THESE ARE SOLEY MY OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE
EMILY TO THE RESCUE
Beckey Overton
Directed by
Dianna Basso
Produced by
Tracy Blagdon (Jam Filled)
Ian McCue (HIT/Mattel)
Plot
When a pretend emergency turns into a real emergency,
When a pretend emergency turns into a real emergency,
there's only one engine who can save the day!
Air Date
26/06/20 - AUS
I'll say this, after 17 years of being numberless, Emily finally has a number! While it's not much of a huge deal to me, I think its quite nice that the production team had finally done something about it. But the episode overall just feels...meh. Some people might compare this to an early CGI series script (S13-16), and I can see why, but at least what this episode did was making it as entertaining as possible while also, from my belief, keeping with the Thomas tradition of storytelling. Whereas an early CGI series script is filled with nothing more but boring and bland repetition, rhyming, wooden voice acting and some terrible morals for kids (e.g - Thomas taking hats without permission and not apologising for taking them.) but one good thing it does have and that was conflict, though kinda, but I digress here, I would compare this story to something that Christopher Awdry would've written. This is more akin to the stories he'd written for his Railway Series books. Often I've been hearing other people saying that Christopher's books aren't as interesting compare to his father's and I could see why.
In the stories by Rev.W.Awdry, the characters have traits like being boastful, arrogant, silly, rude etc. and by the end they would go into a dilemma that would make them learn there lesson,
(e.g - 'Down the Mine' with Thomas being cheeky to Gordon about falling in a ditch and then he gets his own back by falling in the mine and James calling Toby a 'dirty object' and crashed into some tar wagons and James getting stung by a bee after calling BoCo a 'buzz-box diesel'.) whereas in Christopher's stories like 'Thomas and the Great Railway Show' things like Thomas' accident with the level crossing on his way to York or in 'Scrambled Eggs' when Thomas crashed into a lorry that was filled with eggs and Duncan helping some boy scouts in 'Pop Special' by bringing them drinks where things just happened because it did. The same can be said about his some of his annual stories too like 'Thomas and The Tickles' or 'Quick Thinking'. This is in no way of berating Christopher Awdry as a writer but this is how I feel about his stories. His stories aren't terrible but they are just not good as his father's I'm sorry to say and I think I could see why Mattel, HIT and Egmont, the latter under ownership of HarperCollins, weren't interested in his books, the last time we had any treatment of Christopher's book was back in 2007 with its own complete collection, which I still have since that very Christmas. I will say his stand alone books like 'Thomas and the Tiger' and 'Thomas Goes To School' do at least have the characters going through some sort of conflict as well as some annual stories like 'Percy and the Brake Van' and 'The Trouble With Sheep' and 'Signal Failure'.
I digress but my point is to me this episode has got nothing to do with Emily wanting to be a hero and it was more in the moment with her. Perhaps maybe the episode should've devoted alot more to Emily's motive of wanting to be a hero instead of seeing a safety inspector going around checking engines and rolling stock with his pun here and there. I understand that Emily is one of Mattel's marketable characters, although when you look at the viewership of her Steam Team video from last year, she only had, at the time of writing this post in May 2020, about 481,000 views compare to the others who have about over 1-2 million views. But I think if she were to have interesting stories maybe have her back in her S8 persona, but try and mix it with her original persona as well. Perhaps now that she is the Island's 'safety engine' maybe you could have her being overprotective and being bossy. Hopefully whenever this hiatus ends we see that and maybe that might get kids more interested in her with her flaws.
I aprecciate the production team wanting to give episodes for the Sterling Single but I think more needs to be done. But I will say I am impressed that this episode also didn't have a fantasy sequence and I think BWBA could at least work with them if they are needed and not wedged in to meet the check boxes.
Series Ratings (So far):
A New Arrival - 7/10
World of Tomorrow - 7/10
Thomas and the Royal Engine - 9/10
Emily's Best Friend - 7/10
Thomas' Fuzzy Friend - 8/10
The Great Little Railway Show - 9/10
Thomas and The Forest Engines - 5/10
Emily to the Rescue - 4/10
Overall Rating (So far):
56/70
