Antagonist/Protagonist Questions

This is still a problem for me. Evil empires are so easy, story-wise. They make your hero the underdog right off the bat.

What if we have a GOOD empire? Like Star Trek's Federation?

There are some possibilities here. Perhaps the best one is that there are multiple cabals working to infiltrate and corrupt the government.

In my first ideas for this story, I had a brother and sister searching for the father who had been imprisoned by the evil empire for his work in a resistance. A bit too Star Wars-y, that family. And years later, I saw X-Files do the "search-for-a-sibling" bit, and Firefly did the "family-member-wanted-by-evil-empire" bit.

But I still like the idea of the search for a lost family member. Maybe I'll stay with it.

With the cabals in place, the lost family member could be someone who was working undercover to infiltrate a cabal, and disappeared. Maybe they were working solo; maybe they were legitimate law enforcement. (I don't like police dramas, though, and this edges dangerously close.)

Ooh! This just handed to me: the family member has a clone. The one that got captured? Yeah, has a clone. Need to figure out why, obviously, but the rest of the family needs the clone's help in order to rescue the other.

Clone insurance, perhaps? Such a brutal concept, but might serve well. Of course, "unknowing clone" was done in The Island as well The Sixth Day, and it also leaves open this entire issue of how to put a stop to the clone farming.

Clone. Hmph. Maybe.