This is Your Shining Time: The "Thomas and Friends" Retrospective Rewritten
Luke Canady
A child of God (Christian); aspiring screenwriter and character designer; creator of Christian cartoon concept Eternity Kingdoms; attending Ball State University for MDIA Master’s Degree and working as a custodian there
In Februrary 2021, I posted an article detailing the history of the 1984-2020 (yes, it really ran that long) British children's show Thomas and Friends. While I still think that's one of my best works shared here on LinkedIn, I decided that the article needed a reworking from the ground up. Expand on a few points here, cut down on my rambling there- you know, making it a bit more readable.
(Besides, I've learned a lot more about the series and The Railway Series books that inspired it in the year or so since I wrote the original retrospective, so I kinda feel obligated to do a new version)
I hope you don't mind me retreading an old topic. I just wanted to put out my definitive version of this retrospective on a show that meant so much to me as a child and still does to this day. So without further ado, I present to you the story of a priest and railway enthusiast turned children's book writer, the books and television series that made his characters infamous, how it all went to pieces once an American toy company injected it with corporate sterility, and why we the fandom still love that cheeky little engine so much... again.
This is the story of Thomas [the Tank Engine] and Friends, as told by someone who dearly loved it and still enjoys it to this day. All aboard!
"Dear Christopher:
Here is your friend Thomas the Tank Engine. He wanted to come out of his station yard and see the world. These stories tell you how he did it. I hope you like them because you helped me to make them.
Your Loving Daddy"
Reverend Wilbert Vere Awdry, 1946
PROLOGUE: A Father's Love
Once upon a time (specifically 1942), Reverend Wilbert Vere Awdry was in the midst of trying to cheer up his ailing son Christopher, who was sick in bed with measles. He'd gone through many nursery rhymes and bedtime stories, but only "Down by the Station" seemed to appeal to young Christopher. Thinking quickly, Wilbert drew a line of steam engines in a shed, each with different expressions on their smokebox-mounted faces.
One of them looked rather sad, catching Christopher's eye. "Why does he look sad, Daddy?" he asked. Wilbert answered that this engine hadn't been let out and put to work for a long time, having been outclassed by the newer and bigger engines. "What's his name?" Christopher asked next. Even if he didn't know its impact yet, what Wilbert said next would alter the course of many lives (including his own) forever.
"Edward."
It didn't take long for Wilbert and Christopher to come up with a story about Edward, and this was later followed up by a tale about Edward helping a pompous big blue engine named Gordon up a steep hill as his backing engine as well as a sad story of a green engine named Henry who was bricked up in a tunnel for being proud about his paint. Surprisingly, Wilbert didn't plan on doing anything with these stories outside of telling them to his son. However, his wife Margaret coaxed him into doing so, and he sent his first three stories around to publishers, eventually winning over the publisher known as Edmund Ward.
Due to a series of complications (WWII causing paper shortages, Wilbert's struggles with illustrator William Middleton, and Wilbert being required to write a fourth story that served as a happy ending for Henry that let him redeem himself and a story that tied Edward, Henry and Gordon together as engines all on the same railway), The Three Railway Engines didn't release until 1945. It was a smash hit, burning through three print runs in one year. Of course, there's more to the story.
Wilbert had made a wooden model of Edward and some coaches for Christopher, and planned to do the same for Gordon as a Christmas gift. However, whether by providence or happenstance, he didn't have enough wood to make a full version of Gordon. Making good with what he had, he chose to make a small teal (not yet blue) tank engine. Christopher was quite happy, and like he was with Edward, full of questions about the newly created Thomas.
The Reverend put it this way- "Once we made Thomas, I had no peace until there were stories about him too!" These stories were collected into a follow-up to The Three Railway Engines, one that connected this new little locomotive to the likes of Edward, Henry, and Gordon. In 1946, Thomas the Tank Engine was released to bookstores everywhere in England.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
PART 1: The Railway Series In Full
The Three Railway Engines and Thomas The Tank Engine soon became the earliest installments in The Railway Series, a 42-volume series of books written by Wilbert and later Christopher Awdry (Wilbert wrote the better-known 26; Chris wrote an additional 16). The series was and still is an anomaly among children's books based on vehicles. Rather than being unrealistic and fantastical, the only thing unrealistic about the Awdrys' engines was that they and most other vehicles had faces that allowed for them to communicate with each other. They were otherwise normal, realistic vehicles.
This drive for realism was based in Wilbert's experience with locomotives in the past. In his youth, he imagined the chugs and barks of engines passing by his home at night as conversations between two engines (which undoubtedly inspired the tale of Edward helping Gordon up a hill), and in his adult years, he spent many years helping out at the Welsh narrow gauge Talyllyn Railway. Unfortunately, this caused him much grief with the illustrators, who never seemed to be able to get Henry's basis right. (Awdry wanted him to be a GNR C1 "Atlantic", but repeated misunderstandings on the illustrators' ends resulted in him looking like a strange Atlantic/LNER A1 "Pacific" hybrid)
Wilbert's earliest post-Thomas books in the RWS were primarily focused on fleshing out the characters who already existed and establishing more of the fictitious Island of Sodor. James the Red Engine further established the vain mixed-traffic engine James (first introduced in Thomas's solo book in a black livery), albeit repeating having a similar arc of "new engine gets in over their head and makes a big mistake only to redeem themselves" to Thomas. Tank Engine Thomas Again explored Thomas's new life on his branchline and introduced non-rail vehicles Bertie the Bus and Terence the Tractor; Troublesome Engines saw Wilbert comment on British Railways' then-current labor strikes by having Henry, Gordon and James refuse to work because they no longer have Thomas to fetch their coaches, necessitating the purchase of a new shunter of ambiguous model named Percy.
The railway that these six engines worked on was run by Sir Topham Hatt, a man humorously known as "The Fat Controller". Hatt was a firm but caring authority figure, punishing unruly engines but never denying them a shot at redemption unless they've proven themselves to be incorrigible. Considering Awdry's faith as a Christian, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Fat Controller was intended to be a God surrogate to the engines' reflections of wayward man, someone who was slow to anger and rich in mercy despite the repeated moral failures of his subjects.
Despite the success of the RWS so far, Wilbert was frustrated by the trouble surrounding Henry's design. He planned on having Henry crash and be sent away for scrap, something supported by many post-Three Railway Engines stories depicting him as ill and unable to work. Thanks to many letters from children voicing their concern for the big green engine, though, he decided to rework his plans for Henry's spotlight book to be a story about the Fat Controller mending his steaming problems by first giving him Welsh coal to help him steam better and later having him rebuilt into a Black Five engine after a nasty accident pulling an early-morning fish train. Instead of writing him out as planned, Wilbert chose to work with Henry's complicated design history and fix it in-universe through the crash.
This decision not only gave Henry a workable design for the illustrators to reference, but it also firmly cemented the RWS's universe in reality. This would be continued by the following books in the series, which shone spotlights on Gordon, a wise little tram engine named Toby (based on a real-life tram that Wilbert and his family rode in while on vacation), and Edward. Further expanding the Island of Sodor, though, was Four Little Engines, which highlighted Talyllyn-inspired narrow gauge engines Skarloey, Rheneas (pronounced "ren-e-us", not "ren-ay-us"), Sir Handel and Peter Sam and their line which ran concurrent to the main line.
Many, many more books followed, and Wilbert began to use the RWS to critique decisions made by British Railways regarding diesel engines (he was never outright opposed to them, though; he wouldn't have created Daisy, BoCo or Mavis if that were true), to highlight real-world preservation railways like the Talyllyn and the Bluebell Railway (as well as famous engines like the City of Truro or the Flying Scotsman), and to expand the world of the Island of Sodor with each new volume. Sodor had a rich history rivaled only by that of Tolkien and Lewis's Middle-Earth and Narnia, and the characters were no slouch, either. They weren't merely vessels to communicate morals to children; they were a diverse bunch who children and adults alike came to love for their flaws, their quirks, their humor, their growth, and their strengths.
Some of the finest RWS volumes include:
However, the best of the RWS is found in the volumes centered around the Skarloey Railway's engines. The Little Old Engine and Gallant Old Engine focused on Skarloey and Rheneas's respective homecomings after both of them were sent away for repairs and Very Old Engines saw Skarloey tell tales from he and Rheneas's youth, when Sodor was just getting used to having railways. Also seeded throughout these books are Peter Sam's mumblings about he and Sir Handel's old line and a figure known as "Duke".
The look back on Sodor's history and the mystery surrounding Peter Sam's old line were intertwined in Wilbert's final book about the narrow gauge engines, entitled Duke the Lost Engine. If there was any book that could be pointed to as Wilbert's magnum opus, it would be this one. It's full of rich history, it reveals new facets to Peter Sam and Sir Handel's characters, it has tales of exciting rescues past and present, and it ties together several plot threads from past RWS books.
Part of me wonders if this was intended to be the final volume in the series at some point since it would've ended the series as it began- with three railway engines. One's old and wise (Edward/Duke), one's young and pompous (Gordon/Sir Handel), and one's green and inexperienced (Henry/Peter Sam). Heck, the final story in both Duke and The Three Railway Engines end with an engine being rescued from an enclosed space!
Wilbert's tenure as author of the RWS ended with 1972's Tramway Engines, one last look at Thomas's branchline that introduced the feisty young diesel Mavis and highlighted some misadventures on that part of Sodor. Admittedly, I'm a touch angry that Duke wasn't the last book for the sake of symmetry, but this is still a good book. Overall, Wilbert's 26 books are quite exquisite reading, even if you're not a child. They're full of likable characters, shockingly deep worldbuilding, and delightfully British wit.
Nearly a decade passed, and Christopher took up his father's pen, restarting the RWS with a 27th installment (Really Useful Engines) about Thomas's branchline again. Chris Awdry's books in the series have always been iffy among fans. On one hand, he explored some interesting concepts, like Gordon accepting he's not the high-speed express engine he was in his youth and retiring or the real-life engine named in Wilbert's honor visiting Sodor.
On the other hand, many of Christopher's books lacked focus (James and the Diesel Engines spends three of its four stories screwing around before resolving James's anti-diesel prejudice in the final one), seemed to be too Thomas-centric, or were just plain dull. Apparently the overly Thomas-centric books were mandated by his publisher, who insisted that the most iconic character in the series's history was front and center, resulting in many books where Thomas's name was in the title but he himself did very little in the enclosed stories (i.e. Thomas Comes Home). The fixation on Thomas resulted in many of Chris's more experimental concepts (such as a planned book about "Barry the Rescue Engine") either being denied the light of day or stunted in their execution.
The Railway Series came to an end in 2011 with a book (Thomas and his Friends) that was half shenanigans as per usual and half rounding out the RWS with one story about Gordon being awarded a Medal of Honor for an act of heroism and another about the engines celebrating Wilbert Awdry's centenary. While not a perfect ending by any means, it was at least a thematically fitting one. It highlighted several characters (Thomas, Donald, Douglas, and Gordon) one last time, and it concluded with a statement that summarizes the RWS as a whole.
"There will never be anything like it anywhere."
Prince (not King) Charles (III), Thomas and His Friends (2011)
Sure, Christopher's entries were decidedly lesser than those which his father penned, but when you look at the series as a whole, it's an impressive endeavor. Where else would you find children's books with in-universe history that goes back to the 1800s? Where else would you see character arcs that lasted for 46 years across two authors with minimal inconsistencies? Where else would you find characters as enduring as the Fat Controller's famous engines?
There really never will be anything quite like The Railway Series.
PART 2: Britt Allcroft Presents...
Now, before we discuss what I and many others consider to be the "golden years" of the Thomas and Friends television series, we must discuss two botched adaptation efforts that preceded it. The first was an infamous 1953 BBC adaptation of "The Sad Story of Henry" that had an onscreen derailment of Henry's model, necessitating a hand to put him back on the rails and therefore break the audience's investment in the story. This adaptation was so disastrous that Wilbert Awdry himself wrote a letter criticizing it.
Following that disgraceful display, Wilbert refused to allow any further adaptations of The Railway Series. The second attempt was two decades later in 1973, pitched by then-up-and-coming West End composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (who had grown up reading the RWS). Webber's pitch was intended to be a hand-drawn musical animated series. Despite the pitch getting fairly far into production, Awdry found Webber's terms to be ones he disagreed with.
If the animated series was made, it would've given Webber's company full control of Wilbert's books, characters and any further material. This was allegedly done to help secure financial support from the American investors. Rather wisely, Wilbert pulled out of the deal, fearing that if Americans were to get their hands on Thomas, they would leave him and the other engines of the RWS in a vulgarized state. (How prescient, given what happened once an American toy company got its hands on the Thomas brand years later)
A few years passed. While he was in the midst of being interviewed for a documentary about the Bluebell Railway, Wilbert caught the eye of a young woman by the name of Britt Allcroft. Allcroft had become smitten with The Railway Series prior to seeing Awdry during this interview, and she saw the potential for the books to be turned into a children's series.
Despite some initial hesitation given how the BBC adaptation and Webber's pitch turned out, Wilbert agreed to give Britt adaptation rights, and so a crew began to be assembled. Ex-Thunderbirds director David Mitton, jingle-writers Mike O'Donnell and Junior Campbell, and a team of model makers came together. And as the cherry on top, the in-production series scored former Beatle Ringo Starr as its first narrator.
On October 9th, 1984, Thomas [the Tank Engine] and Friends premiered.
Much like the books that inspired it, Thomas was a unique anomaly among children's media at the time. It wasn't quite animated, but it wasn't quite live-action either. The engines were represented by highly intricate models with functioning eyes, side rods, and small "steam" generators that allowed them to puff from their funnels. Scene changes allowed for them to change expressions (what an expressive bunch they were!), and they had an expansive, well-crafted replica of Sodor's railways they got to run around. Human characters were represented by small static figurines.
Season 1 of Thomas followed the events of The Three Railway Engines, Thomas the Tank Engine, James the Red Engine, Tank Engine Thomas Again, Troublesome Engines, Henry the Green Engine, Toby the Tram Engine, and half of Gordon the Big Engine fairly closely. Alterations made included combining shorter stories with one another, cutting out some stories (these would be adapted in later seasons, although these were often hurt by their new context), and adding in a wholly original Christmas story. The series was a smash hit, and a second season was soon put into production.
The following season was far more slipshod when it came to how it handled RWS stories. Due to a lack of stories about Thomas, Edward, Henry, Gordon, James, Percy and Toby available to adapt, the show began to adapt stories from all over Wilbert's books and even one of Christopher's books (this one, More About Thomas the Tank Engine, was written with the sole purpose of adapting it for the show; a factor that Chris feels hampered the end result) rather than continuing to adapt the books in order. (Besides, they didn't have the budget to handle the smaller gauge engines yet) Admittedly, this wasn't a bad thing, as it allowed for Season 2 to tackle the introduction of Trevor, Donald, Douglas, Daisy, BoCo, Bill, Ben, Duck, and Diesel.
After Seasons 1 and 2, Thomas's production went on hiatus. Britt began negotiations for getting the show broadcasting in other countries like America and Japan. The American airing of Thomas saw it swaddled in a wholly original series entitled Shining Time Station, which saw Ringo play a diminutive magical railway worker named "Mr. Conductor". Conversely, Japan received a dub of the series that uniquely possessed a full voice cast in addition to the narrator- something that the show itself wouldn't gain until 2009. Meanwhile, David Mitton, Mike, Junior, and some of the model makers attempted to make their own show about vehicles with faces in the years between Seasons 2 and 3 of Thomas.
This show was TUGS, a show about American (though conspicuously European-accented) tugboats who worked for two rival companies in the 1920s. It was a significantly more mature series than Thomas with great ambition and even greater craftsmanship, but due to its childish appearance clashing with its darker tone and its production company going under thanks to budgetary issues, the show never made it past its first thirteen episodes. Fortunately, many of the TUGS props were repurposed for Thomas's third season.
Season 3 of Thomas saw the model makers apply the lessons they'd learned from TUGS, resulting in a much brighter, more detailed set for the engines to run around. In fact, Season 3 was host to many changes made to the series. Ringo stepped down as narrator, replaced by Michael Angelis in the UK and the George Carlin in the US (who also took over the role of Mr. Conductor for Shining Time Station). Allcroft and Mitton began to write the characters more as their own, specifically accentuating James' vanity and revealing Henry's love of nature and Thomas's more empathetic side. Mike and Junior began writing lyrical songs for the series, and magazine stories penned by a young lad named Andrew Brenner were adapted alongside wholly original stories.
One of Brenner's stories, "Henry's Forest," greatly incensed Wilbert due to its violation of a railway rule and the supposedly illogical nature of a steam engine being interested in scenery (ironic, considering one of his earliest stories had Thomas longing to go fishing). In addition, he wasn't terribly fond of Thomas's increased presence in stories that he wasn't in originally, dubbing the process "crane-shunting". This created a rift between the elder Awdry and the TV show's production staff, one that only widened as further deviations from the source material came along.
Don't forget Brenner, now. He'll be important later.
Regardless of Wilbert's criticisms, Season 3 continued Thomas's rise to stardom with further development of the characters, faithful RWS adaptations and new locations being explored. And with a rise to stardom came much merchandising. Alongside die-cast versions of the characters made by ERTL and motorized engines and cars from Japanese toy company Tomy was the now-iconic "Wooden Railway" range produced by Learning Curve from 1992 to 2012 and by Fisher-Price from 2013-2017 and 2022-present. While the engines originally looked quite primitive compared to what would come later, they captured the characters' essences quite well.
In what I assume was a response to Wilbert's criticism of Season 3 for its divergence from the source material, Season 4's first half was extremely focused on adapting the hitherto-untouched stories about the Skarloey Railway engines. While the order of adaptations was rather wonky (they started with Duke the Lost Engine's contents and ended with Gallant Old Engine), these were all quite pretty visually and handled their source material decently. I still think this is the nicest the show ever looked all these years later.
Unfortunately, the rest of the season was a grab bag of leftover stories left unadapted by earlier seasons, some of Christopher's stories from a Tobycentric book, and a butchered version of Stepney the Bluebell Engine that recast Stepney as an engine in need of being saved from scrap and the Bluebell Railway as a branchline on Sodor. If you thought Awdry was upset over "Henry's Forest" and the "crane-shunting" of Thomas into stories where he didn't belong, he was FURIOUS over seeing such an iconic real-world engine and preservation railway treated this way. Why Britt and Mitton chose to treat Stepney this way is a mystery.
Maybe they didn't want to pay licensing rights to the Bluebell Railway; maybe they sought to recreate the spectacle of Douglas's rescue of Oliver as seen in Enterprising Engines/Season 3's "Escape". Whatever it was, Wilbert wasn't happy. Rather tragically, he passed two years after Season 4 came out.
1998 rolled around, and with it came yet another big year for TTTE driven by Season 5. Carlin stepped down from his role as American narrator (a role he greatly enjoyed), allowing for the infamous Alec Baldwin to step into the role. Baldwin's narration was... interesting, to say the least. Season 5 was notably the first season without any adaptations of either Awdry's stories- instead opting for wholly original tales, with new characters, new locations, and all-new, all-different action.
Come to think of it, "action" is really the best way to describe Season 5. A dockside crane named Cranky gets toppled over, Gordon crashes through a newly-built station and sustains serious damage, a seemingly malevolent boulder goes on a rampage throughout a narrow gauge quarry, three rude lorries meet their comeuppance in comically cruel ways, Percy and Skarloey both get buried alive, Henry almost falls off a cliff and later crashes into the ocean, Stepney almost gets smelted by two grim diesels, and Sir Topham Hatt goes through hell to make it to his wife's birthday party. Truly the most serious season yet. Many of these stories feel like leftover TUGS scripts repurposed into Thomas stories, especially some of the darker ones like "Stepney Gets Lost" or "Haunted Henry". I mean, that hasn't been confirmed, but considering how many TUGS props were carried over into Thomas, I wouldn't be surprised if some scripts were brought over as well.
Season 5 is considered by many to be a fan favorite, but in hindsight, I find it to be somewhat bittersweet. Don't get me wrong, it's still a great season, but a lot of this season's more experimental, unrealistic aspects would come to harm the series in the long run. Also, it kinda hurts having such an excessive set of stories only a year or so after Wilbert's passing. It sounds morbid of me to say this, but perhaps Britt was waiting for him to die so she could reshape Thomas into what she wanted without him voicing his distaste for certain stories.
Admittedly, the characters were still themselves and many stories were drawn from real-world events, but what followed Season 5 was a wholly different beast than anything that had come before it. This was Britt's attempt to weld the Shining Time Station and Thomas universes together, a tale less about the engines of Sodor and more about a magical steam engine being threatened by an evil diesel. This story was Thomas and the Magic Railroad.
Much has been documented about TATMR by the fandom, but for the sake of this article's length, we're only going to discuss the basics. The film originally had a much grander story in mind involving a human villain named P.T. Boomer (played by the late Doug Lennox), a Liverpudlian-accented Thomas voiced by a taxi driver who once picked up Britt, Michael Angelis reprising his role from the series as voice of James and Percy, and more songs from the show proper. However, the film was drastically altered after a disastrous test screening. Kids were apparently too hot in the theatre where they screened the early version, and therefore weren't in the best condition to analyze the film.
Boomer was cut from the film wholesale, resulting in his muscle (a villainous diesel engine named Diesel 10) becoming the film's main antagonist. Several characters were recast with new voice actors from Canada (humorously, Percy and James were given the voices of Sailor Moon actresses Linda Ballantyne and Susan Roman), and the film was hacked up and cut down to something more manageable. Magic Railroad, while it holds much nostalgic value for me, is very much a product of its troubled development and Britt's skewed priorities.
Instead of the realism which characterized the RWS and the Thomas TV series up to that point, this film reclassified Sodor as a strange pocket dimension kept alive by the magic of film-original engine Lady (voiced by Britt herself; if this was meant to represent her, talk about narcissism). Unfortunately, Lady's out of puff thanks to the machinations of Diesel 10, who's returned (we never learn about his first visit to Sodor) to cause trouble for Thomas and company. Meanwhile, Mr. Conductor (now played by Alec Baldwin) is trying to find more of the "gold dust" that lets him traverse between Shining Time Station and Sodor.
Now how much of that is Thomas-related again? That's the film's biggest problem. Despite his name being in the title, Thomas isn't the main character. Sure, he's a major player and his friends get to have little moments in the spotlight (Toby gets to scare the crap out of Diesel 10 with his bell and it's great), but they're not the center of the film. Instead, Mr. Conductor, a depressed man named Burnett Stone (the late Peter Fonda, doing his best with the material he was given), and his granddaughter Lily (played by Mara Wilson in her final acting role; this movie tanked her acting career) are at the core of the story.
Put simply, Magic Railroad is a mess. Much of its worldbuilding is inconsistent and ill-defined (a far cry from Wilbert's dedication to making his world as real as possible), the human characters aren't terribly interesting, and the introduction of magic is such a jarring inclusion that it's led many to write the film off as non-canon to the show proper. Thankfully, it's not a complete mess; the film's actual Thomas content is quite pleasant and Diesel 10 (as well as his grunts Splatter and Dodge) are amusing villains.
As you'd expect for something so detached from its source material, TATMR was a flop. UK fans didn't know who the Shining Time Station carry-overs were, film critics dismissed the film as kiddy fluff, and the film barely made back its budget. Its failure was so great that Britt herself was driven out of her production company, and the shockwaves created by its failure resulted in Thomas's reputation being irreversibly damaged in the US. No longer seen as a cut above the average children's show, it was now seen as babyish drivel.
Following the mess of the movie was Season 6. While not hitting the same heights as its direct predecessor (and it continued to degrade some of the characters; Skarloey was starting to lose some of his sagacity and determination), this season felt somewhat like course correction. It was less about pushing the series to its limits and more about continued expansion of the characters and their world. Most notable of these efforts was a pair of episodes about a front-end loader named Jack and a band of colorful construction vehicles nicknamed "The Pack".
Much like the engines, the Pack were intricate little models with great amounts of both detail and function. Despite only appearing in two episodes in Season 6, they were quite a fun... erm, pack... of characters and there were big plans for them down the road. It got to the point where Jack and the Pack were to star in their own spin-off series, the clunkily titled Jack and the Sodor Construction Company.
However, due to an incoming corporate purchase, the Jack spin-off was cancelled after having thirteen episodes filmed. This was because HiT Entertainment, a company set to purchase the Thomas production company, already owned Bob the Builder and saw Jack and the Pack's spin-off as a threat to that series. (This didn't stop the Pack from popping up in later stories, fortunately) Unfortunately, HiT's acquisition of Thomas had poor effects on the show proper.
Season 7, for many, is the last season in Thomas's golden years. I'd have to agree with them. Several characters were given last hurrahs of sorts, new characters continued to be introduced, and the world was given its last Mitton-era additions. However, the season also had an incredibly time-crunched production schedule that drove David Mitton and some of the original staff away from the series. HiT was tightening its grip on the series, and Mitton simply couldn't work under those circumstances.
Perhaps that's why this season seemed so determined to make the time the original crew had left. New characters popped up left and right (some of whom, like streamlined silver LNER A4 express engine Spencer and elegant Stirling Single Emily, became series mainstays), older characters from both the RWS and the TV series got spotlights here and there, new locations were almost as plentiful as the new characters, and the action had found a nice middle ground between Seasons 5 and 6.
Thomas and Friends, in its first seven seasons, was perhaps in its purest state. That's not just nostalgia talking, folks- ask someone on the street about Thomas, and chances are they'll think of this era of the show first. Sure, there were divergences from the source material (some more egregious than others; poor Stepney), but for the most part, it was very consistent with Wilbert and Christopher's original vision for the RWS. Heck, there are some characters and series-original stories that I'd argue are on par with the RWS originals. If there was a word I'd use to define these early seasons, it'd be "craftsmanship."
Good as the stories were for the most part, it was the excellence of the model-makers and composers that truly elevated Thomas to being more than just a "kids' show". The sets and models were dressed in a manner that suggested they weren't just making a fancy model railroad to film on... they were recreating and expanding upon the world established by Wilbert Awdry and his son. The soundtrack and lyrical songs weren't just vapid noise; they said things about these characters' personality. Even when the show shifted to telling wholly-original stories, it always felt like it was honoring Wilbert's advice for writing children's stories.
"You've got to remember who you're writing for. You're not merely writing for children. You're writing for the unfortunate people who've got to read the stories over and over and over again."
Rev. Wilbert Vere Awdry
PART 3: The Great Derailment
By 2004, HiT had full ownership of Thomas and Friends. And they had big plans for the series moving forward. However, those plans weren't everyone's cup of tea...
First and foremost, they needed a new American narrator and set of composers. Alec Baldwin left the show after Season 6 due to personal troubles, and Mike and Junior left after Season 7. Ergo, Michael Brandon (arguably the worst narrator in the show's history) stepped into the role of American narrator and Robert Hartshorne took over as composer (his work isn't bad, but he relied far too much on the brass synth).
Second, the show's format was retooled significantly. Episodes were now seven minutes long, accidents/crashes were "softened" by the use of slow motion, and a new main cast had been established- Thomas, Edward, Henry, Gordon, James, Percy, Toby, and Emily. Originally, Duck would've been the 8th character in the lineup (fitting, because he is Sodor's number 8 in the TV series), but HiT must've wanted a girl in the "Steam Team".
Lastly, the show was now much more moralistic, lacking the subtlety most of the Awdry-era and Allcroft/Mitton-era stories had. It's not bad that Thomas under HiT had morals; it's just that the series was now entrenched in a monotonous formula of "engine A is given special job, screws it up exactly three times, is scolded, then does it right and is praised for their hard work". This was exactly the kind of thing Awdry warned against- the show was now telling stories solely for children, not children and the unfortunate people who had to watch these episodes again and again.
The "HiT era" (Seasons 8-12) is a frustrating beast to analyze. Many characters were rewritten into something unlike what they once were- Edward and Toby became feeble old men who doubted their self-worth a lot, Skarloey and Rheneas regressed from wise old gents into immature children, Percy got way dumber, Emily went from kind and sisterly to impatient and bratty, and Thomas lost a lot of the bite he had in the earlier seasons in favor of being a moral authority. The engines' cargo became increasingly unrealistic in the name of making sure kids knew what was inside their trucks. And worst of all, most of the new characters and locations were rather shallow, as if they existed solely for merchandising purposes.
Speaking of which, Thomas merchandise was at an all-time peak during this era. LEGO scored the rights to make preschool-oriented DUPLO sets (surprisingly good ones at that), the motorized Tomy engines were given Americanized counterparts by HiT themselves as part of the "TrackMaster" range, and Learning Curve was cruising right along with the Wooden Railway and die-cast "Take Along" ranges. Maybe that's why HiT-era episodes were so determined to make toyetic characters and locales- HiT knew the gold mine they'd struck after purchasing Thomas and wanted to capitalize on it as much as they could.
I'm bold enough to say that the HiT era isn't horrible. Rather, it's merely decent. It's significantly poorer than the RWS and Seasons 1-7, yes, but it has its bright spots. Some episodes are quite well-written by this era's standards (here's a playlist with the best of the best), characters like Gordon, James and Duncan were kept in character amidst almost everyone else being out-of-character, the new vehicle characters were all well-designed and sometimes had interesting personalities, and some of the new locations added layers to the TV series' depiction of Sodor.
One of the other changes that the HiT era brought with it was the introduction of "specials". These were functionally mini-movies, events designed to sell more merch- I mean, introduce new characters and establish new locations. The first of these was Calling All Engines, a perfunctory effort that pitted the steam engines against the diesel engines, causing much confusion and delay amidst construction of a new airport and a refurbishment of Tidmouth Sheds. It's ultimately alright, but it's far from the big event that HiT was pushing it as. It DEFINITELY wasn't a good 60th anniversary celebration for the RWS either, especially considering neither Awdry were anti-diesel.
Conversely, 2008's The Great Discovery was a surprisingly good special about Thomas discovering a lost town and wrestling with his jealousy over a new engine named Stanley charming every one of his friends. While it's plagued with repetitive songs (save for "Thomas, You're the Leader", that one's a straight up bop) and rhyming that had come to characterize the writing of HiT era writer Sharon Miller, it keeps the characters in character, it introduced an interesting new location in the form of Great Waterton, and it was narrated by none other than James Bond himself, Pierce Brosnan. Many have argued that if Thomas and Friends could have ended anywhere, it should have ended here. TGD ends with everyone celebrating Great Waterton's reopening and Thomas surrounded by his friends. What more could you want from an ending?
Well, HiT wanted more, but in a different format. The show had become rather cost-ineffective to produce in its current format, and they sought to cheapen things up. Ergo, they chose to replace the engines' faces and the human and animal figurines with CGI provided by the Canadian Nitrogen Studios. And yes, that means that Thomas and Friends, a children's show, was co-produced by the same studio that would go on to animate the R-rated Pixar pastiche Sausage Party.
Knowing Nitrogen would go from Thomas to something like that is... concerning, to say the least.
Season 12 was the only season of the HiT era to utilize this "hybrid" format. Even as a child, I felt there was something decidedly off about the CGI faces, people and animals. They just looked too... pristine and plastic compared to the timeless models which had been utilized for more than 25 years by this point. Mercifully, HiT didn't continue the show in this format, deciding to transition into full CGI provided by Nitrogen.
The jump to full CGI necessitated a partial overhaul of the show, with the role of the narrator being greatly reduced in favor of the engines and humans gaining their own voice actors for the first time since Magic Railroad. And the first fully CGI special Hero of the Rails, which saw Thomas help restore a damaged Japanese engine named Hiro, wasn't half bad. Perhaps Thomas was getting back on track...
... then Season 13 came out. And Season 14. And Season 15. And Misty Island Rescue. And Day of the Diesels. All of it spearheaded by Sharon Miller, who had ascended to the role of head writer of the show. None of it was good.
What made Miller such a bad writer, you ask? Well, dear reader, I'll tell you. She had an annoying adherence to incorporating alliteration and banal rhyming into her stories, resulting in tales that were at worst infuriating and at best boring. In addition, the lack of realism and character mutilation continued, with Henry now becoming a sick, screaming coward instead of a big strong engine refined by his past trials.
Put simply, it wasn't a good time to be a Thomas fan (unless we're talking about the merch; like the HiT era, it was still quite good). I'd argue that this- not anything put out by Mattel- was the worst era of the Thomas and Friends TV show. While Mattel shot themselves in the foot so many times it's a miracle the show still had legs, at least you could still watch a majority of the episodes and specials produced under their tenure. Seasons 13-16 were just aggravatingly obnoxious and boring to the point where it was unwatchable.
Mercifully, Season 16 was the least terrible season of the "Miller Era". It was still bad for the most part, but it was significantly less so than the three seasons and two specials which came before it. The first era of CGI Thomas came to a close with Blue Mountain Mystery, a surprisingly great special about Thomas playing detective to help solve a mystery involving the narrow gauge engines. Not only did it restore the Skarloey Railway engines to their original characterizations and make many Miller era characters more interesting (Paxton the friendly diesel and Victor the repair engine who happens to be Cuban), but it also heralded the return of a writer long absent from the series.
领英推荐
Andrew Brenner was back.
PART 4: Brenner's Brief Bout of Brilliance Amidst Corporate Conformity Creeping In
In 2012, HiT was acquired by Mattel, who had also picked up the rights to produce the Take Along (renamed to "Take-N-Play") and TrackMaster ranges in 2010. (They also scored the Wooden Railway range in 2013, but that's not important right now) Like HiT before them, Mattel had big plans for Thomas... this time, these plans were ones that fans actually liked. The show's source of animation was switched from Nitrogen to Arc Productions and Brenner took over as head writer, with the goal of rerailing the series.
Season 17 marked the first step in fixing the series after the damage done by the HiT and Miller eras. Many of the Miller characters were either given more depth or were written out entirely, the main cast was nudged back towards their model series characterization (some quicker than others), characters like Duck, Bill and Ben made their grand return after years of not being in the show, and realism once again took center stage. The stories were also freed from the dreaded "three strikes" formula that plagued the prior two eras, allowing for a lot of character exploration and more unique storytelling opportunities.
Brenner's time as head writer is best characterized by his drawing on Railway Series lore in clever ways that fit the canon of the show proper, exploring new sides of characters (much like Britt and Mitton did in the early seasons), and introducing new characters that felt less like new toys and more like actual characters. King of the Railway brought in Sir Robert Norramby, the eccentric Earl of Sodor; Tale of the Brave saw Thomas working on Edward's branchline with Bill and Ben while his own line was being repaired, a scenario evocative of Thomas and the Twins (one of Christopher Awdry's better RWS books). Season 18 only continued the "Brenner era's" success, reintroducing more old faces and continuing to explore the world of Sodor.
However, not all was well at Mattel. See, they'd created a spin-off of their Monster High doll line called Ever After High about the teenage children of various fairy tale characters. Disney, furious over how similar EAH was to their then-in-development concept Descendants (about the teenage children of their characters), chose to revoke the Disney Princess license from Mattel. With one of their biggest sources of revenue gone, Mattel started cheapening up their merchandise to make ends meet.
The 2014-onward Take-N-Play engines were made more squat and given fatter magnets incompatible with older models. TrackMaster was given a complete overhaul that stripped the engines of their ability to roll freely and established a new track system, all in the name of making the engines "faster" and capable of climbing steeper hills. Unfortunately, parents weren't happy with the changes, and so the revised T-N-P and TrackMaster engines and sets began to clog shelves.
Mercifully, the show itself hadn't been too badly hurt by the cheapened merch. Seasons 19 and 20 were moving right along production-wise, and two big specials released in 2015. The Adventure Begins retold the first two Railway Series books' stories in full CGI (albeit with inconsistencies created by CGI-era characterizations clashing with Wilbert's original stories); Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure saw Thomas work to overcome his pride amidst the construction of a new branchline and discovery of lost pirate treasure (a bit too similar to The Great Discovery for my liking, but otherwise quite nice). The former special was apparently fast-tracked into production, causing much stress at Arc Productions that would pile up as the series went on.
Seasons 19 and 20 are where the Brenner era peaked. Characters old and new were well-written and kept in-character, the new locations added to Sodor's geography felt organic and smartly integrated, the stories were varied in who they focused on (so it wasn't just a member of the Steam Team and other characters), and as the cherry on top, Season 20 saw the TV series's first adaptation of RWS stories in years thanks to Sodor's Legend... introducing the small-scale Arlesdale Railway and its engines to the TV show's world. How ironic that Andrew Brenner, the writer critiqued by Wilbert Awdry for writing an "unrealistic" story about Henry appreciating nature, ended up being the one to deliver some of the most faithful RWS adaptations in the series's history. This was the best Thomas had been in years...
... too bad it didn't stay that way.
Between dipping merchandise sales and dipping TV ratings (PBS wasn't treating the show too kindly), Mattel felt as if the show had to do more to compete with the likes of PAW Patrol. The first of these efforts to "revitalize" the series despite the quality of Seasons 19 and 20 was The Great Race, a special which focused on Thomas's efforts to get into a Great Railway Show highlighting engines from around the world. Admittedly, this wasn't a bad special, just one with misplaced focus. You're telling me that the special that introduces the Flying Scotsman to the TV series canon ISN'T one about Gordon?
Part of me wonders if Brenner planned on making Gordon the star of TGR, but like Christopher Awdry before him, he was mandated to use Thomas as the main character. In addition, the special introduced many, many international engines who seemed to be defined by the fact they came from other countries. While this seems like an inconsequential detail in the grand scheme of things, trust me. It went on to hurt the show far more than you could ever imagine it would.
2017 was perhaps the worst year for the Brenner era, with the one-two-three punch of Season 21, the special Journey Beyond Sodor, and the announcement of an upcoming rebrand that would change the show in a manner far more damaging than the Mitton-to-HiT transition ever did. Let's start with JBS. This special was a Wizard of Oz-like tale of Thomas taking a goods train meant to be taken by James to the British mainland, meeting a band of oddball engines based on real-world obscure designs and running into trouble with a pair of ill-intentioned engines who force him to work at a grimy, dark Steelworks.
Not a bad concept for a story, but the special brought a pretty big visual shift with it. From JBS and onward, the engines gained the ability to "gesture" on their chassis, ranging from slight movements to full-on cartoony shenanigans. The latter clashed extremely hard with the realism that the Brenner era defined itself with. Apparently, the gesturing was such a last minute addition that it contributed to the bankruptcy of Arc Productions! If that wasn't a sign that this new direction was a poor one, Season 21 (animated by Jam Filled , who many Arc animators migrated to amidst their old employer going under) definitely was.
Like Season 7, Season 21 wasn't bad, but it definitely had production scars caused by Arc going bankrupt and Mattel preparing for... something. Something dreadful. It was the shortest season of the series at only 18 episodes, with 8 of its planned episodes being either canned entirely or reworked into episodes for later seasons. For the most part, Season 21 is traditional Brenner-era fare, save for two episodes.
"The Fastest Red Engine on Sodor" is a James-centric episode that sees him overlooking a brake fluid leak and crashing into Tidmouth Sheds because of his carelessness. Sounds fairly harmless, right? Wrong. This story was followed by the infamous "A Shed For Edward", which ended with Edward leaving Tidmouth (and by extension the main cast) in favor of moving in with a Mattel-created character who the fandom despised. It felt incredibly insulting to take the first character ever created by the Reverend W. Awdry and write him out of the main cast, not helped by him being paired with such a disliked character.
I'm sorry to say that wasn't the end of Mattel's changes.
Fortunately, what remained of the Brenner era ended decently. Some fans theorize that Season 21 was intended by Brenner and the other writers as a pseudo-final season in case Mattel's changes were incompatible with what came before, and I'd have to agree with them. Diesel puts aside his mischievous ways once and for all (word of advice, don't watch "A Most Singular Engine" after "Springtime for Diesel"), Cranky the dockside crane accepts his age and help from a newer crane named Carly, and Gordon puts his rivalry with snooty private engine Spencer (a show original introduced way back in Season 7) aside. If you ignore "The Fastest Engine on Sodor" and "A Shed for Edward", it's a perfect end to the best era of the show since the original seven seasons.
Overall, Seasons 17-21 were a welcome return to form for Thomas and Friends. Granted, they weren't without sin: the characters weren't really allowed to develop past their base character traits, Mattel's demands for more marketable scenarios and characters began to hamper the storytelling as time went on, and some of the out of character writing from the HiT and Miller era sadly wasn't fixed (poor Toby). But they were significant upgrades over what came before and INFINITELY better than what followed.
PART 5: Big World! Big Adventures! Big Problems?!
Before we jump into analyzing the final seasons and the rebrand that came with them, we must discuss the "Thomas Wood" range. Mattel sought to cheapen up the Wooden Railway range, and in 2017, they replaced it with the blandly named Wood line. The goal of this range was to reduce the amount of plastic on the engines, other characters, locations, and track pieces.
Unfortunately, Wood ended up being a colossal failure, and not just because of the sudden change from Wooden Railway to this new line.
For starters, many of the engines and rolling stock were left with swathes of unpainted wood. This was allegedly done because Mattel thought kids couldn't tell the difference between the Wooden Railway and post-2014 Take-N-Play engines, so they decided to make it as obvious as possible that these new Wood engines, trucks and wagons were made of wood. This had the unfortunate consequence of making everything look unfinished and ugly, and parents rightly complained, prompting Mattel to recall the initial 2017-2018 range of Wood toys and replace them with better-painted versions.
Surprisingly, it's one of the few times they actually tried to fix things during the latter days of the original series's run.
Next, Mattel chose to replace the tried-and-true track compatible with BRIO and other wooden train brands with a track of their design incompatible with all that track. Sure, there were still adapters allowing it to function with the older style of track, but there was nothing stopping parents from just buying BRIO or Orbrium track and using the Wood engines on that track. If Mattel was trying to monopolize the wooden train track niche of the toy industry by creating a new, supposedly kid-friendly system that went with their "better" Thomas Wood toys, they failed miserably.
Lastly, despite the brand's name, Thomas Wood had an excessive amount of plastic. Various trucks and cars were made out of plastic, sections of track attached to locations were made of plastic, and the human characters were reworked into cutesy plastic figurines similar to those made by BRIO (they were wooden figures in the Wooden Railway years). Ironically, the range all about "correcting" Wooden Railway's use of plastic ended up being one plagued by it.
With that out of the way, let's dive deep into Big World! Big Adventures! and how it killed the original Thomas series.
As stated earlier, Mattel had plans for Thomas in order to best other preschool shows like Paw Patrol and The Great Race, Journey Beyond Sodor and Season 21 all laid the groundwork for this new era. TGR introduced the international engines who would reappear throughout newer seasons, JBS introduced the engines' ability to gesture, and Season 21 forced Edward out of the main cast. All of this was leading up to Big World! Big Adventures!, a rebrand of Thomas and Friends intended to make the show more diverse and inclusive.
BWBA started with a special of the same name, which saw Thomas shirk his daily duties in favor of following an Australian race car around the world. Unrealistic shenanigans ensue, Thomas befriends a Kenyan engine named Nia who comes with him back to Sodor, and Sir Topham Hatt goes on a wild goose chase in search of Thomas that is left unresolved by the film's end. Season 22 ignored the movie's cliffhanger and set forth a new status quo for the series.
Each season would now be split between the international misadventures of Thomas (who was now the narrator) and the traditional happenings on the Island of Sodor. As with the HiT era, the episodes were reformatted. In addition to having Thomas as narrator, BWBA incorporated nonsensical "imagination" sequences that allowed for reality to go right off the rails and had Thomas condescendingly reiterate the moral of each story at the end of each episode. Like the transition from Seasons 1-7 to the HiT era, this was a significant downgrade from what Seasons 17-21 offered up.
But wait, the changes don't stop there! Henry and Toby joined Edward in being booted from the main cast, and the trio was replaced by Nia and a new express engine named Rebecca. Unfortunately, both of them were incredibly thin personality-wise. Allow me to summarize both of them. Nia's heritage is the only thing that defines her (a far cry from past international characters like Hiro and Victor being characters first and international second); Rebecca is a generic clumsy nice girl with a cute British-adjacent accent.
Honestly, both of them could've been leagues more than what they ended up being. Nia could've been an engine saved from scrap by Thomas during his travels and could've found a new family in the form of the Sodor engines; Rebecca could've been a great foil to Henry and Gordon. Sadly, both characters were limited to the roles of "African girl" and "new girl" as part of the initiative to push diversity and inclusion through Thomas...
... which falls flat on its face when you consider that the show already had quite a large female presence. Heck, the Brenner era seasons made a conscious effort to bulk up the amount of female characters (specialty express engine Caitlin, Toby's coach Henrietta with a face to call her own, the French-accented narrow gauge engine Millie, the eccentric self-powered steam shovel Marion, a reintroduced Daisy, Henrietta's hedonistic sister Hannah, and a completely revamped version of HiT era character Rosie). Rather than add new girls for the sake of attracting media attention, Mattel should've simply continued to develop the ones they already had.
The frustrating thing is, they could've done that AND kept Edward and Henry in the main cast. Since Season 21 had James cause severe damage to Tidmouth Sheds, why not use that as an opportunity to add some extra berths to the sheds so more engines could stay there? In addition, Season 21's marketing was certainly pushing Rosie quite a bit, so perhaps Mattel was considering adding her to the main cast at some point before deciding on Rebecca and the African one who replaced Edward.
But no, Mattel chose to fix a problem that didn't exist (Thomas's supposed "lack of female characters") and wrote out Edward, Henry and Toby in favor of an African blank slate and a generic nice girl. In the words of Henry, James and Gordon, the removal of those three engines was "disgraceful, disgusting, and despicable". What a waste.
In regards to the international episodes, they... they did not portray other countries in a terribly flattering way. You'd think that with how diverse real-world railways are, Mattel would've actually done their homework and tried to tell interesting stories based around each countries' engines and railways as Wilbert once did for the RWS. Heck, this seemed like the perfect merchandising opportunity- Thomas would have to be modified significantly to work in certain countries, and how Mattel didn't see that as potentially marketable is beyond me.
Here's a fan (emphasis on FAN) render of what an "Americanized" Thomas could've looked like suppose he visited America during the BWBA seasons:
If something like that that and other international Thomas "variants" don't sound they'd have been like easy money-makers for Mattel, I don't know what would have been.
However, the other countries (China, India, Italy, Brazil, Africa, and Australia) were all depicted in the most barebones, stereotypical ways imaginable. Instead of focusing on the engines and how their railways were different from Sodor's British-adjacent rails, the writers decided to focus on surface-level cultural stuff and forced Thomas to learn about that. For example, he learns about pandas, the symbolism behind dragons and tai chi in China, he learns about monkeys (yes, monkeys) in India, he learns about opera in Italy, he learns about elephants in Africa, and he learns about kangaroos and hurricanes in Australia.
It doesn't help that most of the new international engines are as thinly-written as the African engine who shall not be named that replaced Edward. There are exceptions, mercifully (the Brazilian electric engine Gustavo isn't horrible and Chinese engine Yong Bao actually has a decent backstory), but the majority of them are rather flat outside of their connection to their home country. As such, the international engines often failed to leave an impact.
I still think it's funny that the Miller era- the worst era of the show, mind you- did a better job with Victor and Hiro than the BWBA seasons did with their ethnic engines. Granted, I already mentioned that Victor and Hiro were characters first and foreign second, but it's a point worth reiterating. The BWBA international engines had no reason to be as shallow as they were other than the fact that Mattel were more focused on scoring brownie points from the press than telling good stories and producing good merch.
The Sodor episodes of BWBA aren't terrible, but thanks to the format change and increase in unrealistic "funny businesss", they're (say it with me now) significantly weaker than what had come before. Many Awdry-original characters were sidelined in favor of those created by Mattel, the HiT era and Miller era nonsense began to creep back in, and some of the absolute worst stories in Thomas history were unleashed upon the world ("Forever and Ever" can go die in a fire for all I care; Gordon had every right to be upset about Edward and Henry leaving Tidmouth Sheds, but NOOOO, he has to be lectured by the African stereotype who replaced Edward about why "cHanGe Is GoOD"). Fortunately, some characters like James and Gordon were kept in character, and others (like Duck or Hiro) got semi-decent send-offs before BWBA's sloppy writing came to taint them.
Eventually, the pressure from Mattel broke Andrew Brenner, and he left Thomas after Season 22. Michael White, another fan-turned-pro like Brenner, took his place as the writer who did lots of RWS callbacks and smartly written stories. I've seen some of White's BWBA episodes, and they're about on par with some of the Brenner era stuff. They're probably the only parts of BWBA I'd actually recommend. Here's a playlist of his work.
Seasons 23 and 24 continued to use the remixed format, each being slightly better than the last. Sure, the "gesturing" was still there, Edward and Henry were so thoroughly downplayed you'd think they were minor characters, and most of the international stuff is still painful to watch because of all its wasted potential and lack of realism, but it was progress. At this point in the series, Thomas was nothing more than a merchandising vehicle for Mattel to sell increasingly gimmicky TrackMaster sets through.
This was especially evident during the final season, which devoted multiple episodes to increasingly gimmicky concepts. These include an anachronistic "invention showcase" that involves a thoroughly modern Shinkansen bullet train named Kenji being brought to Sodor, a dancing robot who was present at the showcase, a car named Cleo made from locomotive parts with cartoony movement capabilities, a "walking bridge" designed to cross a large chasm (the subject of Toby's final spotlight episode, unfortunately), and the engines all wearing animal masks in the final episode for some reason I still don't understand. Admittedly, Kenji's episode saw him bond with Hiro in a sweet manner, but still. Mattel wanted merch money, no matter how much damage it did to the show.
Thomas came to a close with Thomas and the Royal Engine, a Michael White-written special about Thomas and Sir Topham Hatt's voyage to the British mainland to meet the Queen of England and Prince Charles (knowing White, Charles's inclusion must've been an intentional callback to the final book of the RWS). It's definitely not perfect- many CGI assets from past stories are reused in a sloppy manner, the "Thomas doesn't like the new engine" cliche first seen in The Great Discovery is used again, and it still has some of BWBA's narrative trappings. Compared to the shenanigans going on in the show's actual final episode, though, I'd rather have Thomas and Topham meet the Queen again than Thomas screwing around Sodor with an animal mask on his smokebox.
Tragically, Big World! Big Adventures! did more damage to Thomas and Friends than anything before it ever had. The new format alienated preexisting fans and failed to attract new ones, the show's ratings reached new lows even after switching networks from PBS to Nickelodeon to Netflix, the merchandise had hit its absolute nadir, and the entirety of the rebrand had left the show unrecognizable. All this because Mattel wanted to beat PAW Patrol in ratings and toy sales... and none of it worked out the way they had planned.
With the sheer amount of changes made to the show, the increasingly poor ratings, and the lack of Brenner's guiding hand, I honestly don't think Mattel could've salvaged Thomas the more I think about it. The best writer they had left was Michael White, stores were increasingly unwilling to accept new merch due to how much it warmed shelves, and the show's world was all sorts of screwed up thanks to the nonsense introduced during the last BWBA season. As much as I hate to say it...
... a reboot was the best thing Mattel could've done for the series. And that's exactly what they made.
PART 6: Requiem for a Really Useful Engine (All Engines Go!)
In my original Thomas retrospective, I was extremely critical of All Engines Go! (the series's reboot) before it came out for all the reasons the fandom was critical of it. It looked extremely unrealistic in a way that even BWBA would've blushed at, it had an unappealing aesthetic, and it looked as if the series had been dumbed down for the toddlers Mattel was aiming the final seasons of the original series at. However, in the year and a half since then, my opinions on AEG have softened significantly.
Granted, that's not to say it's good. It's still an insult to what the Awdrys, Mitton, and Allcroft set out to do, but it's not the worst children's show ever. All Engines Go! is merely a sometimes better than average preschool show that features characters from Thomas.
The show follows Thomas, Percy, Nia, Diesel and a new electric engine named Kana as they work hard and play around on the Island of Sodor (no longer a peninsula off the coast of Britain in this series, just an island in the middle of nowhere). Not gonna lie, this is actually a good concept for a reboot of Thomas after everything that went wrong with BWBA. Instead of increasingly unrealistic shenanigans around the world, AEG sounds like it'd recenter the series on the daily (mis)adventures of the engines as they work to be really useful.
Unfortunately, the show's concept is compromised by what it retained from BWBA. The engines have reached peak cartooniness, no longer limited by realism or the firmness of their materials. They can bend, stretch, jump, dodge obstacles, move under their own power (no operators needed) and use their wheels like hands or feet. This change in aesthetic feels uncannily like the Mattel executives watched the Cars trilogy and/or Nickelodeon's Blaze and the Monster Machines and thought "yeah, that's exactly what our Thomas reboot should be like".
Keep in mind, one of the main reasons why the RWS and pre-BWBA Thomas and Friends worked was because the writers acknowledged the engines were big pieces of machinery that had realistic limitations. Thomas couldn't just hop off their rails to avoid crashing into a stationmaster's house or stretch himself out to stop some runaway trucks; he had to obey the laws of physics and the control of his driver (or lack thereof, in the stationmaster's house incident's case) Come to think of it, many of Thomas's action sequences work because there was such a real sense of danger to a runaway train, and a lot of that danger evaporates once you turn the characters into bouncy, stretchy cartoon locos that can just hop over/around incoming danger.
Legacy characters like Gordon, James, Emily and especially Edward and Henry are pushed off to the side in favor of letting the new engines shine. Gordon's been straightened out, stripped of his pompousness in favor of being a father figure to our main quintet. James has lost some of his pride, although not nearly as much as Gordon- he still considers himself quite handsome. Diesel is once again reduced to a stock bully as he was in the HiT, Miller and BWBA seasons. Emily didn't even speak for most of AEG's first season, and Edward and Henry have been reduced to background characters with no dialogue whatsoever.
The nicest thing I can say AEG did with its characters is that Nia finally has a character outside of being African. She's revealed to love music and nature here, traits that could've easily made her better in the original series. Thomas and Percy still feel somewhat like themselves, albeit being more childlike than the fussy young engines they were in the original series (so basically their HiT era characterizations without Percy being a moron). The same can be said for Cranky, who somehow feels almost identical to his original series characterization. I guess it's really hard to screw up a grump like him.
The AEG-original characters aren't half-bad. Kana is an energetic electric engine (methinks she would've been in Japan-centric episodes of BWBA had the original show continued; this is supported by the fact Hiro and Kenji are pretty prominent in AEG and its accompanying merchandise), Sandy is a sweet railway speeder who sometimes gets way in over her head (she's my favorite of the AEG originals), and Carly, despite being based on the crane introduced in the original show as a partner to Cranky, has been reinvented as a rail-based crane engine who helps repair new engines. While Carly's not a new character, the amount of alterations made to her character and design pretty much made her into one.
For the most part, AEG is mostly kiddie fluff. The most offensive thing about it is that it keeps most of the exaggerated absurdity from BWBA, but if you're able to separate it from the context of The Railway Series and Thomas and Friends, it's actually more than okay. However, All Engines Go still has Thomas's name attached to it.
And that's its biggest problem. It's a Thomas show that feels almost nothing like the general audience's perception of Thomas was.
I get that Mattel wanted to move on from the original series. I'm okay with that; the show was in pretty bad shape by the time they were done with it. Heck, I'd argue that the merchandise they're putting out now is better than anything they'd put out from 2014-2020. At least the characters actually look like they do in the current show instead of looking unfinished or cheap.
But for all they've done to "fix" Thomas and Friends, Mattel has stripped it of its heart and soul. All that remains is a hollow replica of the original series, one that prioritizes exaggerated spectacle over calm realism and attention-grabbing wackiness over subtle, smart humor. They've taken charming railway stories intended by a caring reverend to cheer up his ailing son and injected them with cold, corporate sterility, leaving Thomas as a husk of the really useful franchise it once was.
"Once the Americans get ahold of [Thomas], the whole series would be vulgarized and ruined."
Reverend Wilbert Vere Awdry, 1974
PART 7: The Unlikely Fandom
If you've made it to this point in the article, congratulations. My writing must've enthralled you to the point where you read through all my ramblings about a beloved children's book series, a beloved children's TV series, and what ultimately killed said TV series. With most of the talk about the books and show out of the way, let's talk about the fandom.
The Thomas fandom is one of the more unique fandoms in the world. Nowhere else will you find people dedicated to telling new stories (and fixing old ones that didn't work the first time), adapting RWS tales left untouched by the original TV series, creating models both show-accurate and realistic, reviewing merchandise new and old, recreating Mike and Junior's music in new forms, and spending absurd amounts of time creating video essays about the source material. To say it's impressive would be an understatement.
To say it's misunderstood and overlooked would also be an understatement.
Despite the fact we live in a world where it's okay to like things like Star Wars, Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Star Trek, The Muppets, Transformers, Disney's empire of animated films, or even My Little Pony as an adult, the second you as an adult say you're a Thomas fan, you're going to be looked at like something's wrong with you. Most people who hear that there's a huge adult Thomas fandom and that you're part of it tend to react with bewilderment at best or belittling at worst. It's such a strange form of hypocrisy.
If it's socially acceptable to like a show about Technicolor talking horses, unicorns and alicorns (unicorns with wings) that teaches about friendship and promotes an accompanying toyline as an adult, then I see no reason as to why liking a series that shows the realistic day-to-day lives of steam engines who happen to be alive shouldn't also be acceptable. Just because it's meant for children doesn't mean that you can't appreciate its quality as an adult. Clive Staples Lewis put it like this:
"Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development.When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
What Lewis said here amounts to "being concerned about looking childish is ironically quite childish and being 'adult' doesn't mean that you have to leave the stories you grew up with behind." And that's something I believe the Thomas fandom has embraced. They don't care how sentimental about a fictitious tank engine and his friends they may seem to the world; they're unabashed about their love for the series and have channeled that love into everything they do.
Many Thomas fans (including myself) are on the autism spectrum. Autistic children can easily be overwhelmed by all the other hectic, chaotic, and loud shows aimed at non-autistic children. Thomas and Friends (at least, Seasons 1-7 and Seasons 17-21 minus "A Shed For Edward") is a welcome respite from all that noise, what with its laidback tone, clear expressions (helpful for people who struggle to read emotions), and general realism. Not all people on the spectrum are fans of the show (if you've met one of us, you've met one of us), but those of us who grew up with it are definitely better people for it.
In the wake of the BWBA rebrand and later AEG being announced, the fandom responded with rightful fury and decided to start making material that actively challenged the show in its current state. New stories were told. Old stories that weren't up to snuff were given rewrites, and unadapted Awdry-penned stories were retold in new formats. Models both show-accurate and realistic were made. Music was recomposed, often with beautiful results. If Mattel wasn't going to respect Thomas, the fandom knew they had to do so instead.
At this point, I'd argue the spirit of Thomas and Friends is kept alive by fan content more than it is by All Engines Go and the company that produced it. It sounds corny as all get out, but it's true. What Thomas has become doesn't take away from the cheeky little tank engine we once knew and loved or still know and love today. It never will. Some of us have never really left that "land where dreams come true" an old reverend, his son, a special-effects director, an aspiring young woman, and many, many others helped bring to life.
"Sadly, Mattel now has control of Thomas and there is nothing I can do. I totally understand your feelings [about All Engines Go]. Keep loving the Thomas that I brought to life for you and was faithful to the true Thomas as we know and love him and all his friends...
... there is only one Thomas and he is a little blue tank engine and not a human being. It is all our imaginations that bring him and his friends to life in the way we know and love and that I brought to life with the blessing of Wilbert and, importantly, his wife Margaret."
Britt Allcroft, 2021
CONCLUSION: Thomas, We Love You
Well, here we are again. The end of a long-winded and detailed article about a series of children's books and a British children's series about sentient locomotives. And what a ride it's been.
Before you get off this train of my nostalgia and continue going about your daily business, let me tell you my story about what made me love Thomas in the first place. It began sometime in my toddler years when my maternal great-grandmother gifted me a Take Along model of Edward. My mother claims that my great-grandmother believed that I would love it.
She was right.
I soon after became a Thomas fanatic, assembling a massive merchandise collection (Wooden Railway, Take Along, and TOMY/TrackMaster) and gathering DVD after DVD. My artistic career began with sketch after sketch of each engine- rather simplistic renderings in hindsight, but hey. We all have to start from somewhere. I watched the show from Seasons 1-11 almost religiously.
The CGI shift was rather jarring for me, but I only caught a few glimpses of Season 12 before moving onto bigger and better things (i.e. Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon back when both of those channels were thriving). However, that's not to say I completely abandoned Thomas. I kept an eye on it, occasionally checking in to see what the show was up to. Notably, 2012 me spend an exorbitant amount of money on Wooden Railway versions of Miller era characters like Hiro, Victor, Kevin, Flynn the road-rail fire engine, Belle, Scruff, and the infamous Logging Locos without knowing who those characters really were.
I was not a terribly discerning kid back then. At least I got Hiro and Victor out of that purchase!
I picked up a few more Wooden Railway engines over the next few years, ending my collection with Paxton and a "Day Out With Thomas" cargo car in 2015. This was also around the time I started noticing the Brenner era being pretty good in comparison to what directly preceded it. The inclusion of Mike and the other Arlesdale engines was a particular surprise to me, as years prior I had been gifted a Take Along rendition of the character. I had no idea where he came from for years, and then the show brought him, Rex and Bert into the show and I was overjoyed.
(Similarly, I had no idea who Culdee was after getting a Wooden Railway version of him, but sadly the stories of him and the other Mountain Engines have remained unadapted to this day)
Unfortunately, just as I was getting back into Thomas, the big BWBA rebrand went into effect. The sheer amount of changes made (writing out Edward and Henry, the gesturing, the HiT/Miller era-ish nonsense) frustrated me, and as such I went back to watching the show from a distance. It wasn't until late 2020, in the wake of All Engines Go being announced (which upset me greatly) and during a worldwide pandemic, that I rekindled my love for the franchise.
I watched a few old episodes for nostalgia's sake, relistened to some of Mike and Junior's songs, and watched those Season 20 episodes with Mike, Rex and Bert in them. However, everything changed when I came across an hour-long video essay on everything that went wrong with BWBA. Not only was it surprisingly funny, but it was insightful, encouraging and heartfelt. It wasn't just sixty minutes of an emotionally stunted manchild screaming about how Mattel "ruined his childhood"; it was a well-thought out and organized critique of Seasons 22-24 that also proposed how the show could've been salvaged.
From there on out, I found myself thinking about Thomas again. I started digging into the backlog of Brenner era episodes I missed out, I became an avid scholar of The Railway Series and the TV series's histories, and I found myself revisiting the first seven seasons through a different lens- that is, watching them with the UK narration. The franchise became a comfort to me amidst all the chaos in the world over the last few years.
Notably, my reawakened interest in Thomas led to me redesigning the characters in a semi-realistic manner as part of what I like to call "The New Railway Series". It started with a simple drawing of Thomas based on the Reverend's model of him, and soon I started redesigning everyone. I've reimagined the RWS's eight famous engines (Thomas, Edward, Henry, Gordon, James, Percy, Toby and Duck), the Scottish Twins (casting Donald in TV series black and Douglas in RWS Caledonian blue), Oliver and Emily, the Skarloey and Arlesdale engines, many of the side characters, and even some of the TUGS boats. These redesigns are meant to inhabit my own personal take on the franchise, one that amalgamates the Railway Series, Seasons 1-7 and 17-21 of the television series, and some of the best elements of the show's weakest eras (that being Seasons 8-16 and BWBA).
I am so, SO grateful to God for introducing me to this wonderful series when I was a young lad. I'm willing to bet that He put it there to shape much of my character and creativity. It's been a wild ride looking back on everything this cheeky little engine has taught me and shown me...
... so thank you for going with me. Thank you for reading. God bless!
Graphics designer ,social media marketer,Fiverr Affialate programmer ,Canva expert,freelancer expert
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