Series 16, Episode 18 Review: Don't Bother Victor!

I’m sure I wasn’t the only fan to be thrilled to see an episode about the Skarloey engines once again, but not surprising for all of us; it was an episode that could have gone to the standard gauge engines, for it felt like The Green Controller, rewritten with the Narrow Gauge engines, of which they already did that with Sir Handel in Charge, showing how much they  repeat the same plot. It was, as normal, a badly written episode that we have already seen before, many times.

You can’t believe that the voice acting for Thomas is also in the management of Sharon Miller, for it is of a far greater standard than the script writing. I thought I should finally give my opinions on the voices for the Skarloey engines, and like all fans, I am soooooooo happy to hear them with Welsh accents, for we were hoping they would have, but I was expecting Skarloey and Rheneas’s voices to be a bit  more high-pitched, and Sir Handel and Peter Sam’s to be lower, but that’s just me, the voice actors have done their best, and it wouldn’t surprise me that within their respect for Thomas, they have done their own research before voicing the characters, and Ben Small was of course a Railway Series fan in his youth, not knowing he would one day be the actual voice of Thomas the Tank Engine.

The CGI in the episode was, as you expect me to say, brilliant. I’m sure Greg Tiernan is in heaven when making an episode focused on the Skarloey Railway, and I’m sure Blue Mountain Mystery will be a lot of fun for him too. When watching what has been reviled of it so far, you can see just how much the standard of the CGI has greatened during the last 3 years, and looks like something any old Thomas fan will enjoy watching, and the story sounds better than usual, but we will have to wait and see.

Tomorrow sees the last episode of Series 16, losing Nitrogen’s animation from the series will never be anything as sad as when we lost the models, but they have given such great dedication towards Thomas, in one of the bleakest periods of the show’s history. The CGI series could have been something far more than it was, it could have been a fresh start for Thomas after series 8 to 12, but HiT didn’t care, it was just seen as a way of helping the writers succeed in writing new material from the bottom of the barrel of lazy story ideas, and to make their version of the show look fresh in giving it a modern image, and it seems to be what’s happening again now with the changing of the animation studio, but we are all very glad of the changes next year, and we still have more to come from Nitrogen with Blue Mountain Mystery and The Christmas Express, so let’s give them the best farewell we can in the rest of the year.

Thanks for reading,

Jacob