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Thunderbirds Thursday: Ranking the Hood’s Villainous Schemes

The Hood is surely Thunderbirds‘ most ruthless enemy, his insatiable lust for greed and power the perfect villainous foil to International Rescue’s altruism. Despite his primary function as Thunderbirds‘ main villain, the Hood has a far more scarce presence in the series than you may realise and more varied role. He only appears in six episodes – Trapped in the Sky, The Mighty Atom, Martian Invasion, Desperate Intruder, Edge of Impact, and Cry Wolf. He doesn’t appear at all in the short-lived second series and it remains up for debate whether or not that really is him in Thunderbird 6!

Likewise, his role is rather more unpredictable. Sometimes, his goal is to capture the secrets of the Thunderbird machines, but sometimes he’s happy to outright destroy them, too. He also either works as a lone wolf or is happy to offer his services to whichever enemy governments may pay him the most. With such a varied role, the Hood’s various villainous schemes are more of a tapestry to unravel. This Thunderbirds Thursday, we’re investigating the Hood’s schemes and determining which one was the best!

7. The Hood attempts to steal the secrets of Zero X (Thunderbirds Are Go)

The Hood’s role in Thunderbirds Are Go is a rather minimal one, so we don’t really come to learn his deeper motivations for sneaking aboard the mighty spacecraft Zero X to take photographs of its internal engineering. After infiltrating the craft before take-off by hiding within its undercarriage and unwittingly causing its first disaster, he makes the comparatively more successful effort to disguise himself as one of the craft’s crew for Zero X’s second attempt to journey to Mars. This second attempt may have been a more brazen one, but both efforts ultimately fail for the Hood to acquire the secrets of Zero X.

6. The Hood sabotages the Red Arrow (Edge of Impact)

As Hood schemes go, this is the International Rescue villain at his most straight-forward and unsurprising. In Edge of Impact, the Hood offers his unique services to an enemy power to sabotage the Red Arrows, a project spearheaded by Colonel Tim Casey, a former military friend of Jeff Tracy. There’s no deceptive twists in the scheme, but it’s an engagingly straightforward scheme of the Hood’s to draw a Red Arrow fighter off course and have the craft crash-land into a tele-relay tower, with its two-man crew trapped at the top. Interestingly, there’s no expected duplicity on the Hood’s part. He’s content to act purely in service to another power without the need to tease out International Rescue.

5. The Hood destroys the Atomic Irrigation Plants (The Mighty Atom)

A common tactic used by the Hood is to trigger some destructive event that demands the intervention of International Rescue, but his plan in The Mighty Atom to destroy an atomic processing station leaves a bitter aftertaste. Even by the Hood’s standards, causing a global nuclear disaster feels like overkill. Unless, of course, the Hood has an unspoken confidence that International Rescue *can* save the day? Perhaps the Hood has a more begrudging respect for International Rescue than he’d care to admit.

4. The Hood sabotages the Lake Anasta Expedition (Desperate Intruder)

We’ve previously explored how the Hood is in full remorseless menace in Desperate Intruder, but is it at the expense of consistent characterisation? When the Hood learns of International Rescue’s efforts to uncover the possible treasures hidden within Lake Anasta, his sense of greed clearly overpowers all over faculties. Why not attempt to capture the greatest treasure of all – the engineering genius behind the Thunderbird machines? Only when the Thunderbirds themselves arrive in response to the Hood’s sabotaging of the expedition does he think to try once more to capture their technological secrets.

3. The Hood infiltrates an undercover weather station (Cry Wolf)

Cry Wolf offers us a rare example of the Hood’s interests outside of his fixation on International Rescue. He comes desperately close to obtaining the secrets held by the inconspicuous Dunsley Tracker weather station, which the Hood discovers is in fact a military satellite tracking station. Intent on acquiring the data concealed by the station and selling it on to the highest bidder, the Hood succeeds in breaking into the Williams’ family home. Williams’ slow turn to face his intruder is a menacing touch, and only through Scott Tracy’s interception of the Hood in Thunderbird 1 does the Hood fail to make a clean getaway.

2. The Hood films International Rescue (Martian Invasion)

Another scenario in which the Hood very nearly comes out the victor, staging an elaborately deceptive plot to lure International Rescue out in the open, followed by a comical scramble to evade them once the initial disaster has served its purpose. The Hood’s staging of a disastrous cave collapse on a b-movie set demands the need of International Rescue to save a pair of trapped actors. The Hood’s disguise as the movie’s producer allows him free access to roam the danger zone, which includes filming the Thunderbird machines in action! Additionally, the Hood succeeds in hypnotising his vulnerable half-brother Kyrano to immobilise Thunderbird 1’s automatic camera detector, allowing the Hood the freedom to film International Rescue in action without suspicion.

1. The Hood sabotages the Fireflash (Trapped in the Sky)

The passengers and crew of the atomic-powered Fireflash were unwittingly part of one of the most daring exploitations of International Rescue’s good will. The outfit’s first mission to rescue the stricken passenger jet was the work of the Hood, who utilised his plethora of disguises to infiltrate London Airport and sabotage the craft, but also enable himself to capture the secrets of Thunderbird 1. It’s a plot that showcases the Hood at his most classically cunning and merciless, happy to let the passengers and crew of the Fireflash suffer a terrible fate if it allows him to gain International Rescue’s most closely guarded secrets. Whether it’s monetary or intellectual powers gained from the Thunderbird machines, no evil is too low for the Hood to stoop to!

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Written by
Fred McNamara

Atomic-powered writer/editor. Website editor at Official Gerry Anderson. Author of Flaming Thunderbolts: The Definitive Story of Terrahawks. Also runs Gerry Anderson comic book blog Sequential 21.

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