March 2011 saw the twelfth episode of Season 15 of Thomas & Friends...
...but before the review, the usual disclaimer:
The views below are entirely those of the author and not representative of the Sodor Island Forums as a whole.
On that note, it's time to get this review underway..
...The Mist rolling in from the Thames...My desire...is always to be found at...
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Spencer the Grand
Writer: Jessica Sandys-Clarke
It is a very foggy day and the engines are asked to stay put until the weather clears. However, Spencer and Percy do not heed the warning.
Overall Impressions
Trains run in fog, all over the world, almost daily. Line speeds are reduced to cope with the reduced visibility, and drivers are advised to proceed with caution when entering new sections of track.
Great Britain has had, historically, very few major incidents in fog over the course of the life of the railways, though when it has happened, as with the Harrow & Wealdstone crash of 1952, it has come with horrendous damage and loss of life.
The great moral behind driving in fog, be it on rails or on road, is caution, and concentration.
A missed signal could be the difference between life or death.
So it was with some weariness that I watched today's episode, Spencer the Grand. I wondered prior to switching it on, if any research as to how railways actually work around the problems of fog would have happened; would the moral be caution and vigilance, which characters would it focus on, and whether or not we might get an episode out of it that said something morally profound whilst also entertaining its audience.
So it was with some semblance of despair that the extremely cliched (and totally unsuitable) "getting lost in fog" storyline appeared.
How can trains get lost in fog? They run on rails. They know where the rails go prior to rolling along them!
We're not really even talking about a basic understanding of railways. This is a basic understanding of reality. Trains are guided by rails. They are set to run on them.
Rails follow a set route. They don't just up and change at a whim. So if you run along the coastal track, you will run by the coast, and still end up at your destination, whether you can see that far ahead or not.
More and more I wonder if the writing team has ever experienced railway travel. We're fast approaching the degree of logic seen in rival show Chuggington. With the fundamental difference that Chuggington's rather frantic paced and silly storylines make absolutely no attempt to be realistic, and that is why their episodes are fun to a degree. Not intended to look or even be realistic, just to appeal to a young audience with bright colours and lots of stunts.
Arguably, Thomas & Friends needs to go back to its roots and basics in order to put the pretender to the crown back in its place. The older episodes relied on fundamentally good stories, steeped in railway history and practices, told in an emotive fashion and rounded off with brilliant stunts and life lessons all round.
We're never going to go back to the Dirty Objects or A Close Shave style stunts which showed the dangers of a working railway in great detail, but the potential for making the series educational AND entertaining, without making it ludicrous on the scale of Chuggington is there in the CGI.
The storyline today followed the tried, tested, and in my opinion, absolutely failing practice of three attempts at making the same mistake, followed by a final act of "making things right" and everyone whistles, laughs and is happy again.
It's gone beyond reasonable levels of sub standard script writing to just being incredibly predictable and boring. If you've seen one episode this season, you've seen them all, and if my godson of age three knows that, then something IS seriously wrong with the writing in this show.
The usual complaints - alliteration, rhyming, unnecessary exposition and unnatural dialogue - all in spades today, but that wasn't my biggest beef with today's script. It's the cut and paste nature of the whole format.
Spencer as a character is completely interchangeable with Gordon. "I am the best!" replaced with "I am Spencer the grand!" The two engines are simply mirror images of one another. Both brash, both proud, both pompous, both arrogant, and if Season 15 is anything to go by, condescending too.
The thing that was fresh about Spencer when he was originally introduced to the series, was that he was, to all intents and purposes, the "young" Gordon. Gordon as a character by the time of Spencer's introduction had grown beyond his original remit of being big, boastful, and pompous, and it was in that very first episode, Gordon & Spencer, that we fully saw just how far the big blue engine had come, with a silver engine who acted exactly like he used to.
Now, we find that Gordon has reverted to his characterization in the very first series, and Spencer is nothing more than a clone of the big blue engine, only sporting a streamlined casing and silver paintwork to hide his true origins.
That said, today's episode did give me some chuckles. What's that - Simon laughed today?!
Cue the four horses of the apocalypse! It's a sign!
Actually, the voice acting for Spencer, coupled with the perfect expressions of horror from the CGI was very well done in this particular episode. It was to some extent reminiscent of that scene from Wrong Road - "I AM Gordon, STOP STOP!"
You see, the potential for this series to be award winning with what can only be described as a sublime voice cast, and perfect animation, is so within the reach of HiT Entertainment, but the writing just fails this episode - and the rest - so much that it brings the whole thing back to square one with every episode.
The animation today was a case in point. The fog was supremely well done, and the way lights and shadows fell was exemplary. With a storyline carefully constructed to show how a railway copes with fog - and most definitely NOT shutting the whole system down (which would never happen) - the CGI today would have sealed the deal on what had the potential in concept to be a good episode of Thomas & Friends.
Final Conclusions Season 15 has felt, to some extent, like the "filler" season. So many episodes with identical plots, and characters/locations swapped around at will, that you could be forgiven for thinking that the writing in this series is supremely lazy.
We've been told before that there is a significant amount of guidelines in writing new episodes, and that "hands are tied" to some extent as to what can and can't be done - but what is said, and what is being shown currently, do not match up.
Is it self inflicted to some extent? I cannot see how it is not. The same format: the same problems with rhyming and alliteration, the same plots and plot holes, the same twisted concepts of morality that sit uneasily with me.
The more we stay silent on the matter, the longer this format will continue into the future. I look back and read what my partners in crime on this blog have written over the last few years, and the general feeling in 2008 was that the final nail in the coffin of this series was the CGI. This was after years of sub standard writing, starting with HiT Entertainment's first season of Thomas & Friends back in 2004.
Now we're seeing what can be done with stunning visuals and more than decent direction, the whole scene has shifted, and the focus has gone back to being on the writing. After much promise with Hero of the Rails, the thirteenth and fourteenth seasons were not exactly met with critical acclaim, and in Misty Island Rescue, we can perhaps consider that to be the lowest ebb of the writing in the CGI era so far.
That is, until the end of this season. I plan on writing an overview of the entire season after I've finished these reviews, and looking ahead I am not sure that my overview will have many positives in its writing.
Certainly, I will give credit where credit is due, and despite some little niggles I will persist in airing (cough, brakevans, cough!), Greg Tiernan and Nitrogen Studios should be proud of the animation they've provided for this series. So many little nudges and winks to the older series, and the books, that the CGI universe does at times have that Awdry atmosphere.
But the decline in the writing standard means that this supremely beautiful world, created in CGI, will never go up for an award. The ultimate aim for any children's television series is of course to make money: it is a business and no one would expect anything less of it, but the desire to earn the respect of your peers, and perhaps critical acclaim should be top of the agenda.
Perhaps perversely, this is an extremely achievable goal: but only if the quality of writing matches the quality of the animation and direction.
Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, as it used to be known in the 80s and 90s, was nominated twice for a Bafta: once in 1985, and once in 1987.
It lost out to two varieties of cartoon bear: one snow white bear with a ridiculous scarf and jumper combination, and the other to an even more ridiculous red suit and cape with a spotted and rather unconvincing alien sidekick.
It was a travesty of justice that the original series, and those that followed quickly up to the end of the third season, were not recognized for their spectacular storytelling and animation.
Could Thomas & Friends get nominated for a Bafta again? Only if the writing improves, and sadly - looking ahead to the last eight episodes of the season - that doesn't look like it's going to happen for a long time yet.
Individual Episode Score: 2/10 - Gordon and Ferdinand 4/10 - Toby and Bash 3/10 - Emily and Bash 5/10 - Edward The Hero 1/10 - James to the Rescue 2/10 - Happy Hiro 1/10 - Up, Up and Away! 3/10 - Henry's Happy Coal 2/10 - Let It Snow 2/10 - Surprise, Surprise 4/10 - Spencer the Grand
Total Season Score So Far: 30/120
Average Season Score So Far: 2.5/10
Quick Character Stats
Speaking Roles:
Thomas, Spencer, Percy, Whiff, The Fat Controller, Mavis
Cameos:
Gordon, Henry, Edward, James
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