrestrial | major | It was revealed that the two main characters are both in fact undercover Martians. |
| what if I found myself in the body of another person | major | Yangan explained that he had suddenly found himself in the body of a human named Howard Wilcox. |
| coping with the death of someone | minor | Yangan was coping with his entire species dying. |
| human vs. captivity | minor | Yangan explained that he had apparently been abandoned in a jail cell. |
| husband and wife | minor | Bill told Yangan to go home and comfort his wife. |
| lying | minor | Martians don't lie, but humans do, we heard. Especially to wives, and so he did. |
| natural pandemic | minor | Mars was a dying world because of a strange disease, known as Krill, that had blown in from the desert. |