Tom Thumb Tempest

"Tom Thumb Tempest" is the 22nd episode of Stingray, a British Supermarionation television series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and produced by their company AP Films (APF) for ITC Entertainment. Written by Alan Fennell and directed by Alan Pattillo, it was first broadcast on 28 February 1965 on the Anglia, ATV London, Grampian and Southern franchises of the ITV network. It subsequently aired on ATV Midlands on 3 March 1965.

The series follows the missions of the World Aquanaut Security Patrol (WASP), an organisation responsible for policing the Earth's oceans in the 2060s. Headquartered at the self-contained city of Marineville on the West Coast of North America, the WASP operates a fleet of vessels led by Stingray: a combat submarine crewed by Captain Troy Tempest, Lieutenant "Phones" and Marina, a mute young woman from under the sea. Stingray's adventures bring it into contact with undersea civilisations – some friendly, others hostile – as well as mysterious natural phenomena. The WASP's most powerful enemy is King Titan, ruler of the ocean floor city of Titanica.

In "Tom Thumb Tempest", Troy has a nightmare in which Stingray and its crew are miniaturised. The use of life-sized sets to convey the shrinking of the puppet characters has drawn a mixed response from commentators. Fennell later authored a picture book based on the episode titled Stingray: Terror of the Giants (1993, Boxtree Ltd).

Plot

The Stingray crew are relaxing in the Marineville standby lounge when Commander Shore tells them to prepare to launch, warning them of a dangerous mission. Captain Troy Tempest is eager to leave immediately but Shore says to await further instructions. Troy's attention turns to the fish in the lounge aquarium. He then falls asleep in his chair.

Troy wakes to hear Shore on the intercom, ordering the crew to launch. He departs in Stingray with Lieutenant "Phones" and Marina. Shore radios in, ordering Troy to pilot Stingray through an undersea tunnel. Troy asks for details of the mission and is left feeling belittled when Shore gruffly denies his request.

Stingray exits the tunnel and collides with a sheet of glass. The crew are astonished to find that they have been miniaturised and ended up inside an aquarium within a giant dining room. Leaving Stingray on their personal hovercraft, they investigate the dining table, which has been laid out for various undersea villains. At the head of the table – set for Titan – is a schematic of Marineville's defence systems. The crew realise that they have stumbled across a gathering of the undersea races to plot the destruction of Marineville.

The crew take cover when an Aquaphibian dressed as a butler enters the room to check the table. They then use a nearby telephone to call Marineville. Shore answers and Troy attempts to explain the situation, but Shore thinks that it is a prank call and hangs up. The crew are again forced to hide when the Aquaphibian returns with Titan's agent X-2-Zero, who notices the mess the crew have made and reprimands the Aquaphibian for what he assumes to be poor table-setting. The Aquaphibian tidies up and leaves.

The crew destroy the schematic by soaking it in alcohol and setting it alight. The fire quickly engulfs the room, forcing them back to Stingray. As the aquarium boils, Troy realises that Stingray is trapped. He orders Phones to launch a torpedo to shatter the glass, hoping that the escaping water will put out the fire.

As Phones fires the torpedo, Troy wakes to find himself back in the Marineville lounge. Shore tells the crew to stand down and Troy, realising that he has had a nightmare, apologises to Shore for his earlier impatience.

Regular voice cast

• Ray Barrett as Commander Shore
• Robert Easton as Lieutenant "Phones" and Surface Agent X-2-Zero
• Don Mason as Captain Troy Tempest

Production

The title of the episode was based on the folklore character Tom Thumb. In the script, the Aquaphibian butler was called "Jeevesea" – a pun on the fictional valet Jeeves.

"Tom Thumb Tempest" was significant for combining Stingray's 1⁄3-scale Supermarionation puppets with a life-sized dining room set. (Accordingly, at one point Troy says that the contents of the room appear to be "three times" larger than normal.) It was not the first episode of an APF series to deal with miniaturised characters: the idea had previously been explored in Supercar's "Calling Charlie Queen" and Fireball XL5's "The Triads". However, while those episodes had used back projection for their miniaturisation effects, "Tom Thumb Tempest" placed "shrunken" characters on a physical set. Stephen La Rivière cites "Tom Thumb Tempest" as another example of the "Land of Giants-type" episode that APF had attempted in its previous two series.

Reception

Gerry Anderson biographers Simon Archer and Marcus Hearn consider "Tom Thumb Tempest" to be one of Stingray's most entertaining episodes. By contrast, TV Zone names it the worst of the series, calling the ending "reasonably clever" but the overall episode a "wasted opportunity". The magazine argues that the episode is spoiled through its use of "two hoary old clichés – the 'incredible shrinking cast' idea ... and the 'it was all a dream' cop-out ending" – the first of which merely emphasises the "unreality" of the plot while the second renders the episode "entirely inconsequential". It also criticises the dream sequence itself for being insufficiently surreal and "[degenerating] into sub-Tom and Jerry shenanigans" towards the end.

Jim Sangster and Paul Condon, authors of Collins Telly Guide, describe the episode as "decidedly less aimed at realism" than those of later Supermarionation series. They also refer to dream sequences in general as "one of Anderson's most annoying recurring plot devices".

La Rivière suggests that the "tantalising glimpse of reality" in this episode conflicted with APF's ongoing efforts to make its puppet characters seem more human. Ian Fryer regards the episode as a precursor of the final Supermarionation series, The Secret Service, which featured both puppets and live actors.

References

Works cited

• La Rivière, Stephen (2009). Filmed in Supermarionation: A History of the Future. Neshannock, Pennsylvania: Hermes Press. ISBN 978-1-932563-23-8.
• Pixley, Andrew (2022). Stingray: Adventures in Videcolor. Network Distributing. pp. 273–275. 7958280.

External links

• "Tom Thumb Tempest" at IMDb