Recap / Thunderbirds S 1 E 14 The Mighty Atom

Yes, it's a Robot Spy mouse.

The One With… the mouse camera.

When a Nuclear Plant (that uses a new method of cooling) explodes in Australia, it gives the dastardly Hood an idea; a similar project is brought online in the Sahara a year later and he steals a new prototype camera disguised as a mouse, sabotaging the Saharan plant and drawing the attention of International Rescue!

The first part of his plan goes without a hitch, but the sabotage rapidly grows out of hand and soon the entire plant is on the verge of destruction. Thunderbird 4 successfully disables the seawater intake for the plant, thus averting a nuclear disaster and instead of getting pictures of Thunderbird 2's dials and control panel, the Hood's mouse-cam takes pictures of Lady Penelope's freaked out (she hates mice) face instead!

Incidentally, this is the only episode to feature all five Thunderbirds on screen.

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• Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: You'll be relieved to know that all nuclear power stations are built to a far higher safety standard than the ones portrayed here. The only nuclear disaster of similar scale (Chernobyl) was caused by a chain of extremely poor decisions rather than a single failure, and would have been impossible in any other reactor design.
  • Also, each reactor has a SCRAM button, which when hit will immediately drop the control rods into the reactor core to halt a runaway reaction. No need for a technician to slowly insert them one by one.
• Awesome, but Impractical: A nuclear power plant that desalinates seawater as part of its power generation process, turning desert into arable land. Sounds too good to be true, and it is. If a fire breaks out, there is essentially no way to stop the fission process as it grows out of control until the core explodes. Even when this flaw is determined to be responsible for the destruction of one plant and a resulting nuclear disaster, nothing is done to address the problem when an identical plant is built.
• Citywide Evacuation: Discussed as a looming necessity as the radioactive cloud in the opening is heading towards Melbourne. Thankfully, it proves to be a moot idea when the wind changes direction and blows the cloud back out to the bush.
• Contrived Coincidence: Good thing Lady Penelope just happened to be aboard Thunderbird 2 on this occasion and that she has a terrible fear of mice, or else the Mighty Atom would have taken some amazing photos of its interior.
• Conveniently Timed Guard: The Hood is just about to photograph sensitive areas of the Australian power plant when he is spotted and the alarm raised. The resulting shootout sets the chain of events in motion that ultimately destroys the plant.
• Cool, but Inefficient: The Mighty Atom is a clever bit of spy technology, but invokedFridge Logic sets in when you wonder how photographing a control panel is supposed to reveal secrets about a piece of technology. Just have it run around and photograph... well, everything!
  • As an example, do a quick Google search for a picture of an aircraft cockpit. Done that? Good. Now use it to build your own airliner.
• Eek, a Mouse!!: Lady Penelope is completely freaked out by the appearance of the Mighty Atom aboard Thunderbird 2. This actually serves a plot purpose as averting her eyes prevented the camera from photographing any sensitive areas of the cockpit.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: The Hood's Glowing Eyes of Doom are seen through glasses (including in the teaser trailer at the beginning), which he is wearing as part of his Professor Langley disguise.
• Happy Storm: After the facility in Australia explodes, the only thing that keeps the resulting radioactive cloud from reaching Melbourne is a strong wind.
• Leitmotif: The mouse-cam has an appropriately scurrying tune.
• Made of Explodium: A seemingly small incident in the nuclear plant triggers a chain reaction that culminates in a nuclear explosion.
• Never Recycle Your Schemes: The Hood has finally perfected his method of photographing the Thunderbirds craft with the use of the Mighty Atom — an automated, motorised spy camera that doesn't seem to set off the Automatic Camera Detector. By fluke, it fails on its first attempt... so the Hood beats it into powder rather than try again.
• No OSHA Compliance: How on earth did this style of nuclear reactor get off the drawing board? A single point of failure for catastrophe, an extremely fiddly and time-consuming safing sequence instead of a single SCRAM button, not to mention that the apparently critical step of cutting the sea water supply cannot be completed with the built-in systems... And then, once one such station has failed disastrously, why do they go ahead and build an identical one!?
• Percussive Therapy: In his rage over its failure to get any useful photographs of Thunderbird 2's interior, the Hood pounds the Mighty Atom into powder with his bare fists.
  The Hood: You stupid! Idiotic! Failure!
• Prequel: The first act, where The Hood destroys the facility in Australia, is chronologically set before International Rescue became operational.
• Robot Buddy: The Mighty Atom to The Hood, at least until he angrily destroys it.
• Robot Spy: the Titular mouse.
• Spanner in the Works: Lady Penelope to The Hood. Since the mouse-cam is programmed to locate human faces to determine what to photograph, The Hood's attempt to take pictures of Thunderbird 2 result in only Lady Penelope being visible on the photo's.
• Stay In Thunderbird 2: Lady Penelope pleads with Jeff to be allowed to go on the rescue, as she happens to be visiting the base. Eventually she is allowed to go, although she is ordered to stay in Thunderbird 2 while Virgil and Scott do the dangerous work.
• Tear-Apart Tug-of-War: Played with: Parker and Kyrano squabble over who will serve the drinks, and play tug of war with the loaded drinks tray, with predictable results.
  Jeff Tracy: By the sound of it, we're going to stay thirsty.
• The Tag: The final scene is the Hood inspecting the footage of Thunderbird 2, collected from the robot mouse; and when he discovers that all he has is pictures of Lady Penelope screaming, he pulverises the mouse.
• Title Drop: The Mighty Atom is the nickname of the mouse cam.
• Villain Ball: The Hood smashing the Mighty Atom counts, big time. Yes, it failed to get any usable shots of the Thunderbird craft, but it still had plenty of pictures of the atomic plant, which is what the Hood went there for in the first place! Not to mention, The Hood could easily have tried to make it photograph the Thunderbirds again had he not smashed the mouse, and Lady Penelope's cover could have been blown.