Thomas & Friends (Seasons 1-8, 11, 17-21)

***Thomas & Friends*** (formerly *Thomas The Tank Engine & Friends* and also referred to as *Thomas the Tank Engine*) is a British children's television series. It had its first broadcast on the ITV network in 1984. It is based on *The Railway Series* of books by the Reverend Wilbert Awdry and his son, Christopher Awdry. It started airing in the United States through Shining Time Station on January 1989.

## Plot

These books follow the adventures of a group of anthropomorphized locomotives and road vehicles who live on the fictional Island of Sodor. The books were based on stories Wilbert told to entertain his son, Christopher, during his recovery from measles in World War II. Many of the stories from the first four seasons are based on real life events from Awdry's personal experiences.

## Why It Rocks

1. The earlier episodes are faithful to the original *Railway Series* books and the original stories are also fun to watch (for example: "Thomas and Bertie").
2. The idea of talking railway engines is a really cool idea, and feels realistic (as you can tell by The Railway Series).
3. A large variety of engines such as Thomas (of course), Gordon, James, Percy, Daisy, Henry, Toby, Edward, Duck, Rosie, Emily, Nia, Rebecca, Spencer, Donald and Douglas, Oliver, Stanley, Ryan, Sonny and the list goes on.
4. The models in the live-action model series are well done.
5. The Really Useful Around the World videos are pretty interesting and fun to watch, maybe these videos would be more interesting if they were adapted to Railway Series stories.
6. **Four words:** Jack and the Pack.
7. Well-done narration. Not to mention, in the model series, the first narrator was none other than the former drummer of The Beatles, **Ringo Starr!**
8. George Carlin, like Ringo, has the best narration in the Classic era out of every narrator. Even his voices for Bill, Ben, Gordon, James, Sir Topham Hatt, Donald, Douglas, Trevor, Duncan, Toad, Tom Tipper, Daisy, and Harold really show how talented and enthusiastic he is.
9. Likable and relatable title character protagonist (except in Seasons 12-16).
10. All of the theme songs are catchy.'
11. The series is filled with great and enjoyable episodes, such as:
	* All 130 episodes of the first five seasons.
	* "Jack Jumps In"
	* "Duck & the Slip Coaches"
	* "Percy's Chocolate Crunch"
	* "Emily's New Coaches"
	* "Jack Frost"
	* "James Gets a New Coat"
	* "Faulty Whistles"
	* "Forever and Ever"
	* "Love Me Tender"
	* "Twin Trouble"
	* "Thomas' New Trucks"
	* "Batucada"
	* "James the Second Best"
	* "Thomas and the Storyteller"
	* "Gordon Takes a Tumble"
	* "Wish You Were Here"
	* "Thomas and the Royal Engine"
	* "Tickled Pink"
	* "Hector the Horrid!"
	* "Heart of Gold"
	* "Wayward Winston"
	* "Duncan & the Grumpy Passenger"
	* "Rosie is Red"
	* "Free the Roads"
	* "Useful Railway"
	* "Emily's Rubbish"/"Emily and the Garbage"
	* "Best Friends"
	* "The Great Little Railway Show"
	* "Three Cheers for Thomas"/"Hooray for Thomas"
12. *Speaking of Shining Time Station, the US dub was actually pretty good (except in season six with Alec Baldwin's awful narration in that season).*
13. The Japanese dub is as great and superior as the UK and US dubs, in fact, it was the first Thomas dub/production to individually voice the characters. Predating *Thomas and the Magic Railroad* in 10 years.
14. Ever since 2013, the show gained it's full charm back once again thank to the help with Andrew Brenner, Davey Moore, Lee Pressman, Paul Larson, Laura Beaumont, Becky Overton, Tim Bain, Mark Huckerby, Helen Farrall, Michael White, and so many more that helped the show's charm grow back once again.
15. The animation in seasons 17-21 is great, though used in S13-16 looks nice, S17-21 has some of the best animation imaginable thanks to Arc Productions (and Jam Filled Entertainment in the episodes they animated in season 21) Though the animation went downhill again in season 22.
16. The characters that are engines, rolling stock trains, and road vehicles are based off actual British railway engines, rolling stock and vehicles, and most of the episodes were based on real life events.
	* "The Sad Story of Henry" is an example of this, it was inspired by a steam engine in America that couldn't get out of the tunnel.
	* "Break Van" is based off an accident with a railway engine crashing tender first into a signal box.
	* "A Better View for Gordon" is based off the famous 1895 train crash in Paris called the Gare Montparnasse.
	* "Busy Going Backwards" is based off on a couple of "hair-raising" runaway trains in the Tondu valleys that occurred during David Maidment's time as Area Manager in South Wales.
	* "Trusty Trunky" is based off another real life event with two elephant getting an engine from Australia and its train of trucks back on the rails.
	* "Percy's Promise" is based off an event where an engine is swimming through water with it's passenger train.
17. The music and songs are well-done, such as:
	* "Thomas You're the Leader"
	* "James the Really Splendid Engine"
	* "Rules and Regulations"
	* "Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining"
	* "Percy's Seaside Trip"
	* "Come For the Ride"
	* "The Island Song"
	* "Night Train"
	* "Accidents Will Happen"
	* "The Snow Song"
	* "Winter Wonderland"
	* "Down by the Docks"
	* "The Red Balloon"
	* "Hear the Engines Coming"
	* "Monsters Everywhere"
	* the "Engine Roll Call"
	* "We Make a Team Together"
	* "That's What Friends Are For"
	* "Will You Won't You?"
	* "Set Friendship in Motion"
	* "Streamlining"
	* "You Can Only Be You"
	* "The Hottest Place in Town"
	* "Our Tale of the Brave"
	* "Never Overlook A Little Engine"
	* "Let's Be Brave"
	* "Somebody Has to Be the Favorite"
	* "Really Useful Engine"
	* "All The Girls Around the World"
	* "Thomas' Anthem"
	* "Free and Easy"
	* "We're Friends"
	* "The Most Important Thing Is Being Friends"
	* "I Want to Go Home"
	* "On a Journey Today"
	* "Roll Along"
	* "Go Go Thomas"
	* "Determination"
		+ In fact, the Japanese dub even had its own exclusive song, "I'm Thomas The Tank Engine".
18. The Thomas Creator Collective was as good as from the looks of it.
19. The crashes are absolutely epic and fun to watch.
20. Jam Filled Entertainment did a good job on Thomas and Friends when season twenty-one first popped up, despite Arc animating eight episodes for said same season until their bankruptcy in 2016.
21. It's not afraid to be mature and have dark themes. One example of a dark episode is *Granpuff*, where Duke tells the story of an engine named Smudger who misbehaved and often rolled off the rails and then got turned into a generator because the manager wanted to make him useful at last. Then, due to no one wanting him, Duke gets buried in a shed. It's really adult-felt and depressing. *Haunted Henry* was also a darker episode of the show because of the spooky atmosphere. There was even an episode that is darker out of all of them where Stepney is nearly scrapped by a huge grabber in the scrapyards until The Fat Controller saves him on time, that episode is "Stepney Gets Lost".
22. Many good morals that kids can learn, such as "be patient" ("Thomas' Train"), "never trust toxic people" ("Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure"), "don't judge others from their looks/appearances" ("Heart of Gold"), "don't spread rumors" ("Thomas and the Rumors"), "be careful what you wish for" ("Toad's Adventure"), "brakevans are important for all trains" ("The Runaway Elephant"), "work together" (various episodes), "trust others" ("Tale of the Brave"), "be honest" ("Who's Geoffrey?"), "be who you are" ("Dream On"), don't refuse to take help from others ("Heave Ho Thomas"), etc.

## Bad Qualities

1. Because Thomas is the title character, he often takes up everyone else's screen-time (most notably Season 13). Fans either blame him, the writers or outright both of them for this. Here's a video that pointed this out. Thankfully, this was toned down in later seasons, until the so-called Season 25 was announced, which will be a total continuity reboot.
2. Experienced a massive decline in quality during S12-16 and S22-24 (despite mixed reception), and would drop into a much bigger downgrade starting in the 2021 2D animated reboot series made in hands with Nelvana that claims the new era as "Seasons 25 & 26" (the first two seasons of the 2D animated era), with most recently announced changes made just to begin straying away from the original source material and British tone the franchise had for 75 years, and for how the TV series had for 36 years (31 years in America).
	* The "Seasons 25-26" are now later called Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go! according to the Thomas the Tank Engine Wiki. We kid you not, **they really started the series all over again from scratch by bastardizing the source material!**
	* Sharon Miller's involvement as head writer in the series at the time is to blame for how horribly handled these seasons are, though to be fair she did write some good episodes in those five seasons like she did during seasons 9-11, but not enough to say how badly written or average most of them were.
	* Nelvana and Campbell Bryer's involvements were to blame for the 2D Thomas part because they are a terrible choice to change the TV series into 2D animation
	* Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go! felt like is was more suitable for preschoolers than a general family, and some characters are even flanderized, like Thomas started to sound like a kid, and fans said that Gordon became a father to Thomas, but it's unknown if it was true or a theory since the reboot only had 2 main engines.
	* Similar to S6-8 of SpongeBob SquarePants, these seasons are loaded with bad episodes, such as:
		+ "Wonky Whistle" (the worst episode of the series)
		+ "Happy Hiro"
		+ "Bust My Buffers!"
		+ "Pingy Pongy Pick Up"
		+ "Saved You!"
		+ "Don't Go Back"
		+ "Splish Splash Splosh"
		+ "Big Belle"
		+ "Fiery Flynn"
		+ "Ho Ho Snowman"
		+ "Push Me, Pull You"
		+ "Up, Up and Away"
		+ "Let It Snow"
		+ "Sodor Surprise Day"
		+ "Duncan and the Hot Air Balloon"
		+ "Mountain Marvel"
		+ "Rosie's Funfair Special"/"Rosie's Carnival Special"
		+ "The Lion of Sodor"
		+ "Flash Bang Wallop!"
		+ "The Man in the Hills"
		+ "James to the Rescue"
		+ "Percy and the Monster of Brendam"
		+ "Buzzy Bees"
		+ "Henry Gets it Wrong"
		+ "Steamy Sodor"
		+ "Race to the Rescue"
		+ "Percy's New Friends"
		+ "Henry's Magic Box"
3. There are even a handful of bad episodes before and after S12-16, such as:
	* "Middle Engine"
	* "Edward Strikes Out"
	* "Thomas' Frosty Friend"
	* "Which Way Now?"
	* "Thomas and the New Engine"
	* "What's the Matter with Henry?"
	* "Panicky Percy"
	* "Wharf and Peace"
	* "Follow that Flour"
	* "Too Loud, Thomas!"
	* "The Old Iron Bridge"/"The Old Bridge"
	* "Thomas and the Big Bang"
	* "The Other Side of the Mountain"
	* "Who's Geoffrey?"
	* "Rheneas and the Roller Coaster"
	* "Three Steam Engines Gruff"
	* "Emily Knows Best"
	* "Topped Off Thomas"
	* "Edward and the Mail"
	* "Don't Be Silly, Billy"
	* "Thomas Makes a Mistake"
	* "Skarloey the Brave"
	* "Toby Feels Left Out"
	* "Henry and the Wishing Tree"
	* "Apology Impossible" (depending on your view)
	* "The Magic Lamp"
4. Season 12 uses a mix of CGI and models. Unfortunately, using both never works because they unrealistically clash with each other and to makes matters worse, it constantly switches between models and CGI in many shots, resulting in inconsistency. Worst of all, characters from the classic era that were absent during S8-11 like Duck, Oliver, Stepney and Toad are pandered to the audience to keep the viewers happy for a few seconds, which is just insulting to the classic era fans. Even characters that appeared during Seasons 8-11 like Donald, Douglas, Murdoch, Neville, and Bill and Ben are also examples of this.
	* The CGI in Season 12, (while impressive for the engine character's faces to make them move and give them more expressions), looks pretty primitive, particularly for the human characters, as they some of them look either uncanny or ugly.
5. Alec Baldwin's narration takes a nosedive in Season 6. It becomes a lot more bland, boring and unenthusiastic. Also, he stops doing his character voices from Season 5, like Henry and especially Bill and Ben, and not even attempting an accent for Donald, Douglas and Duncan. However, he still does some good voices, like Elizabeth, Byron and Salty, but that's about it. The only Season 6 episodes that Alec does a good job narrating are "Elizabeth the Vintage Quarry Truck", "Jack Jumps In" and "A Friend in Need", while the only voice that he kept from Season 5 is Sir Topham Hatt.
6. Some characters (those who never appeared in the *Railway Series*, the show's book origin series) have received a lot of negative feedback, such as Billy, Charlie, Bash, Dash, Ferdinand, Vinnie, etc., for either being incredibly annoying or having unlikable personalities.
7. Gained controversy in 2003 from the BBC that crashes in Thomas the Tank Engine can scare kids.
8. Seasons 8-11 and Seasons 22-24 have received mixed reception among fans. While these seasons are generally better received than S12-16, they are still not as great as S1-7 or Seasons 17-21, but they at least tried:
	* Season 8 is decent and has a handful of good episodes. But it does have some inconsistencies and plot holes, like Henry being bad at pulling the express.
	* Season 9, while not terrible, is arguably the weakest season in the model era. The episodes in this season are a mixed bag, ranging from good, to average, to bad.
	* Season 10 had a rocky start with the episode "Follow that Flour", but picks itself up later on. Even so, it has its share of bad episodes, like the infamous "Edward Strikes Out".
	* Season 11, while an improvement over Seasons 9-10, can get a little predictable and repetitive at times and has some bad episodes. But nowhere near as bad as Season 12.
	* While Seasons 22-24 had good potential here and there (Thomas going around the world is a good concept that kind of works), mixing realistic laws of physics with some cartoony physics doesn't work in a show that was meant to follow how railways work. To be fair, Season 5 followed some ridiculously unrealistic visuals like a runaway boulder.
9. Has made numerous errors just like Pokémon:
	* An example is that whether or not the engines can actually control themselves without their driver or firemen is very inconsistent. In episodes like "Daisy", they seem to be able to move without them, but other episodes, such as "Wayward Winston", "Thomas Comes to Breakfast" and "Old Iron", make it clear that they need drivers.
	* This inconsistency worsens from season 8 onwards, as the engine crews are seen less often in the cabs, and "The Great Discovery" has several instances where Thomas goes into areas that a driver would not have allowed him to, and has at least one accident in which the driver and fireman would have been injured in. But throughout seasons 12-16, the engine drivers and firemen are seen more regularly in the engines' cabs, but are strangely silent, and are doing little more than making the engines move and other actions for the engines without question. But in the 2021 reboot as announced from the SiF blog post, the engines will now move without their crews to run them starting with the 2D animated series.
	* In some episodes of the US version, the term railroad is used to refer the North Western Railway as a railroad despite Sodor's railways being geographically British. This happened one time in the UK dub of "Elizabeth the Vintage Lorry" with The Fat Controller saying Elizabeth is the grandest lorry in the whole railroad, which is of course inaccurate, because a railroad is an American term for a railway. This is thankfully fixed in Baldwin's narration when Sir Topham Hatt calls Elizabeth "the grandest truck in the whole railway".
10. Though unintentionally, some episodes can teach kids bad morals, such as:
	* It's okay to play with fireworks ("Sodor Surprise Day").
	* It's okay to disobey orders ("Don't Be Silly, Billy").
	* Old people are no help at all ("Toby Feels Left Out").
	* It's okay to spread rumors, slandering the innocent is okay and that you will not get punished for it ("Thomas and the New Engine").
	* Or even the worst moral, it's okay for bullies to pick on you ("Middle Engine").
	* It's fine to always refuse help from others, and treat it as a normal thing ("Push Me, Pull You").
11. Some moments can be scary for younger viewers, most notably Alicia Botti screaming in "Thomas, Percy and The Squeak".
12. While the animation in S13-16 is alright, it's a bit clunky in some cases.
13. The 2020's shorts from Thomas' Magical Birthday Wishes and Learn with Thomas feel downgraded, overly kid friendly, and underwhelming compared to previous miniseries content such as Jack and the Pack, Great Race Friends Near and Far, and Really Useful Around the World. Worst yet, Mattel didn't even bother doing American dubs for both miniseries, let alone them being a real disappointment to the 75th anniversary of the Railway Series.
	* Thomas' Magical Birthday Wishes is the most downgraded out of all of the mini-series content. Mainly due to the overly cartoony visuals, unnecessary lack of down to earth logic (worst offender; the engines' crews don't even appear in Thomas' Magical Birthday Wishes as if Sir Topham Hatt is the only human who lives on Sodor), lack of continuity, the bouncing looking way over the top than in the S21-24, Rob Rackstraw's awful performance as Percy, overly simplified stories, limited amount of voice actors to play the characters, and lack of backgrounds other than railway tracks, railway stations, and other buildings.
	* Learn with Thomas (2020) isn't any better. Instead of learning how railways work like signals, points, or anything on what to do and not do on a railway, instead whenever Thomas or Percy learn something, either it's a message topic involving something they already learned, or is a moral that is, or learn about something they already know, and not even the bouncing helped either. Much like last series, Percy's voice given by Rackstraw still sounds nothing like how Nigel Pilkington voiced as him like usual, the plots have been more simplified, and the topics of each episode where both Thomas and Percy learn a thing or two, whilst none of them are necessarily bad, are added in like learning how to count to 20, how colors work, or how what opposites are make this miniseries belong on a show from Nick Jr.
14. While not necessarily a bad thing or a good thing either, some new characters and old Characters of the show have been shown to never appear again, with characters like Lady, Molly, Arthur or BoCo being prime examples. (Though those characters are bound to appear again soon).
15. Michael Brandon's narration (and the late Michael Angelis in seasons 8-16), while not terrible like Alec Baldwin in season 6 is kind of annoying. At the very least, Angelis and Brandon gave the characters emotions. But later on, while he isn't as good as George Carlin or Michael Angelis, he did improve later on.