THESE ARE MY OWN OPINIONS AND ARE NOT INFLUENCED FROM THE THOMAS & FRIENDS FANBASE
BAAA-TATSROPHE!
Kristen McGregor
Directed by
Campbell Bryer
Produced by
Suzie Gallo
Air Date
12/02/25 - UK
Plot
When Thomas' delivery of sheep goes badly, he worries that Annie and Clarabel will think he is not good at his job.
It's honestly nice to see Thomas pulling his two coaches again probably since the first season of the show? And it's quite refreshing, at least for a little bit, to see Thomas pulling passengers instead of another delivery for once as well as acting like what engine is suppose to do deliver passengers as well as goods whereas in episodes before this it was always a 'delivery of the day' kind of thing. I will say after watching through all of this first of S4 we FINALLY had a decent episode that has conflict with Thomas trying and failing each time with the sheep, yes it's a repeatable three strike formula but it works for the plot to fill in time despite the bad sheep puns and annoying sheep gags.
The song was refreshing too because the music was different in comparison to the modern Radio Disney style of music but it didn't need to be there because like the typical AEG episode, Annie and Clarabel had already stated the moral earlier so there's no need to hammer it down. I also like how the Fat Controller embrace the colour pink, bringing down the stereotype that it's just exclusive to boys, very nice touch. So yes a decent closer to what is sadly, so far, a horrible 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
The Stinking Delivery - 3/10
Don't Train on My Parade - 4/10
Shiny Spiffy Sandy - 3/10
Diesel's Bad Day - 4/10
Moo-Ving Friendship - 4.5/10
Art Engines Go - 1/10
Lightening the Load - 1/10
Baaa-tatsrophie! - 5.5/10
Overall Rating (So far):
40/130
So that is all of S4A and my god this is bad. My expectation was little for this season but my god this first half of the season was just awful to sit through. If I have to sum up this half of the season it's slop.
We at least had decent opening episode and then it fell and forgot how to stand up afterwards as the episodes were just bad with it consistency, boring outcomes, lack of respecting its character development and formulaic storytelling. If this is likely the very last season of the show then wow they weren't even trying to make it feel like a finale or least entertaining.
While reviewing these episodes during the show's UK airing, I was sitting through S22 of 'Big World, Big Adventures', that'll be coming out in early March, on Amazon Prime Australia and this might shock everyone but despite the problems of that iteration of the show, writing wise, it was miles better than what AEG tried to do.
You might not agree with me on this but the international characters such Hong-Mei, Shane, Rajiv and all have character, despite being little in those episodes and at least that iteration of the show had done something that AEG would never be good at, variety! It knows how write entertaining stories such as Thomas being scared by the idea of a dragon while celebrating Lunar New Year, Thomas and Hong-Mei racing, yes I know there were plenty of Thomas and Diesel ones in AEG but unlike them BWBA offers more than just that, an Elephant pushing Thomas back onto the line. They had much better conflict than AEG's attempt. Oh Kana was trying to make another painting and was told to look for inspiration that got resolved too quickly? Well OK, I would rather sit through the idea of Thomas going down the wrong track in the middle of the Australian outback because he was too proud to admit he was wrong. Something that was built up from taking Shane's train to him making up facts and all about the Australian outback.
Hell I'll take 'Apology Impossible' over any AEG episode, even if James' persona was highly flanderised. At least it was entertaining and ironically more memorable than whatever episode had aired here. I mean some people are still talking about it for nearly a decade! And yet some have been saying to critics to get over their AEG hate.
It's strange how Mattel thinks this would make Thomas better with its toy sales and while there had been good numbers in their quarterly reports it didn't last too long and of course as I'd said in previous posts, here in Australia, the places that I'd been I had hardly seen much demand for toys. Not even the NSW Rail Museum at Thirlmere had much last time I'd visited in late 2024 and they would usually have more than any of the big chain stores (i.e - Big W, Kmart, Target, Myer etc.) even during my visits to the United States I had hardly seen much Thomas toys of the show either.
However I am excited for the 80th anniversary items that Mattel had announced to be released and I was surprised to see that most of the toys we're seeing are more akin to the original look of Thomas, as it should be, that he was seen in the later CGI era such as the die-cast toy as part of their ruby collection, the Train-Sim 5 collaboration, the minis with Reginald Payne's painting of Thomas on the side tanks and, even though they hadn't officially announced it just yet, the redesigned Motorised Thomas that shares the same SKU code as the AEG Thomas, very likely it's going to replace it. Not to mention Japan's release of the Railway Series Thomas the Tank Engine that would come out next month, Dalby face and all.
We had not seen, as of writing this post in February, any new AEG toy for the west apart from Duck and Douglas and we already knew about these characters since last year and they weren't part of the 80th anniversary line up. While I am excited to see what Mattel would release for Thomas' 80th anniversary, I believe they won't, sadly, market it very well as usual.
While we await for the second half of this season, watchout for my CGI re-review of S22 coming out March 3rd.
