THESE ARE SOLEY MY OWN OPINION AND NOT FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FAN BASE
THOMAS AND THE BREAKDOWN TRAIN
Adapted for Television by
Britt Allcroft, David Mitton & Robert Cardona
Originally Written by
The Rev.W.Awdry
Air Date:
22/09/84
Plot:
With Thomas learning from his incident with the trucks, Thomas began to learn a few things. One day, a new engine named James was being pushed by trucks and caused his brake blocks to be on fire! Later, James was off the line and Thomas collected the breakdown train and on their way to save James, which ended up having his own branch line after being really useful.
PRO:
- The special effects for the brake block fire was done splendidly. You can do that with CGI nowadays, but back then, it will be a lot of hard work.
CON:
- It's a shame that James was not painted in L&YR black, like his original basis in the book.
This episode was filmed well and as I said before, the special effects at the time would've been alot of hard work with the fire for the brake block scene. Sure, CGI can do that nowadays, but David Mitton is one talented director and its a shame that he passed away.
The beginning of the episode shows a good moral about being yourself, nowadays, you have an episode focused onto that moral. But here you have the Fat Controller mentioning, 'You can be fast or strong as Gordon. But you can be really useful.' and thats it and then later we see that moral without the narrator mentioning it at the end, we learn from it from the picture. Thomas is not thinking about himself as Gordon, just himself.
But its a bit of a shame that James was not painted in his black paint, like the one in the book. But I think they only did so it might not end up getting the child confused on who it is. But despite the one flaw, the episode has great rescue scene and it shows Thomas actually being useful.
Rating: 4/5
