S17 Ep.8: Luke's New Friend

THESE ARE SOLEY MY OPINIONS AND NOT FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FAN BASE

THIS REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS, CAUTION IS ADVISED

LUKE'S NEW FRIEND

Directed by 

David Baas

Written by

Davey Moore

Produced by

Kallan Kagan (Arc)

Ian McCue and Halim Jabbour (HIT)

Plot:

Up at the Blue Mountain Quarry, Luke finds a scared young dear, so he tries to get the other engines to work quitely. Although that's not an easy thing to do.

PRO:
- The CGI for Ulfstead Castle, the deer's and the BMQ looks incredible 

- Moral: Belonging somewhere

- The adding of lamps on the NG engines

- The explosions.

- No name given to the deer.

CON:
- The error's of brake vans.

The episode was a sweet and cute episode and of course better then a so called episode were an engine is friends with some animals in a poorly written season. I'll say this, as much as I liked Nitrogen's work on bringing Thomas and his friends in CGI, Arc really added some extra detailing into the render, the castle park look amazing (the grass for example), the deer's as well, though they remind me of Nitrogen's render in 'Percy's New Friends' and the detailing of the BMQ, mainly the floor. Plus I may have noticed that Rusty has some extra detailing of smudge around his paint work. I believe the moral is, in the deer's point of view, about belonging somewhere. It belongs in nature not at a working quarry were it can actually get hurt. Plus the explosions were a nice touch so I think they'll have an excuse for those BMQ dynamite toys that the wooden railway has been releasing last year. There is one con I have for this episode and that is the brake van. First we see a standard gauge brake van behind Luke's train, then we see no brake van after that and then we see a NG brake van as Luke and his friend left the quarry. Though it is an animation error but it's still illogical to have a standard gauge brake van. I'm also glad that they didn't gave a name for the deer like 'Deer' or Mr/Mrs Deer, I hope they don't do that again in Thomas episodes though in future. Overall this is a nice episode, but not up in the standards of yesterday's episode or like 'Gordon Runs Dry'. But it's nice and sweet and defiantly a watchable episode.  

Rating: 4/5