Adventures into the Past 3: Thomas on TV / Is It Nostalgic Bias?

I’m talking about Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends again. A comfort series in hell-times. In the previous post on those anthropomorphic locomotives, I talked about how much the series meant to me as a child and why I still find its earlier incarnations – namely the original books written by Rev. W. Awdry and the first five seasons of the television series adaptation – to be of decent-to-good quality as an AH-dult.

Likely any work of media, the world of Thomas the Tank Engine has several fans young and old, and the fanbase has many differing opinions of the quality of certain aspects of the franchise. If I am to ever talk about Thomas and his engine friends, you won’t hear me weigh in on anything about the show post-2002, which is where I kind of dropped off. I have seen a scattered handful of episodes from subsequent seasons, and with that stuff, I’m kind of between an “I haven’t seen much of this stuff to form a firm opinion” stance and a “what I have seen isn’t really to my liking” viewpoint. There are Thomas fans who still stick to the show in its post-2000 incarnation (when show creator Britt Allcroft was kicked off of the franchise after the flopping of the theatrical feature Thomas and the Magic Railroad), even the current seasons which are rendered in CGI. Others? They don’t like the CGI stuff, and some don’t like the post-Allcroft seasons of the show altogether.

In my previous post on Thomas, I skimmed over the first five seasons and their respective strengths and weaknesses. In this post, I want to break them down and look at the individual nuts n’ bolts of each… After all, these five seasons were pivotal in my childhood and I keep coming back to them because they do happen to hold up for a children’s show, but some of them are certainly not without their flaws, so… With my country still in trouble and little going on, I figured, “Hey, I’ll talk some more about Thomas!” And probably more about BIONICLE, various video games, etc.

Series One debuted on ITV in the UK in fall 1984, and it was narrated by none other than former Beatle Ringo Starr. The Beatles and I also go way back, and 5-year-old me was shocked to learn that that voice was one of those guys. This season is probably the most faithful to the books… To a tee. This is probably because the early Awdry stories were the easiest to translate. These were stories that operated off of some real life railway incidents, and were often tied to an old-fashioned moral or two. Character introductions, engines acting up and getting their comeuppances, simple little tales of railway incidents and near-mundane adventures. Series One ended with a Christmas special, but the last proper episode is ‘Down the Mine’, adapted from the book Gordon the Big Engine, which was originally published in 1953. In the publication history, this was two years before the introduction of the narrow gauge engines of the Skarloey Railway, and one year before the concept of anthropomorphic locomotives being scrapped was brought up in Edward the Blue Engine… Britt Allcroft and her team perhaps got all the easiest stories out of the way at this time.

As such, Series One is without any hiccups. Stakes are muted, and few major accidents occur. Thomas throttles into a snowbank, and later down a not-so-steep mine, Gordon slinks into a ditch. James collides with a bunch of tar wagons. Henry gets the roughest crash in ‘The Flying Kipper’, the best episode of the first season and a series highlight. Perhaps the most effective arc here is Toby’s, in his introductory episode ‘Toby and the Stout Gentleman’. There is an undercurrent of melancholy throughout this story, as it – in 4 1/2 minutes – details the slow decline of his faraway railway. Business wanes, as do the amounts of passengers he and his coach Henrietta transported. Toby was introduced in his self-titled volume in 1951, published near the time the British Railway enacted their modernization plan, which in some cases lead to the scrapping of some steam locomotives. That’s strongly hinted at when Toby’s railway is to be closed down, but just the sheer loneliness and having no locals to take around makes for a surprisingly sad episode, right up there with ‘Coal’. Henry’s arc concerns his weak mechanics, and how they may impact his longevity. He is then given an expensive special Welsh coal, which gives him the power to pull the Flying Kipper. After the accident, he gets a rebuild and all is well again. The arc is finished off in a story where Gordon ridicules Henry for his cheerful whistling but has his own whistle malfunction that knocks him down a peg, later leading to an incident where boys on a bridge pelt Henry’s passenger coaches with stones, to which Henry pays them back with a sooty sneeze.

Other than that, these particular stories are fun and breezy, though not necessarily spectacular in any way. They get by on the visuals and the catchy musical score, and through Ringo Starr’s charming narration and the occasional humorous bits. The original stories and these adaptations make mundane situations engaging and fun, which is hard – I believe – for any writer to pull off. Simple pleasures and joys sometimes make for a neat alternative to something more action-packed, and what pulls the weight are really… Well… Those characters. There’s nothing wrong with a story about characters just existing and the day-to-day things that happen to them, so long as it’s all interesting. High-caliber children’s television? Yes. Call me nuts, but I think it’s almost like a TV show equivalent of a Beach Boys album like Friends, or the similar Kinks album The Kinks are The Village Green Preservation Society. Albums, both of which were released in 1968, that bask in simple community pleasures of a place and period. The latter album even has a song about the end of the steam engine use, which the British Railway put into effect that same year. The early Awdry stories and these adaptations similarly emphasize the fun of trains coming and going, and the little tasks that need to be done on Sodor’s railway, and how those tasks sometimes lead to little adventures. Subtly an “every day is an adventure” kind of mood. This made it contrast nicely with not only the rest of children’s television in the mid 1980s, but also with the Saturday morning cartoon scene that was littered with shows that were merely commercials for toy lines.

Series Two aired in fall 1986, and Ringo Starr returned to narrate this new set of stories. This season starts to lock into the juicier books of the original Rev. W. Awdry run, and even does some skipping ahead. Series Two is indeed a high point for the TV series, but it is strangely a little inconsistent and flawed. What some fans complain about in the following three seasons, arguably, could be traced back to Series Two… Is this what the cool people call a “hot take”? I have a hot take on a children’s show about talking steam locomotives?

Chronologically, this season is all over the place. Britt Allcroft and the producers of the show tasked Christopher Awdry, who was now handling the authorship of the book series, to write a new set of stories meant specifically for adaptation. This resulted in the 1986 volume More About Thomas the Tank Engine, three of the stories ended up being made into episodes, and two of them feel like filler: ‘Better Late Than Never’ and ‘The Runaway’. Thomas is almost terribly out of character in the former; in one scene he angrily says that a passenger train falling with a collapsed viaduct is a relief from him being late. Imagine! Thomas being okay with passengers falling to their death! The latter repurposes footage from Series One and feels generally uneventful. Even as a kid, these episodes never stuck with me. The third story that got adapted, ‘Thomas, Percy, and the Coal’, fares a lot better but isn’t among the better episodes of the second season. The fourth, untouched story, ‘Drip Tank’, was supposed to bring the small coal-related argument between Thomas and Percy to a close, leaving the televised ‘Thomas, Percy, and the Coal’ adaptation to feel a bit rushed.

Most of the stories are adapted wonderfully, though, and each episode is aesthetically pleasing. A more grimy, almost working environment sort of look is integrated into the series, balancing out the colorful pastoral imagery of the first season. There are new facial expressions, great crashes, and lots of imaginatively-shot sequences. Ringo Starr is much more in-tune with the material and gives it his all. Junior Campbell and Mike O’Donnell’s new score music adds more flavor to the series, and I think the synth-drenched sounds actually suit the stories they’re telling. One can only imagine how this series would feel if the score actually reflected the years these books were written in: Standard post-war 1940s/early 1950s instrumental music in the first and second season wouldn’t be that bad of a fit, honestly.

Since the crew weren’t ready to adapt the narrow gauge engine stories, skips are made. Series Two has stories spanning volumes published from 1954 to 1972, including the aforementioned 1986 volume that Christopher hastily threw together. Since Awdry’s books were timeless and sort of avoided pop culture, there’s a consistency to these filmed episodes. However, unlike most of Series One, sometimes they’d adapt a book, but not all of the stories, leaving some gaps that become noticeable after you read said books. Duck and the Diesel Engine (1958), for example, opens with a story called ‘Domeless Engines’. In ‘Domeless Engines’, a visitor from the Great Western Railway named City Of Truro comes to the Island of Sodor, and Duck – being Great Western himself – gets cocky because of it. This spills over into the next story, ‘Pop Goes the Diesel’. Allcroft and crew adapted ‘Pop Goes the Diesel’, but not ‘Domeless Engines’, leaving out any legitimate reason as to why Duck would talk endlessly about how he’s Great Western at the beginning of that story. This said, it isn’t that much of a loss, as it doesn’t entirely effect the overall story and the two that come after it: ‘Dirty Work’ and ‘A Close Shave’, both of which focus on Duck being the victim of a visiting diesel’s pettiness.

‘Percy Takes the Plunge’ similarly begins with Percy recounting the events of a story called ‘Percy’s Promise’, which the crew did not adapt for Series Two. Percy was telling random Other Railway engines this story in the original book version (from Percy the Small Engine, 1956), and thus models had to be built for these engines whom would never appear again. Allcroft and crew solved the problem by just using Bill and Ben. Bill and Ben were introduced in the 1966 book Main Line Engines, and the adaptations of three of those stories are among the last episodes of Series Two. In ‘Percy Takes the Plunge’, these two little mustard-yellow twin engines are stand-ins for the Other Railway steam engines Percy briefly talks to. Henry arrives and tells the engines to go away, because they are not the Fat Controller’s engines… Yet Bill and Ben are… When they are properly introduced in their debut story. Published ten years after this story… Definitely confusing to kid me, especially considering that ‘Percy’s Promise’ was adapted five years and one season later! (For another wrench in the gear, it is speculated that ‘Percy Takes the Plunge’ was hastily filmed as a replacement for a scrapped episode. We’ll get to that in a jiffy.)

Without reading the books or knowing the order of the stories in the book series, this can be confusing to anyone casually watching the show, unless you pretend that ‘Percy’s Promise’ is a flashback episode.

However, this sort of “pick and choose” stuff is a little more egregious with the Donald and Douglas storyline. Their introductory book, The Twin Engines (1960), is the usual four stories. In story one, they are brought to the island, though The Fat Controller ordered one engine. Story two – ‘The Missing Coach’ – focuses on the two twins swapping their numbered tenders in order to stay on the island. ‘The Missing Coach’ was originally filmed for season two, but then the crew decided against it, determining that the storyline – lifted directly from a children’s book series – would be too confusing for children. Everything that occurs in those first two stories is compacted, thus begins their first TV episode – ‘Break Van’, story #3 in the 1960 book – with a few lines explaining that the twins “caused confusion”, and that The Fat Controller had only ordered one engine and was considering sending one back to Scotland. While not derailing the story completely, one can only imagine what ‘The Missing Coach’ could’ve added to the series’ adaptation, for it showed just how determined the twins were to keep themselves on The Fat Controller’s railway. Of course, they were both avoiding… Being sent back to Scotland, where they will be scrapped. This also adds to Douglas has a recurring fear of scrap.

There are multiple fan reconstructions of ‘The Missing Coach’ that use plenty of recently-unearthed material, such as behind-the-scenes photos from the filming of the episode (one of which is pictured above), and the stock footage that made it into ‘Break Van’. You have to admire the dedication the fans put into this stuff, let alone their endless treasure hunt for the pieces. I’m no different with my passions, for sure.

Yet despite the little adaptation issues, Series Two remains a robust season of the show and a long-time fan-favorite.

Series Three is where things get… A little rough…

With the success of the first two seasons behind them, the producers now wanted to bring the series and characters to a North American audience. The Railway Series seems to have had no impact in the US over the course of five decades, but the TV show adaptation would change that.

Allcroft and an American producer named Rick Siggelkow decided to create a TV show that would introduce Americans to Thomas and his anthropomorphic locomotive friends, a live-action show centered around a train station and the shenanigans that went on there. The kid protagonists often spoke with “Mr. Conductor”, a miniature person who would relate the episode’s happenings with one of the Thomas stories. Ringo Starr reprised his role as narrator and played Mr. Conductor, with narration tracks altered for American viewers. (Including changes in British railway jargon, and calling the Fat Controller “Sir Topham Hatt”.) With a blow of a whistle, the story would begin. Basically, Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends became a “show within a show”. The main show was called Shining Time Station, which began airing in 1989. In no time, the program was a big success, and Thomas merchandise was already flying off shelves in the United States. Series Three, after work was done on other shows, was geared for both UK fans and newcomer American viewers seeing Thomas through a PBS show about kids visiting their local train station.

For the new UK series season, Allcroft and the crew chose to adapt enough of the Awdry stories, and pad out the rest of the season with their own stories and tales adapted from the annuals, which no doubt made Awdry very cross. To play Devil’s advocate, some of the “original” episodes actually aren’t bad, while some of the adaptation episodes are the ones that actually suffer the most this season. New stories were cooked up because the producers, very simply, wanted more Thomas in Thomas the Tank Engine. It’s odd to think now, but The Railway Series didn’t quite have a main character. Thomas wasn’t even in the first book in the series, but he undoubtedly became one of the series’ most popular characters. Even before the TV show went into production, annuals weren’t called “The Railway Series Annual”, but rather “Thomas the Tank Engine Annual”. As such, the TV show made Thomas the main character, with the adaptation of his introductory story being the first episode of the series. The producers saw to it that Series Three had plenty of Thomas to go around…

Before I go over the original stories, I want to highlight some of the inconsistent adaptations of Series Three. So, let’s get the downfalls out of the way. In 1963, Awdry completed the volume Stepney the “Bluebell” Engine, the first book in the series to truly dive into the horrors of engines being scrapped. One story in the book even has an illustration of two steam locomotives grimly awaiting to be cut up and destroyed, Awdry didn’t hold back in his depiction of locomotive destruction. People often talk about how Henry being bricked up in the tunnel traumatized them, it is nothing compared to this volume. There is some serious emotional resonance too, Percy openly cries when talking about how the engines on “The Other Railway” – the books’ labelling of railways that aren’t Sodor, which gives them something of a mysterious, almost ominous aura – are scrapped. The production team skipped this book entirely, even though it wasn’t completely out of reach. Five years later, in 1968, the year the British Railway officially abolished the use of steam engines, Awdry wrote perhaps the definitive book about engines and scrap: Enterprising Engines. Season Three adapts three of its four stories, and… Hoo boy.

Enterprising Engines began with ‘Tenders for Henry’, a story where Gordon learns that the British Railway has finally abolished steam, in keeping with current events. Lamenting that his Doncaster brothers were all destroyed in mainland England, he is depressed. The Fat Controller then surprises him the next day, bringing The Flying Scotsman, the sole survivor of Gordon’s engine class – and a legendary real-life steam engine, to Sodor. He arrives with two tenders, one for coal and one for water due to the small number of stops where he’s from. Henry then gets jealous of the legendary visitor having two tenders, so Duck – ending the story on a lighter note – sends him up and gives him seven dirty, sludgy tenders as a prank.

Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends‘ adaptation, ‘Tender Engines’, pretty much – ahem – scraps the whole scrap aspect. Gordon is teased in the first half of the episode for having “boiler ache”, and then sees the two tenders of The Flying Scotsman. He doesn’t even know who the Flying Scotsman is in the adaptation, and that’s all we ever see of the legendary locomotive… Apparently budgetary concerns kept them from building the full model, thus we only see his tenders. Wai-what? Anyways, Gordon says he wants to have two tenders so that he won’t have to make stops and listen to annoying little engines. Umm… Ok? Diesel briefly and randomly shows up (even though he was sent away for good in the books, he is a recurring character in the TV series by this point) and talks about how diesels are taking over railways. Then Gordon is sad about that, then talks to the Fat Controller about what Diesel said and the visitor having two tenders… Then it proceeds to go to the part where Duck hooks Henry up with dirty tenders. So yes, they pretty much butchered that story… All the meaning, gone. Everything about the British Railway scrapping steam the year the book was published, and the importance of preservation, muted or dialed back considerably.

I’m going to be a little bit fair here. After all, ‘Tender Engines’ first aired in 1992. 1992 was twenty-four years after the British Railway abolished steam, so perhaps the producers didn’t feel that this aspect would have any significance anymore? I understand not having the budget to complete the model of the Flying Scotsman, but my question is… Why film this story anyways? No Flying Scotsman, no point, he is the heart of that story. Series 3 was actually filmed in two sections, and its release was oddly staggered. ‘Tender Engines’ hails from the second portion of Series 3, and the second portion episodes are noticeably lower-budget. With this in mind, it makes sense that they couldn’t finish the model for the Flying Scotsman. There were some rumors that the model accidentally got damaged, but who knows. When I was little, I had gotten a toy of the Flying Scotsman character first, and then I saw the episode… You could imagine how disappointed I was that they only showed the two tenders…

‘Escape’, from the same book, fares a lot better and is much closer to its 1968 counterpart, though the mystique of “The Other Railway” is gone. Instead, the location of Oliver and Toad (the engine and van that Douglas rescues from being scrapped) is changed to a faraway part of Sodor “where only the diesels work.” The episode thankfully doesn’t lose the effectiveness of the book version, and is staged and pulled off very nicely, with an epic score to boot. The final story of Enterprising Engines – ‘Little Western’ – is briefly integrated into the end of the episode.

Series Three adapts stories published from 1956 to annuals published as late as 1990. It goes back and adapts stories that Series Two skipped, ones connected to stories that Series Two had, such as the aforementioned ‘Percy’s Promise’ and ‘Domeless Engines’, with the writers giving them new context. All of Main Line Engines (1966) save for ‘Buzz Buzz’ was adapted into Series Two, ‘Buzz Buzz’ was adapted for Series Three. Like Series Two, this season avoids certain stories because new models would have to be built. ‘Super Rescue’ from Enterprising Engines was skipped completely, as it was about two big diesels, D199 and D7101/Bear, the former of which was sent away much like “Devious” Diesel was. More models to be built, but less budget to spend. The 1968-1969 stories are tweaked to leave out the Small Railway Engines and any mention of them, who were introduced in the 1967 book of the same name. Those little changes are fine.

Series Three’s original stories are surprisingly not half bad, and they attempt to stay in line with Awdry’s originals, even though the eldest Awdry balked at them and their unrealistic depictions of railway operations. Whatever qualms Awdry may have had about ‘Henry’s Forest’, I quite like the episode for its theme of conservation and its pretty imagery. Other episodes definitely feel like an excuse to have more Thomas, but they’re harmless to say the least. ‘All At Sea’ and episodes like that have random scenarios, but they don’t feel too far removed from what happens in the books proper, and if anything, they just exist to show off the marvelous sets that they crafted for the show. Seriously, ‘All At Sea’, ‘Thomas, Percy and the Post Train’, and several others are just eye candy. Those stories were always comforting for me. Some are just plain random, like ‘Thomas, Percy and the Dragon’ (a follow-up to ‘Ghost Train’, adapted for Series Two) and ‘No Joke for James’. Bill and Ben get more time to shine with episodes written specifically for them. Being childish troublemaker types, it makes sense that the producers wanted more of them. Diesel, who was sent away for good in the books, returns so the series could have a recurring antagonist. After all, why build a model for a character and never use it again? (Though Allcroft and crew didn’t bring back other one-time faces, such as a green bully diesel in Series 4.)

While Series Three is pretty to look at and half of the stories are enjoyable, something about it feels very sugary. The rather ominous synths of Series Two are traded for jauntier sounding tunes, xylophone-laden cutesy little scores that can be a little cheesy. Combined with the bright colors, and the new and cuter facial expressions, the third season feels a little overtly kid-friendly, more so than the balanced first two seasons. Series Three introduced a new narrator, the late Michael Angelis, who is just wonderful. I can listen to him talk all day. It’s a shame few outside of England know who he is, because he had such a soothing, reassuring voice. His narrations never made it to the states on video or on television. George Carlin took over narration duties in the states, and his soft delivery suits the stories as well, a fine contrast to his often hilariously scathing stand-up. The kind of stand-up that is still upsettingly relevant these days. No issue with the narration, both British and American. Upon hearing Angelis’ narration for the first time a decade ago via YouTube uploads, I had NO idea what I had been missing my whole life.

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Three years later, Series Four began airing in the UK. This was when Thomas moved from ITV, to Cartoon Network… Of all places! In the US, Shining Time Station – still on PBS – slowly began to wane, so Thomas & Friends would eventually be told through other TV shows or through the videocassette compilations released over the years. Series Four appeared to have had quite the budget, because there are several new sets and engines and rolling stock… Allcroft and crew finally started to adapt the Skarloey Railway stories, which took place on a railway using narrow-gauge engines. Engines that were significantly smaller than the main steamers. A few little changes were made, but these stories were overall left unscathed and their adaptations are top-notch… And again, the season is gorgeous to look at.

The crew also adapted random stories that didn’t make the cut earlier, some of which date all the way back to the early 1950s. ‘Henry and the Elephant’, for example, comes from the book that introduced Percy… The other three stories in that book were adapted for Series One, but the elephant story was left out, probably because they had to have designed rolling stock for the circus (using up budget, of course) and had to figure out how to integrate a toy elephant onto the set. They even take a crack at Stepney the “Bluebell” Engine, but mostly reduce the titular character’s introduction to a knock-off of ‘Escape’ where Rusty travels to the Other Railway to save him from scrap. Where Series Four succeeds most is in its adaptations of the narrow gauge engine stories. All are charming and visually gorgeous, never too cloying or cutesy. They finally started adapting some of the other Christopher Awdry books too, with satisfying results.

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Jump ahead another few years, we get to Series Five. Rev. W. Awdry passed away in 1997, and the producers saw it necessary to stop adapting the books altogether, even Christopher’s books. Series Five would be all-original stories, with new characters and new settings to boot. Since Allcroft was still there and at the helm, she still made sure that this season lined up with what came before. As I mentioned in my previous piece on this series, Series Five went an action-packed route. There were spectacular crashes, and improbable happenings that would make even the stupidest moments of the Fast & Furious films blush. No episode sums up Series Five better than ‘Rusty and the Boulder’, where a supernatural boulder (with a frowning face, no less) freely comes off of a cliff and chases various engines around, until colliding straight into a building and causing an explosion. No, I did not make that up. I’m not thinking of the moon from Majora’s Mask. As a whole, though… The crashy episodes – such as ‘Rusty and the Boulder’, ‘Duncan Gets Spooked’, and ‘Busy Going Backwards’ – are a lot of fun, the ‘Stepney Gets Lost’ episode is surprisingly intense (the character is nearly hoisted by a claw that will take him to a smelter), but many of the others are merely just okay, not dissimilar to the ho-hum Series 3 & 4 entries.

My final run with Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends was with a handful of Series Six episodes, which were released in 2002. I was turning ten at the time, and it was perhaps unusual for someone in fifth grade to be gung-ho about Thomas, even in secret. I slowly moved away from the anthropomorphic engines, and looking back on this season, it’s a bit easy to see why. It feels like a watered down version of Series Five, and it’s just kind of cloying and dull despite a few standout episodes and moments. Britt Allcroft was fired from the show following the disastrous box office performance of Thomas and the Magic Railroad two years prior, and I think there is a definite change in direction at play here. I checked out some post-Series Six episodes years and years later, and I had similar feelings about them. Just kinda… Eh? It wasn’t for me…

Before I go on, I’ll just say that I don’t understand why they just didn’t adapt the rest of the Awdry stories that weren’t touched. Several Awdry stories and characters – from both Wilbert and Christopher – could’ve been introduced in lieu of their own characters that they brought forth during Series 5 & 6 (characters like Derek, Cranky, Elizabeth, Salty, Harvey, etc.), but it seemed like after Awdry’s death, the producers wanted nothing to do with those stories. Apparently they had a falling out with the family. I still find it so unusual that Series 5 was entirely original stories, even from Britt Allcroft, who herself fell in love with the original Awdry stories way back in 1979. Was she offended by the elder Awdry’s fiery criticism of the Series 3 original stories? Was Series 5 nothing but original stories because of a bit of animosity between the two that was never resolved? Why did Christopher have no say? As a kid, I often wondered why certain characters appeared in Thomas toy catalogues, but never in the show. Who was Culdee? Who was Neil? Who was Diesel D199? Who was Ivo Hugh? Series 5 and 6 could’ve introduced these characters, but didn’t. Surprisingly, a 2015 special finally brought in three characters from an Awdry book that were never before seen in the show (small railway engines Mike, Bert, and Rex), but of course… I never saw it. I’m largely unfamiliar with screen Thomas post-2002, but I do appreciate that effort. For the most part, it seems the current iteration of the show just avoids the original books.

I get it, in a way. Thomas is now a huge franchise, Mattel owns it these days, and it’s probably assumed that today’s kids don’t want the stories that celebrated simple pleasures and the ins-and-outs of railways. Thus you get fantastical plots with dinosaurs and pirates and such. I don’t have a problem with the series being done in CGI now, as full animation allows the engines to talk instead of a narrator doing it for them. Plus, with CG, they don’t have to build more and more physical models of characters they don’t plan to use again. This would actually give them an opportunity to integrate characters from the Awdry books whom never appeared in the TV series (I’d maybe check out a CG episode featuring, say, D199 and D7101 from Enterprising Engines). But that doesn’t seem to be a game plan, so it is what it is. There are multiple fans who see merits in the post-Allcroft version of the show, and all the CG episodes/specials. I think that’s very cool, they can see beyond the originals and embrace the new.

I often advocate for not letting nostalgia blind you, no matter what it’s about. For example? I don’t love every ’90s cartoon, and I love plenty of current cartoons. Plenty of reboots of older things have been good, others have been unsatisfactory. A time period does not define the quality of a work in any given medium. I know a lot of people my age tend to gravitate towards what they grew up on, but not me. Quality is very much the draw, not the age of it.

Thomas is an exception, though. For me personally, the original Railway Series books by the Awdrys (which I never read as a child, mind you), and the early seasons of the TV show are where it’s at. While I think it’s cool that the TV series has lots to do beyond the books and new faces to introduce, I just don’t really care for what I’ve seen of it. I doubt it is nostalgia, because I grew up with Series 5, and a lot of that series – when it’s not gleefully destroying sets and vehicles – is merely adequate to me nowadays. I was technically still a kid when Series 6 came out, and I don’t think it all really holds up, either. There’s just something kind of treacly about the way the stories, fine as they are as “learn good lessons” tales, are executed. I felt the same when I checked out some post-Series 6 episodes. The majority of what was made afterwards simply is not for me… A case where I like the “old” much better, but that has nothing to do with it being from the 1940s, or the 1980s for that matter. It has nothing to do with the fact that I regularly watched those ’80s and early-to-late ’90s episodes religiously as a child.

I’ll make a couple of comparisons. The latest Crash Bandicoot game, which posits itself as the “true” follow-up to 1998’s Crash Bandicoot: Warped, was a real joy and while it did rely a little too heavily on ’90s Crash nostalgia, there were plenty of new tricks and fantastic elements to spare. But I enjoyed a handful of the Crash games that came out in the 2000s as well, so I was usually open to what they served up. I have next-to-no nostalgia for Star Wars, as I didn’t come into that franchise until well later into my life, so I arguably went into the Sequel Trilogy relatively unbiased, and found the first two entries to be of great quality. I always embrace the newest Disney Animation and Pixar feature. I don’t expect all Pixars to be Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles, and I certainly don’t expect the new Disney animated features to be specifically ’90s. I’m quite critical of Disney animated features, almost across all eras, too. Speaking of Disney, their TV Animation unit’s 2017 reboot of DuckTales – from what I’ve seen of it – is quite good! I’ve also enjoyed what I’ve seen of that studio’s recent shows, and they more than stack up next to ’80s-’90s Disney Afternoon ‘toons, and maybe even surpass them. My dislike of Disney’s live-action/CG reboots of their animated features stems from my love of animation as a medium, not a nostalgic connection to the various movies.

I often talk about how I dislike what nostalgia can become, but I always want to point out that it’s fine in small doses. The problem will always be the over-reliance on it, and using it to shield any old thing from meaningful and healthy criticism, and also using it to downgrade something usually looked down upon as a kiddie thing. With that mindset, how do I explain why I’m generally not fond of what the TV series adaptation of The Railway Series morphed into when I was turning ten? Without sounding like a cave-waving gatekeeper? How do you explain your stance when you might easily get ribbed for being an over-nostalgic dweeb? Well, I hope I just did…