The Father Thing story
Eleven-year-old Charlie has a close relationship with his father, sharing a love of baseball. One night, while camping out, they see glowing orbs slowly falling from the sky, which the radio news reports are meteoroids. After a day at home, Charlie is uncertain that his father is who, or what, he appears to be, and he is not alone. Charlie and his best friend eventually find a field filled with body doubles grown by the aliens.
15 total · 3 choice · 6 major · 6 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| father and son | choice | Charlie had a close relationship with his father until the father was replaced by an oddly behaving, alien controlled duplicate. |
| subversive life form from outer space | choice | Body snatching aliens were replacing people with physically identical, but oddly behaving duplicates. |
| what if people around me started behaving strangely one by one | choice | The local kids were perplexed as adults started acting oddly. It became apparent that adults were being replaced with alien facsimiles. |
| child power | major | When adults were getting taking over by aliens, Charlie mobilized kids to resist. Also Charlie told his mom that he understood the parents' marital problems better than they thought. |
| duplicate of a person | major | Body snatching aliens were replacing people with physically identical, but oddly behaving duplicates with the same memories as the originals. |
| extraterrestrial being | major | Some local children resisted some newly arrived body snatching aliens. |
| human childhood | major | Charlie was trying to make the local baseball all-star team. Charlie and his friends discovered an alien plot to replace the local adults were physically similar, but oddly behaving duplicates. |
| husband and wife | major | The father and the mother were struggling with their marriage. |
| the game of baseball | major | Charlie and his dad were obsessed with baseball. |
| brother and brother | minor | Dylan's older brother picked on him. |