Martin, Diana, and Java investigate a small western town in Utah whose entire population seems to have disappeared overnight. Suddenly, the people return to the town, but they all seem a little different.
General Tropes:
- Acting Unnatural: Martin and Diana notice something is very wrong in the town due to the inhabitants' blank expressions and the fact that they only say exactly one sentence.
- Broken Record: The alien spores can only repeat something the person they're imitating said, ending up like this.
- Did Not See That Coming: Neither Martin or Diana expected that Java was making a sock puppet show of Romeo and Juliet using Martin's socks.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: When Java says "lonely", Martin and Diana (who suspect he's lonely from being the only caveman) sympathize with him. He points out "Not Java, town lonely". Our step-siblings believe Java's in denial of how lonely he is. Turns out, they're wrong, and they're the ones missing the point: Java doesn't talk to himself because he's "lonely", he does it because he's rehearsing for a puppet show of "Romeo and Juliet".
- Flat "What": M.O.M.'s reaction when Martin asks for her help finding sock-eating gnomes.
- Hell Is That Noise: The inhuman howls the spores make right before fusing into the main alien.
- Homage: To The Body Snatchers.
- Killer Rabbit: M.O.M. is dealing with an infestation of hamster-like aliens that turn into ferocious beasts.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: As M.O.M. and Martin say, the alien spent 50 years slowly growing in preparation to begin its invasion, only to fall to its death in a salt lake barely a couple of seconds afterwards.
- Salt Solution: Salt is the bane of the alien mushroom creature, which is really bad since it landed near a salted lake. It ends up dissolving into nothing.
- Starfish Aliens: A huge slow-growing mushroom-like alien whose spores can imitate humans and that is very vulnerable to salt.
