THESE ARE SOLEY MY OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED BY THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE
A COLOURFUL WORLD
An Engine Of Many Colours
Hunt the Truck
Counting On Nia
Tiger Trouble
Thomas Goes to Bollywood
Thomas in the Wild
Thomas and the Dragon
The Water Wheel
Special Features
Thomas' Big World: Different Ways To See The World
Thomas' Big World: Still The Best Of Friends
Meet The Characters: Ashima
Meet The Characters: Noor Jehan
UN Stories: Life On Land
UN Stories: Gender Equality
Hunt the Truck
Counting On Nia
Tiger Trouble
Thomas Goes to Bollywood
Thomas in the Wild
Thomas and the Dragon
The Water Wheel
Special Features
Thomas' Big World: Different Ways To See The World
Thomas' Big World: Still The Best Of Friends
Meet The Characters: Ashima
Meet The Characters: Noor Jehan
UN Stories: Life On Land
UN Stories: Gender Equality
Written by
Micheal White
Lee Pressman
Becky Overton
Davey Moore
Lee Pressman
Becky Overton
Davey Moore
Directed by
Dianna Basso
Produced by
Ian McCue (HIT/Mattel)
Micaela Winter (HIT/Mattel)
Tracy Blagdon (Jam Filled)
Distributed by
HIT Entertainment/Mattel Creations (UK)
Release Date
29/07/19
Before we await for the upcoming two parter special 'Digs and Discoveries', the UK had finally been given the final S22 DVD of Thomas & Friends. Featuring two episodes from new writer and Thomas fan, Micheal White. So here are my views on 'A Colourful World'.
EPISODES
Before we await for the upcoming two parter special 'Digs and Discoveries', the UK had finally been given the final S22 DVD of Thomas & Friends. Featuring two episodes from new writer and Thomas fan, Micheal White. So here are my views on 'A Colourful World'.
EPISODES
The DVD consists three Sodor and China episodes and two India episodes. The first three were really good episodes and I still hold my opinion on them when the episodes debuted last year. 'An Engine of Many Colours' and 'Hunt The Truck' may have been written to the standard formula for the refreshed series, but how the way Micheal White handled them makes them the best episodes of the season in my opinion. The fantasy sequences really fit well into the story in James' episode they were dreams and in Bill and Ben's case it fits in well because it adds more to their worries. They were not just randomly placed to add as filler, they were massaged well into the story.
'Counting On Nia' is an episode I feel that would relate to actual immigrants when they enter into a new country and Nia not understanding numbers in english was also something that is new to me. I remember after watching the episode I researched about numbers in Africa and it turns out that they are written differently. I understand that not everyone likes Nia because she replaced Edward and she didn't have any episodes to flesh out, but I didn't like the criticism that she was getting and that was because some claimed that Nia was a 'Mary Sue'. A character who is absolutely perfect and bears no flaws not one bit, almost like Superman. To me her not understanding numbers in english is a bit of a flaw because she was new to Sodor and it resulted her to have an accident until Annie and Clarabel had helped her understanding numbers through animals, plants and all. It gives the message that there can be solutions to a problem. To me it makes me believe that Nia has story potential for things that can relate to an immigrant maybe have an episode dealing with home sickness or wanting to celebrate Christmas in the way she had celebrated in her own country and have one of the Sodor engines being angry that there traditions are being spoilt for someone else.
Another episode that I did like and I considered this to be the best of the China episodes and that was 'Thomas and the Dragon'. It feels like Davey Moore's 'Batucada' episode that he did for the Brazil as it combines both culture and story so well and 'Tiger Trouble' was probably the best India episode before 'Crowning Around' came along and took the top spot. The India episodes from S22 weren't the best lot of episodes despite that I think 'Trusty Trunky' and 'Thomas and The Monkey Palace' as OK but looking back, the conflict wasn't strong in those stories. However 'Tiger Trouble' had added much strong conflict dealing with animal hunters and a good moral on how we should protect animals from harm. Plus it gave Shankar a bit depth as a lover of animals. A bit like Henry and his love of nature.
'Thomas In The Wild' was OK but it was more educational and less on story. But the Panda's I say are adorable. However I can take that episode over any Miller/Barlow era story any day and the fantasy sequence gave me a good chuckle and it kind of make sense considering that Thomas would've never seen a Panda.
'The Water Wheel' however was just confusing, the story started off with Hong-Mei talking about how bamboo is important, then it was about Thomas chasing a water wheel and the moral was about how important water is. I said it before in my episode review and I'll say it here. The episode could've worked if it were focused on Hong-Mei with her competitive and one track mind behaviour. There was no rain happening for a while and it was a hot summers day, Hong-Mei was bored in her shed as she can't run and so went out of her shed despite the ban. After racing around she was running out of water and tries to find a water tower but all them are dried up because of the lack of rain. Luckily she found a water wheel made of bamboo and the people helped her by filling her water tank from the river. Hong-Mei was happy and learnt that saving water is important.
'Thomas Goes To Bollywood' wasn't awful but a bit bad. I still believe that it was a huge loss for Rajiv to take the spotlight with his arrogant persona, thankfully 'Crowning Around' made up for that. The ending wasn't really good though as there was no real danger for the arrogant actor and everyone hailed Thomas as a hero. It could've been better if the truck of mattresses wasn't placed probably for the actor and Thomas had to act fast to save him from an accident.
'The Water Wheel' however was just confusing, the story started off with Hong-Mei talking about how bamboo is important, then it was about Thomas chasing a water wheel and the moral was about how important water is. I said it before in my episode review and I'll say it here. The episode could've worked if it were focused on Hong-Mei with her competitive and one track mind behaviour. There was no rain happening for a while and it was a hot summers day, Hong-Mei was bored in her shed as she can't run and so went out of her shed despite the ban. After racing around she was running out of water and tries to find a water tower but all them are dried up because of the lack of rain. Luckily she found a water wheel made of bamboo and the people helped her by filling her water tank from the river. Hong-Mei was happy and learnt that saving water is important.
SPECIAL FEATURES
The special features are pretty much what you can find on the offical Thomas US YouTube channel. However these videos are UK dubbed so for some it is a first. The first video is about Thomas explaining about different ways to travel around the globe. A nice video for young kids to understand the difference of travel. The second is of course a way of explaining to kids about friends who may live far away but that you are still the best of friends no matter how far you really are. I think they should've placed this video on the Steam Team DVD when it was released in 2018 to give more kids the message about Edward and Henry's departure from the Steam Team. But despite that it is still a good message to kids.
The special features are pretty much what you can find on the offical Thomas US YouTube channel. However these videos are UK dubbed so for some it is a first. The first video is about Thomas explaining about different ways to travel around the globe. A nice video for young kids to understand the difference of travel. The second is of course a way of explaining to kids about friends who may live far away but that you are still the best of friends no matter how far you really are. I think they should've placed this video on the Steam Team DVD when it was released in 2018 to give more kids the message about Edward and Henry's departure from the Steam Team. But despite that it is still a good message to kids.
The next video is another 'Meet the Characters' and this time with Ashima. This video however was never released on the YouTube channel until June 26th 2019. It was first discovered through a user on twitter through an on-demand streaming website called 'Kabillion'. Why was this never released with the others officially, I don't know. The other is about Noor Jehan. These videos are a nice way to express about the characters and what they do, but they don't really justify the personalities of these characters. I hope the writers of the show give these two there time to shine and not make them static characters.
We also have the two UN goal videos that were released on the US channel a year ago. Since the refresh series was shown to the public, Mattel had announced that they've been working with the United Nations and explain about the goals through Thomas to young kids. I like these videos and I really don't see how teaching kids to respect everyone equally and to respect life on land as 'politically correct' or political considering that the some people of the world don't really show respect that much today to other people and animals.
OVERALL
The DVD doesn't have the best of the episodes but I don't think they are not god awful to sit through. If you feel the same about these episode I recommend buying episodes separately on iTunes, that's what I do when Australia release DVDs here as they are the same as the UK's. But if you have kids that like these episodes, then this DVD could be for you. The special features are nice and I think they are goods for kids too.
Rating: 7/10
