All Engines Go! Review - S4 Ep.7 - Don't Train on My Parade

  THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE

DON'T TRAIN ON MY PARADE

Written by

Sam Bissonnette

Directed by

Campbell Bryer 

Produced by

Suzie Gallo

Air Date

4/02/25 - UK

Plot

When Sir Topham Hatt's springtime parade floral float is destroyed before delivery, Thomas and the engines find the spring in Sodor to save the parade.

While the episode has some usual things from this show, like Thomas doing something that results in an accident, at least it works plot wise despite the show lacking character development. Thomas' accident by taking a short cut and not paying attention to things just works to help destroy the float and to make it anew. Whereas Diesel's one in 'Quacking Quandary' could just work with Diesel trying his best to be brave and fight against his fear instead of being scared and lie to everyone that he wasn't which we've seen plenty of times before. While I don't think this episode is my favourite this season it was at least decent enough to be good unlike the last few episodes. 

Yes there is the typical rinse and repeat of characters messing things up and finding an alternative but that had purpose for the episode's message about starting up again. I'm never that much of a fan of the songs as I feel they're pretty unnecessary. They don't need to state the moral and the episode could still work without them. I could at least see the song sequence working just a montage instead but I know the songs have to be there because Mattel needs them for mandated digital albums, though so far we haven't got any announcement about it. Though when is Mattel ever good at telling people anything new about All Engines Go? As I was writing this post back on Feb 5th 2025, the official Thomas Instagram page hadn't posted anything since November 2024. As I said before, for a new marketing team that was brought in to help Thomas get better at toy sales they are doing a really poor job at doing it. That and Mattel's very bad distribution.

It's good that we got another decent episode though by all means it wasn't that great, I still think the first episode of this season was the more decent one. 

  

Series Rating (So far):

Sheep Stampede - 6/10

The Berry Best - 3/10

Creepy Crawly Courage - 3/10

Windmill Woes - 2/10

Quacking Quandary - 1/10

The Stinking Delivery - 3/10

Don't Train on My Parade - 4/10

Overall Rating (So far): 

22/70

All Engines Go! Review - S4 Ep.6 - The Stinking Delivery

 THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE

THE STINKING DELIVERY

Written by

Becky Wangberg & Sarah Eisenberg

Directed by

Campbell Bryer 

Produced by

Suzie Gallo

Air Date

3/02/25 - UK

Plot

None of the engines want to take a super stinky compost delivery, so they make a 'hide & stink' game. But after a spill, they must work together to deliver the smelly mess.

I felt that the 'Pie and Seek' game dragged on just so it can fill in time. Perhaps it would've been if Diesel had taken more than one wagon pf compost and tries to prove that he strong and that he could do the dirty work because Thomas and the others don't want to do it. Sure we've seen typical three strike episodes like that previously but I would take that instead of a dragged out scene of them playing their game, in my opinion I think 'Mud Tag' sounds better than 'Pie and Seek', to fill out the run time. 

At least with Diesel trying to prove himself would've been a better storyline than this thing. Though I would at least give the episode credit of not stating the team work moral as the audience is as dumb as a goldfish and just showed it instead. One of the rare cases of show don't tell in this iteration of the show. 

This episode was boring and could've been better. It's amazing we are just six episodes in of this new season with a decent season opener and then by episode 2 it started to sink rapidly like a sinking ship smeared with duct tape to keep it afloat. I know this aimed for kids but I think kids deserve better. I don't really have any high expectations for this season to be good but my god they should at least try to be good!

Series Rating (So far):

Sheep Stampede - 6/10

The Berry Best - 3/10

Creepy Crawly Courage - 3/10

Windmill Woes - 2/10

Quacking Quandary - 1/10

The Stinking Delivery - 3/10

Overall Rating (So far): 

18/60

All Engines Go! Review - S4 Ep.5 - Quacking Quandary

  THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE

QUACKING QUANDARY

Written by

Peter Gaffney

Directed by

Campbell Bryer 

Produced by

Suzie Gallo

Air Date

31/01/25 - UK

Plot

When Diesel hears a strange noise that sounds like a swamp monster, he gets too scared to pull deliveries through the area. Bruno and Percy must help conquer his fear.

You think maybe after four seasons and a few specials that maybe Diesel could at least have some character development after dealing with things he thought were monsters? This is one of the problems that I have with this iteration of Thomas. When you have a restricted cast there's never really much variety and its sad because we had two episodes so far this season where they use different characters instead of just using Thomas, Percy, Kana, Diesel, Carly, Sandy and Nia for the umpteenth time. Why not use Ashima? We never really see her getting scared of anything, sure it might end up being the same but at least they're using someone different and add some extra character to there personality. 

I thought, at least, that Diesel might show a wee change with him not being scared but as soon as he reached the swamp with the troublesome trucks when he heard the noise the second time, since it had been four seasons, but that little bit of hope was gone because Diesel was once again hiding his fear. 

Character development is never really much of a thing in this show? I know that the original series had its fair share of inconsistency from time to time but at least, at times, they kept it in tact for a bit. Look at Percy in S19, he was hardly the same character that he was before prior to Tale of the Brave in 2014 before they'd reused his scaredy persona from Journey Beyond Sodor in 2017. James had some development too in S20 until Apology Impossible came into existence in 2018. Henry had some development too in S19 and it showed in S20 until he'd moved from Tidmouth sheds and was no longer part of the main cast. The original series at least tried to be consistent but know that they would have to break them in order to make stories for that particular character or maybe they just forgot about it.  

Here it just seems to be forgotten, its almost like the Miller/Barlow era where the characters learn their lesson in one episode and then forgot about it maybe the next episode or two. The show had some consistency but it's really rare to see that, I only know two episodes that had that from the top of my mind which were 'Thomas and Percy's Eggsellent Adventure' and 'Goodbye Ghost Scaring Machine' with Percy saying that he's 'grown up' and that the machine was from the episode 'Ghost Train' and both of those were from its first season! 

I remember the storyboards for this episode were leaked online sometime in September last year and people were kind of freaked out that Diesel showcased his mechanical heart, which to me is a weird and some I find a bit uncomfortable with. They didn't really have to show it, you never saw Thomas in 'The Great Race' showing his heart when he and Ashima were singing in the movie about being yourself. Why not have Diesel blowing his smoke to create a heart? Anyway, the song is just another meh morally forced song and I think it would've worked for the ending instead of the middle of it all. 

The only reason Percy was 'stuck' in the pond was just so Diesel can come and help get Percy out but it's also very unnecessary. You can at least have Percy cry for help while staying on the rails without the need of him falling into the swamp. Diesel would still at least try and show his bravery against the swamp monster! I also hate, and this is common in the show itself, how an engine gets stuck when they have the power to move by themselves. Percy had gotten 'stuck' but a few seconds after Diesel's attempt at saving him, Percy can turn 360 without any trouble at all. I know this seems like a nitpick but you can also have Percy talking to Diesel without the need of moving him. Sure it was done to give the final pay off of making Percy the swamp monster but you can still do it with him on the rails and its possible to do it with the cartoon logic that show has.

  Overall, this was a terrible episode. A typical Diesel is scared of something episode without showing of his growth whatsoever with very pointless creative decisions alongside that could've been tweaked before being animated. You can show Diesel with his character growth and still have him being scared and trying to fight it. Why not showcase him trying to prove to everyone that he's not scared anymore instead of him acting all boastful and cool? Just show him that he had at least grown?  

So far this was the worst episode of the show's fourth season. 

Series Rating (So far):

Sheep Stampede - 6/10

The Berry Best - 3/10

Creepy Crawly Courage - 3/10

Windmill Woes - 2/10

Quacking Quandary - 1/10

Overall Rating (So far): 

15/50

All Engines Go! Review - S4 Ep.4 - Windmill Woes

 THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE

WINDMILL WOES

Written by

Brent Piaskoski

Directed by

Campbell Bryer 

Produced by

Suzie Gallo

Air Date

30/01/25 - UK

Plot

After Thomas, Percy and Diesel accidentally break a windmill, they all tell Gordon different versions of what happened. Can Gordon uncover the truth?

Another meh episode. Personally I think the episode could've start with Thomas, Percy and Diesel at the site of the broken windmill arguing about who was to blame instead of having them racing and showing us what had happened. Sure it was for set up but I just hate that they do that because it felt like it dragged on with the three characters retelling their version of the same story. It felt like the Missing Crane episode from S2 where we see what happened to Carly instead of keeping things a mystery, keeping things a mystery adds more excitement of what the reveal was going to be but here it just feels boring. 

Perhaps to fill in time, Thomas, Percy and Diesel were trying to tell Gordon the truth but they were so cross with each other that they don't want to speak to each other and that maybe Gordon was trying to get words out of them about the whole incident and then piece the story together. It would add some conflict to the story between the characters. All in all it could've been better.  

Series Rating (So far):

Sheep Stampede - 6/10

The Berry Best - 3/10

Creepy Crawly Courage - 3/10

Windmill Woes - 2/10

Overall Rating (So far): 

14/40

All Engines Go! Review - S4 Ep.3 - Creepy Crawly Courage

 THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE

CREEPY CRAWLY COURAGE

Written by

Sam Bissonnette

Directed by

Campbell Bryer 

Produced by

Suzie Gallo

Air Date

29/01/25 - UK

Plot

Yong Bao's fear of creepy crawlies and Carly's disgust for skunks complicate their apple delivery to the Harvest Festival.

I think it's a shame Yong Bao hadn't been fleshed out in the Big World Big Adventures era of the original series run because I think it was a nice personality trait that he has a fear of bugs, if BWBA was at least given a further chance by Mattel maybe Yong Bao would've been an interesting character and likely we would've had an episode of him fearing something, despite being called brave and a hero and it was also nice to see some continuity with Carly with her interest in bugs from the Bubbly special, the show may have inconsistent writing but it at least respects its own continuity, at times. Although I have the feeling that the 'All Engines Go!' title is now becoming a catchphrase for all the characters in every episode, we had it in the second episode, don't know about the first one though as I can't really remember everything about it from the top of my head. 

As for the episode itself it was another meh one. What could've been done to make the episode better, in my opinion, if Yong Bao and Carly were having a heated argument on what is better bugs or fuzzy animals that it resulted their friendship to end until they realise one another's perspective on why they don't like bugs or skunks when seeing something of a creature they like but not a particular one, it would at least make the song's inclusion a bit stronger with how they express liking the true side of each other.  

Just throughout the episode it was nothing more but the two characters just rolling along the line with the three strike formula to build up the climax which was Yong Bao running around from a spider's web with some gags involving apples to fill up the run time and telling the audience the message of the story.

While I like that Yong Bao had some character and that Carly's love for bugs was still intact as well the fact that we're having stories where it's not always restricted to the core cast of characters, the episode was not that great or entertaining to sit through, it was a boring meh fest that could've had some tweaks to make it a bit more interesting.

Series Rating (So far):

Sheep Stampede - 6/10

The Berry Best - 3/10

Creepy Crawly Courage - 3/10

Overall Rating (So far): 

12/30

All Engines Go! Review - S4 Ep.2 - The Berry Best

 THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE

THE BERRY BEST

Written by

Lexie Kahanovitz

Directed by

Campbell Bryer 

Produced by

Suzie Gallo

Air Date

28/01/25 - UK

Plot

Thomas goes too far when taking 'just a few' strawberries again and again uses up all the fruit in Farmer McColl's field.

So the show FINALLY have some self awareness that Percy's puns were never funny at all, until the end of this episode, shame it took them to their very likely last season to get that because in the last three seasons they were really trying to make them funny. 

Still, I think it's another example of the show's inconsistency with its writing that Diesel says they were engines and they can't make something like Strawberry soap scent and yet in the past they could be seen making an obstacle course, art made from scrap and so on. You could have Diesel saying 'How can we make Strawberry soap scent? There aren't any strawberries here!' and you can still go forth with the same transition. Diesel's line felt like Thomas' line when he said he can't plough through fields or swim, when literally in past episodes of this show he can. 

Also how did they use all the strawberries up when Sandy used one to make the scent? Sure it was done for the sake of plot so that Thomas and Sandy can go back to Farmer McColl's farm to collect more strawberries but it can still work without the need of the inconsistency. Just have Thomas and Sandy using the whole truckload up and then they go back for more. It will still have the same outcome as shown in the episode. Maybe have Terence telling them no because Farmer McColl needs them but Thomas and Sandy still takes them anyway because they might think the strawberries would grow back, sure that sounds dumb but this is 'All Engines Go!' they are suppose to be dumb for the sake of plot. 

Also, the animation was inconsistent too with Thomas, Percy and Diesel being covered in mud in one scene but then later they weren't. Sure it may've come off offscreen but it was kind of implied that it was sticky, this is just a nitpick but I just wanted to point it out. 

The episode is nothing special, its comedy with Diesel going through disguises was meh and it just feels ordinary. Improvements could've been made to make it feel consistent instead of just making reasons for the sake of plot because they didn't need to do it. It could've been better if the story focused on James wanting to be cleaned but every time he gets cleaned he's given another dirty job which results to him getting cleaned at the train wash and that it creates the dilemma of wasting the strawberries for the scent. I think that would be way better use instead of using Diesel.  

Series Rating (So far):

Sheep Stampede - 6/10

The Berry Best - 3/10

Overall Rating (So far): 

9/20

All Engines Go! Review - S4 Ep.1 - Sheep Stampede

Welcome to the first post of 2025, the 80th anniversary year of The Railway Series books. After, what is to me, a dismal Season 3 and a very boring Christmas special alongside that could've been an 11 minute episode, we are now at the fourth season of All Engines Go! The only thing new to this season is that Duck and Douglas will be making an appearance, though like with any legacy character that makes their debut they'll just likely show up, have some dialogue and then afterwards they have a cameo here and there and then they are completely forgotten about unless they have some kind of importance in another episode for whatever reason. But apart from those two, nothing else too new or exciting, as if anything AEG related is that exciting. 

One thing I would like to point out though is that, as of this post, we haven't got any news about the show's renewal for a fifth and sixth season. In October 2022, Mattel announced S3 and 4 and Corus Entertainment's '2023/24 speciality releases' press release mentioned this season in June 2023. But yet in June 2024, for their 2024/25 slate of announcements, they would've announced S5 but there was no mention of Thomas anywhere and surely we would've gotten news by now of a renewal, right?

Now I heard from TheGermanofSodor through Discord that Mattel had told the people at Nelvana that All Engines Go! is a 'success' and they had also mentioned things like ratings or the Christmas special being placed at number 2 on Netflix US. No disrespect to TheGermanofSodor, but if this was such a success, for Mattel's case, wouldn't their also be a big demand of the toys to sell? How come there is so little at various shops? 

The ones that I had been to have stock that goes back to the Thomas, Sandy and Kana variants from 'The Mystery of Lookout Mountain' special from 2022, which by the way is something that I'd discovered recently thanks to the wiki. Great packaging and awareness Mattel, I never realised that it was from that thanks to your wonderful blunder of not putting the logo there to spread actual awareness that such special existed or that it was related to it instead of just being another pointless variant! 

But I digress. While some new engines and some new sets have been released, they are hardly restocked after they're gone. I remember seeing the AEG version of Toby once at a Big W when I went shopping most likely around 2023? But after it had been sold, I had hardly seen any of it being restocked. 

The reason why I have such strong doubts that AEG was a success at all is because Mattel had said the same thing in the past for Big World, Big Adventures but toy sale numbers told us different and this is the same company that says that the change up for BWBA saw a 40% increase in TV ratings in 2018 but yet that era of the show lasted until 2020 and very likely because the toy sales had not been strong and you can see that through quarterly earnings between 2019-2020, I don't count the 2018 ones because BWBA started around their third quarter and the numbers for the fourth usually tallies up the whole year. Q4 of 2020 as well as Q1-2 of 2021 showcased good numbers likely due to COVID-19 and the lockdowns but sadly it didn't last long in the aftermath. 

Big World, Big Adventures had good reception when it came onto Netflix US in early 2020, through the sources of Sodor Island Fansite (SiF), but yet the original show was still canned at the time. 

My point is this, Mattel is a TOY company with other interests, particularly media, and while those other interests may see good figures, they would very likely care only about toy sales. Looking at various stores here in Australia and during my occasional visits to the United States, I don't think this reimagining of Thomas had seen so much success. While there had been an increase in sales between 2021 until the second quarter of 2022, though I think MAYBE there had been some toys from the original series still being sold in 2021, things had started to decrease for Fisher Price, the umbrella that Thomas toys are under, from Q3 of 2022, and things hadn't look too handsome since then. 

Since it's very likely that S4 of AEG will be the end of the show, I will give my overall view of it as a whole when I'd finish reviewing all 26 episodes. I will, as usual, look over the special as well though as of writing this piece, we don't know what the special will be all about yet.

So enough rambling, here are my views of S4A but first, the usual:

THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE

SHEEP STAMPEDE

Written by

Kristen Mcgregor

Directed by

Campbell Bryer 

Produced by

Suzie Gallo

Air Date

27/01/25 - UK

Plot

Diesel tells Nia that using her special whistle to find Farmer McColl's sheep isn't fair. So she tries not to use it, even though it is the only thing that can save the delivery.

Like S3's opener, this was another decent one but a bit better than S3's opening episode. Not great or special but decent. The set up was OK with Nia showcasing her sheep whistle and adds a little bit of personality to her which is doing impressions of things like Thomas' whistles, a duck's quack and sheep, though AEG never really does much with the character's quirks for more stories and would usually be more ordinary and boring. Like I do see Nia's impression of things used for other stories like maybe one of the engines have a broken whistle and need to make deliveries so Nia offers into help, don't know what the message would be but with this very likely to be the last season of the iteration for good not much you can do about it now. 

The montage of the lost sheep, though done for the purpose of comedy, was good too as it eases the pacing creating more set up for the story and doesn't make it look like pointless filler. The dynamic between Nia and Diesel was nice to see as well and a bit refreshing to see these two interacting because this could've been another Thomas and Diesel being competitive story and from looking at the episode a second time, it could've easily been one but I'm glad it wasn't, though I believe we will get another one of those sometime this season because this show doesn't have much variety, much like its toy line.

I still think the show could've displayed its morals without the need of stating it because I do believe kids know the message without being told what it is because there are kids who are sharp minded than what people give them credit for. The episode also had a song and while it did feel part of the story, I still think they work better without them but Mattel needs them to make a mandated music album that they might, hardly, advertised on their social media pages. You could at least have Nia going around collecting sheep with her sheep whistle and that's it. The songs are just morally forced because they need to tell the child what the lesson is. 

So despite that, this episode was decent but I'm not going to remain hopeful that this season will be good. 

Series Rating (So far):

Sheep Stampede - 6/10

Overall Rating (So far): 

6/10