Charlie has the perfect father, except that the man who is controlling the house is an alien who has plans to lead the take-over of the Earth.

Written and directed by the show’s executive producer and co-creator Michael Dinner, The Father Thing treads a very well-worn path that has been tapped into from Invaders from Mars (1953 and 1986) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, 1978 etc.) Strange Invaders and even The Invaders TV show. The aliens have landed and are taking over our planet by stealth, either replacing existing humans with alien counterparts or injecting parasitical creatures to control them.

The Father-Thing short story by Dick (we’ve since lost the hyphen in the translation to screen) was published in Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine in 1954, near the beginning of the Cold War. The alien invader stories were metaphors for foreign spies or sleeper agents – the ‘Reds under the bed’. In 2018 that paranoia is less front of mind, with a greater emphasis on young Charlie’s loss of a great father (Mystery Men’s Greg Kinnear).

Charlie’s mum (World War Z’s Mireille Enos) is very passive to Charlie’s accusations and I’m guessing the alien has controlled or glamoured her in some way. It’s unusual in this series for the episode to be contemporary rather than future dystopian, though the kids on bikes tracking down the aliens have a Spielbergian ET nostalgia feel, by way of Stranger Things.

Verdict: A very faithful adaptation of PKD’s original story, this is a familiar but enjoyable retelling of the boy fighting to be believed. 8/10

Nick Joy