The lead characters are ex-astronaut Jeff Tracy, founder of International Rescue, and his five adult sons, who pilot the organisation's main vehicles: the Thunderbird machines.
The misunderstanding is amicably resolved, but when The Hood traps the brothers in a collapsing mine and steals satellite reconnaissance from their father – a tracking station controller – the boys call International Rescue to report a real emergency, only to find that the Tracys do not believe them.
Thunderbird 1 is launched, but on reaching Bob's location in the Northern Territory,[1] pilot Scott Tracy witnesses the boy being "rescued" by his brother Tony.
Realising that the call was part of a children's game, Scott takes the boys home and demands an explanation from their father, a weather station operator.
While Scott recovers the photographs from the crashed vehicle, Virgil and Alan reach the mine and extract Tony and Bob moments before the roof falls.
[3] Fran Pheasant-Kelly, an academic who has studied Thunderbirds from a sociological perspective, notes that in its depiction of Tony and Bob, the episode "perhaps sends a message about the dangers of talking to strangers and about 'crying wolf'".
[4] Richard Farrell writes that the story and choice of title are influenced by the Aesop's Fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf, adding that the episode "plays a bit like a public information film".
[5] Rating "Cry Wolf" three out of five, Tom Fox of Starburst magazine argues that the moral of the story is well worn and the episode "never feels very well fleshed out."
[6] Marcus Hearn, who describes the episode as a "sentimental tale", suggests that the scenes of the Hood tricking the boys into the mine would make a 21st-century audience uneasy.