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"And I can easily agree that CGI Fireman Sam is definitely one of those bad reboots! Why do I call this a "reboot" instead of just Season 6 onwards? Because Season 6 seriously feels like I'm watching a completely different show! The characters look and act different, the setting is different, the animation is different, the feel is different. One of the best things about Season 5 was because even though it was made a few years after the original series ended, that season felt like a sequel season to the show. Kind of like Samurai Jack Season 5. The characters were the same, the setting was the same, the humour was the same, and some elements from the original seasons were present in this season. But Season 6 has basically nothing connected to the fifth season or the other four seasons, except for: Sam's catchphrase of "Great Fires of London!", the characters' names and theme song. That's basically it!"
— James A. Williams, from his "CGI Fireman Sam" rant video
"Oh, by the way, if you are one of those little bastards who go about disliking episodes of the original Fireman Sam series because it apparently looks fake in comparison to your magnificently shite CGI series, stop it! Just because your generation is "f*cked" doesn't mean you can take it out on classic pieces of your parents' culture."
— Jeffery Kitsch, from his "Fireman Sam in Action" critique[1]
Fireman Sam (also known as Sam Tân) is a British children's television series. It is based around the inhabitants of Welsh town Pontypandy (a portmanteau of the names of two real-life towns, Pontypridd and Tonypandy), especially firefighter Sam Jones.
The show first aired on S4C on September 15, 1987, in Wales and November 17, 1987, on BBC One; four seasons were made until the show ended with the episode "Disaster for Dinner" on October 15, 1994 in Wales and November 17, 1994 in the UK. Nine years later after the original series ended, it would later be revived by HiT Entertainment for a 5th season, which first aired on S4C on March 30, 2003, in Wales and on CBeebies on April 4, 2005 in the UK, and ended on December 25, 2005, with the episode "Let It Snow"; after that, re-runs of this season aired on CBeebies until 2008 when the show left the channel and soon started airing on Cartoonito and Channel 5's Milkshake block. Later that year, the show was revived again for a 6th season, and it would be the first season of the show to use CGI animation instead of stop-motion animation.
While the first five seasons (1987-1988, 1990, 1994, 2005) were well received, the same can't be said for season 6 onwards (2008-present), which have been poorly received by fans and are considered to be the moment where the show would undergo a seasonal rot. These seasons are commonly referred to as the "CGI series" or "new series" by fans.
Why It's Not the Hero Next Door Anymore
- Despite being another attempt to revive the show again rather than a reboot, these seasons have little to no connection to the earlier seasons as some of the characters technically look nothing like they did before, and Pontypandy's layout is completely different. Not to mention, these seasons are completely disrespectful to the source material.
- Many elements from the classic seasons are nonexistent in these seasons, let alone the fact there is no continuity to any of them. The biggest examples are Dilys Price and her shop. Dilys was redesigned to the point where she barely looks anything like her original self and her shop, now renamed the Cut Price Store, also looks nothing like how it looked in the previous seasons either. It was completely redesigned with no rhyme or reason why, and for whatever reason, it's now a supermarket, which makes no sense because a normal supermarket looks ten times bigger than Dilys' general shop. This was most likely done so that way they wouldn't have any product placement like how they did in the original series. A simpler solution for this would just be to black out the labels and replace them all with simple blank shapes.
- However, ever since Season 8, the shop is no longer called a supermarket, a likely sign that the writers realized all this.
- To continue with Pontypandy's layout being completely different, most of the locations in Pontypandy alongside Dilys' shop have now been completely redesigned for no reason at all, and they bear little resemblance to how they looked in the classic seasons, with the most notable example being the Pontypandy Fire Station, which almost looks nothing like the original fire station, especially from Heroes of the Storm onward. Pontypandy also seems to now be set way closer to the ocean, despite it being supposed to be based on two real-life towns, Pontypridd and Tonypandy, and both of these locations are nowhere close to the ocean in real life.
- In fact, the only bits of connection with the older seasons of the show are the character's names, the show still being set in Pontypandy (albeit with a different layout), the theme song, a few of the characters' designs making a small resemblance to how they looked in season 5, Sam still using his "Great fires of London!" catchphrase in seasons 6 and 7, a picture of the fire brigade from season 5, and another picture of Bella Lasagne from the original series from the 1980s, but that's pretty much it.
- It may be true that practically every revival is not 100% like the original show it is based on, but with these seasons' case, it doesn't matter because they're classified as seasons and not a reboot, and they're extremely unfaithful to the original seasons to the point where the excuse doesn't even matter anymore.
- Even some of the characters are portrayed differently from how they were in the first five seasons, such as Woolly for example, who was a male lamb in season 5 that belonged to Norman Price, but in the CGI series, he is now a female sheep who is the mother of a lamb called Lambykins, which shows that there are also zero connections to season 5 as well.
- It's even explained in the movie Set for Action! that the original series (seasons 1-4) is an old TV show in this new continuity and was confirmed that the CGI series takes place in a separate universe since in one scene Sam says to Charlie that they used to watch an old fireman show on television when they were kids, which explains why the series is different from the first five seasons and also shows that these seasons are only called Fireman Sam by name and should've been an entirely different show altogether.
- This is not helped by the fact that seasons 10, 14, and 15 sped up the show's decline in quality, with season 10 being infamous for having some of the worst episodes of the show like "Spy Games" and "Froggy Fantasy", as well as seasons 14 and 15 being arguably by far the worst seasons of the entire series for several reasons.
- Even though a slight update was previously given to their uniforms in Heroes of the Storm, in season 14, the Firefighters were given new uniforms that are meant to imitate the modern firefighter outfits of today since most firefighters nowadays don't wear the type of uniforms that the crew wore during the stop-motion era and the early CGI seasons. However, the main problem with the new outfits is that they look terrible since they're filled with too many design details that make them look overdesigned and cluttered in comparison to the outfits from the previous five seasons where they had a more timeless feel to them.
- The vehicles were given horrendous redesigns that not only look ugly, but make it more clear how different the CGI era is to the stop-motion era, with the most infamous example being Jupiter which looks nothing like it did in the previous seasons but also terrible since it looks way too blocky and modernized overall and is a ridiculously huge downgrade from the original Jupiter design, and looks like a rejected vehicle from Thunderbirds. Additionally, the decision to redesign Jupiter makes no sense considering that real-life fire engines that Jupiter's design from the fifth to fourteenth seasons was based on are still being used in the British Isles, which Wales is part of.
- Bella Lasagne seems to be back to being absent from the entire show again since season 9, which shows how very little the writers care about the source material of the first five seasons and is an example of Mattel mocking the Fireman Sam fandom, just like they did to the Thomas the Tank Engine fandom.
- For no rhyme or reason, they decided to turn Helen Flood into a firefighter, which doesn't suit her since she's meant to be a nurse who cures people and helps them with their injuries or body problems.
- Many elements from the classic seasons are nonexistent in these seasons, let alone the fact there is no continuity to any of them. The biggest examples are Dilys Price and her shop. Dilys was redesigned to the point where she barely looks anything like her original self and her shop, now renamed the Cut Price Store, also looks nothing like how it looked in the previous seasons either. It was completely redesigned with no rhyme or reason why, and for whatever reason, it's now a supermarket, which makes no sense because a normal supermarket looks ten times bigger than Dilys' general shop. This was most likely done so that way they wouldn't have any product placement like how they did in the original series. A simpler solution for this would just be to black out the labels and replace them all with simple blank shapes.
- These seasons are rather unnecessary to begin with since the show didn't need to be revived again, as HiT Entertainment already revived the show before with season 5, which ended up being a really good season and a great way to try to revive it. They could have simply continued with the stop-motion animation, kept the original continuity, and/or taken all the great elements from season 5 and put them over into season 6, but for unknown reasons, HiT Entertainment decided to not do that and instead made the decision to revive the show again in CGI, causing the decline to happen.
- Some have speculated this was due to Siriol Productions being purchased by Lyons in 2005 and getting absorbed into Calon, but while they're still clearly active and are still making shows today, they became a new studio and are under a different name, which proves that HiT had no reason to ditch them in favor of Xing Xing Digital, and only wanted to cash in on the CGI trend that peaked during the 2000s, which explains why the animation looks inferior to season 5, but more on that later.
- In the case of HiT Entertainment knowing the company's name change, the change from stop-motion to CGI could be because due to the UK's taxation rises back in the late 2000s, the animation was outsourced to Xing Xing Digital as a way to cut corners. Thus, explaining the drop in quality.
- It becomes even more clear why HiT Entertainment didn't need to bring the series back into CGI, since they were originally going to turn Fireman Sam into a Thunderbirds clone and revamp nearly everything from the first five seasons completely, even to the point where they were possibly going to turn Tom Thomas into a main villain, which would've already have given the CGI series its infamous reputation right from the very start in 2008. Though they did change it back to being the same premise and ultimately decided to not go with the idea of turning it into a Thunderbirds clone, it's still an example of HiT Entertainment not knowing how to handle the series and how much they ruined it when they were making the CGI series in its concept stage.
- Some have speculated this was due to Siriol Productions being purchased by Lyons in 2005 and getting absorbed into Calon, but while they're still clearly active and are still making shows today, they became a new studio and are under a different name, which proves that HiT had no reason to ditch them in favor of Xing Xing Digital, and only wanted to cash in on the CGI trend that peaked during the 2000s, which explains why the animation looks inferior to season 5, but more on that later.
- These seasons try way too hard to modernize the Fireman Sam franchise, but it's done very poorly to the point where it doesn't even feel like the same show anymore, and instead feels like another generic kids' show.
- A notable example is that the characters frequently use smartphones, which feels quite out of place since the first five seasons rarely tried to be hip with kids.
- Another notable example is the episode "Alien Bug Hunt", which capitalizes on the craze that was generated by Pokémon Go. It's true that Pokémon is one of the most popular franchises in the world and that Pokémon Go is a popular app, especially in 2016, but making an entire episode that parodies Pokémon Go really shows that the writers were not even trying here.
- To make matters worse, Pokémon Go was no longer as popular by the time this episode was released, thus making it extremely outdated. The fact that the episode aired in 2018, two years after the game had massive attention, doesn't help.
- It has a more cartoony and faster-paced tone that was absent in the previous five seasons, as nearly all of the emergencies are caused by wacky hijinks and shenanigans that usually happen in most modern cartoons, whereas they were at least subtle since they suited their tone which was meant to be cartoony and unrealistic, but for Fireman Sam, it feels out of place since the first five seasons were meant to be more realistic in the same vein as Thomas & Friends, seasons 1 and 2 of Postman Pat, Wind in the Willows and Coronation Street, and aside from Pontypandy being a fictional town, most of the content and tone of the first five seasons were replicative of real-life situations, which is something that the CGI series lacks altogether.
- There are also numerous unrealistic moments in these seasons, with the biggest example being "The Last Straw" where the Vet Country Practice catches fire from a broken wind blower and the animals are still in the stables, yet they survive the fire although fire can kill animals very easily as proven by numerous incidents from forest fires reported in numerous countries, especially Australia, and so much of the animals in the stables were likely to die in the blaze, thus making their survival from the fire make no sense.
- One of the biggest flaws about these seasons is that the show now uses CGI animation instead of stop-motion animation. While that is understandable, since stop-motion animation is very hard to make than CGI animation, and due to taxation rises in the United Kingdom. However, the CGI animation is a massive downgrade from the stop-motion animation in season 5 and is also some of the worst CGI animations in any kids' show ever as it looks robotic, jagged, outdated, dull, weak, ugly, and lazy (especially in season 6 and 7, due to them having very low-quality CGI animation, washed-out textures and colors, stilted, robotic, and forced movements from the characters and terrible water, fire and smoke effects) to the point where it somewhat looks a bit like something out of a film from Vídeo Brinquedo.
- It doesn't help the fact that the show was animated by Xing Xing Digital in seasons 6-10, a company that is somewhat infamous for making shows with low-budget animation in them, and thus, they did not do a great job at trying to translate Fireman Sam's animation into CGI.
- Animation errors are very common in these seasons too, even worse compared to the errors that were made in the previous seasons. One infamous example is in the episode "Floating Cart", which had one scene where Norman, Mike, Helen, and her van all disappear for approximately one-fifth of a second in the United Kingdom version, as seen in this video. Thankfully, this error is fixed in the United States version. A second example is in the season 6 premiere episode "Paper Plane Down", which had one scene where Station Officer Steele's mouth was not moving when he says "Come here!" at Norman in the United Kingdom version, as seen in this video. Thankfully, this error was fixed in the United States version. A third example is in "Sticky Situation", where at the very beginning of the episode, viewers can spot a literal red line (most likely used for making the animation) on the right side of the screen. How did no one in the animation department notice this till James A. Williams (check below) noticed?!
- Thankfully, it has improved since Season 11 when DHX Media took over, but it's still not perfect, as the fire and smoke effects still look terrible, and the animation is also still not as good as the animation in Season 5.
- Aside from the unneeded character redesigns like Dilys, the overall character designs in these seasons are extremely unappealing to look at and are mostly unfaithful to the character designs in the original series, as most of the characters look a lot more buff compared to their original counterparts and unlike the first five seasons, which had the characters designed in an ultra cartoonish, semi-realistic style, the characters in these seasons are instead designed in a realistic style, which does not suit them.
- Sometimes, there are moments where the faces of the characters can look very uncanny, creepy, ugly, laughable, or just simply off-putting. The best examples are seen in these images.
- It should be noted that the cousin relatives of the older characters lazily rehashed designs of said characters, such as Jerry Lee Cridlington (who is just Elvis but with the same hairstyle as his basis Jerry Lee Lewis (another iconic Rock 'n' Roll pioneer in the same vein as the late Elvis Presley) which was meant to intentional, but he looks more his twin rather than his cousin due to having the same character design), and Derek Price (who is just Norman Price but with brown hair, different colored clothes, and no glasses). Because of this, most of them look more like twin siblings rather than cousins.
- Ironically, both Sam and Helen have siblings that are distinct from them due to them being younger than said characters, with them being both Charlie Jones (introduced in season 6) and Malcolm Williams (introduced in season 12 and becoming a mainstay character ever since).
- Most of the main characters have gotten flanderized beyond recognition:
- Norman Price is the biggest, and overall worst offender of this. He suffers from the absolute worst flanderization and character derailment of all the Fireman Sam characters, and even one of the worst in cartoon history. He has gone from a mischievous boy who would play harmless tricks on his friends and family while also caring about their safety, into an extremely unlikable, loud, whiny, spoiled, bratty, annoying, and arrogant jerk who puts his friends in danger from time to time, does very illegal, evil, and dangerous things for the pettiest reasons, and is rarley punished for his actions, making him a Karma Houdini. He is at his absolute worst in episodes like "Spy Games" and "Froggy Fantasy" where he did things like tying James to a chair for a stupid stunt scene for a movie in the former episode and trapping him inside the changing rooms by literally gluing the door shut just so he could be the star of a synchronized swimming show in the latter episode. He is also at his worst in the movie "The Great Fire of Pontypandy" where he stole sausages from his mother's shop to a camping trip when he wasn't allowed to, and going off starting a fire in the middle of a forest in hot summer weather, and failing to put it out, allowing the summer heat to turn the smoke into flames that nearly brings the end of Pontypandy and almost forces the entirety of the town to leave and let their town burn in the unbeatable fire. Had it not been for the lack of rain, that would have actually happened. (while he did get punished for this, the punishment wasn't good enough)
- What makes his character even more aggravating in these seasons is that most episodes involve him doing something ridiculous, and they always end in unintentional failure due to him not planning them out which therefore causes him to get into trouble, but unlike in the first five seasons, these are not harmless pranks or silly tricks, as mentioned above, and instead dangerous stunts and tricks that are more harmful towards the people around him.
- Whilst Norman had his first share of moments where he did harmful stunts in the first five seasons, most of his actions were often planned out to prevent failure and his irresponsible actions only happened every once in a while, not every episode.
- It doesn't help the fact that he gets way too much screen time in many episodes of these seasons, even when he's not the main focus. The writers seem to have the motto, "When in doubt, always shove Norman into the scene."
- To make matters worse, every episode where he serves as the main character ends with him apologizing for his irresponsible and/or reckless behavior, with the team letting him off with a warning and Norman acting like he's "learned" his lesson, but he quickly forgets everything he's learned in the next episode.
- Because of this, he never gets any sort of character development in these seasons and his personality has remained the same in every season of the show since season 6; in fact, his character got even worse as the show went along, not helping by the fact he causes nearly every emergency in seasons 8-10. However, he has improved somewhat since season 13 (see Redeeming Qualities).
- What makes his character even more aggravating in these seasons is that most episodes involve him doing something ridiculous, and they always end in unintentional failure due to him not planning them out which therefore causes him to get into trouble, but unlike in the first five seasons, these are not harmless pranks or silly tricks, as mentioned above, and instead dangerous stunts and tricks that are more harmful towards the people around him.
- Elvis Cridlington has gone from a somewhat dimwitted, yet friendly firefighter into an idiotic firefighter who acts like an absolute knucklehead and is terrible at his job. Sure, Elvis had his fair share of dumb moments in the first five seasons, such as trying to put out an electrical fire with a bucket in "A Real Live Wire", but he still did a decent job as a firefighter, but here, his incompetence is so bad that it makes you wonder why he even chose to be a firefighter in the first place.
- Some examples of him being an absolute moron and a knucklehead in these seasons are when he got scared of being in a helicopter harness (even though he's a fireman), calling the fire department when there was a fire in the kitchen instead of getting a fire extinguisher, and when he fed Radar (the fire station dog) chocolate (which are sweets that can actually kill dogs), mistaking them for doggy treats.
- It seems like the writers were trying to make Elvis more of comic relief in these seasons in an attempt to make him "funnier", but it doesn't work well at all because even though Elvis was not a comic relief in the first five seasons, he was still a funny character, and though they do try to make him funny here, it just comes across as annoying and frustrating than actually funny.
- The CGI series also fails to acknowledge that Elvis was occasionally smart in the first five seasons and did know his job as a firefighter, such as in the season 5 episode "Mummy's Little Pumpkin", where he gives Norman advice about being careful around candles and tells him to blow them out before he goes to bed (which is true since candles can be dangerous at times and can cause fires unintentionally), which is what happens in the episode where Norman places the pumpkin in a place that isn't suitable for it to stay on and in the night, he slams the door and the pumpkin falls over along with the candle and accidentally causes a fire to happen at Dilys' Store. At the end of the episode, Norman promises he'll never slam doors and misuse pumpkins ever again and regrets ever doing such a thing like that ever again, which is something that the CGI series doesn't acknowledge in the slightest due to how flanderized both Norman and Elvis are in the CGI series overall.
- Station Officer Steele has gone from a strict and mature authority figure into a silly doofus who never reprimands Elvis when he does something wrong. He does yell things like "Cridlington!", but even that's not saying much. He is much more competent and tolerable when compared to Elvis Cridlington, as he is still capable of doing his job at being the fire station's senior officer.
- He also plays with children's toys and does a terrible job at being the Station Officer of the Fire Brigade.
- Sarah and James Jones have gone from being kind and caring siblings who both loved each other no matter what into problematic siblings who act like complete jerks to each other to the point where they constantly quarrel and fight each other 24/7 for no rhyme or reason whatsoever. Thankfully, this appears to have mostly stopped since season 13.
- James has also been reduced into nothing more than just a punching bag for Norman, as he often is always the victim of Norman's irresponsible actions and most of the episodes where Norman is at his absolute worst are when he is trying to do something harmful towards James.
- Bella Lasagne now has a weird obsession with pizza, as she often quotes that making, selling, and delivering pizzas to the entire village of Pontypandy, and her café was retconned into a restaurant, which makes her an offensive stereotype in the CGI series, unlike in seasons 1-5 where she felt like a proper character and was portrayed as a proper person who made all types of different foods and was very mature and still loved doing her job. However, she is still a likable character though and hasn't completely changed, unlike Norman, Elvis, Steele, Sarah, and James.
- Norman Price is the biggest, and overall worst offender of this. He suffers from the absolute worst flanderization and character derailment of all the Fireman Sam characters, and even one of the worst in cartoon history. He has gone from a mischievous boy who would play harmless tricks on his friends and family while also caring about their safety, into an extremely unlikable, loud, whiny, spoiled, bratty, annoying, and arrogant jerk who puts his friends in danger from time to time, does very illegal, evil, and dangerous things for the pettiest reasons, and is rarley punished for his actions, making him a Karma Houdini. He is at his absolute worst in episodes like "Spy Games" and "Froggy Fantasy" where he did things like tying James to a chair for a stupid stunt scene for a movie in the former episode and trapping him inside the changing rooms by literally gluing the door shut just so he could be the star of a synchronized swimming show in the latter episode. He is also at his worst in the movie "The Great Fire of Pontypandy" where he stole sausages from his mother's shop to a camping trip when he wasn't allowed to, and going off starting a fire in the middle of a forest in hot summer weather, and failing to put it out, allowing the summer heat to turn the smoke into flames that nearly brings the end of Pontypandy and almost forces the entirety of the town to leave and let their town burn in the unbeatable fire. Had it not been for the lack of rain, that would have actually happened. (while he did get punished for this, the punishment wasn't good enough)
- Some of the voice acting is painful to listen to, with the voices ranging from annoying to unpleasant, particularly the children, Elvis, and some other characters, especially in the UK dub.
- In the United Kingdom version, the voices of the children in particular, including Sarah and James sound terrible, as they sound more like adults giving high-pitched voices than actual children. The worst example among them is unquestionably Steve Kynman as Norman, whose voice can be downright unbearable to listen to, as it sounds like a terrible cross between Jar Jar Binks and Carl Wheezer from Jimmy Neutron with a Welsh accent at the same time. This is most notable during the scene in the episode "Cry Wolf" where he confesses to Dilys that he was the one who set off the fire alarm. It's rather pathetic when compared to the voice actors for the children in season 5 because they did fantastic jobs at trying to create real children's voices and it feels like they put a lot more effort into making the voices. Even John Alderton in the first four seasons did a much better job at voicing the children, and he voiced every single character in those seasons too. When comparing those seasons to these, it feels like the voice actors didn't even try here.
- Elvis' United Kingdom voice is very annoying to listen to because it sounds like Steve Kynman doing a poor man's version of Elvis' voice from Season 5 and it makes him sound a lot dumber than he was in the first five seasons, similar to the voice that Paul Panting would later give to Muck in the Bob the Builder reboot.
- Some characters even have almost the same voice as other characters, with the most notable example being Trevor Evans, Mike Flood, and Charlie Jones, who all sound scarcely any different to each other. It doesn't help that Trevor and Mike shared the same voice actor until season 12 (David Carling). Similarly, James' voice in seasons 6 and 7 sounds barely any different from Norman's (due to the fact they shared the same voice actor at the time, Steven Kynman), but at a higher pitch. However, as of season 8, John Hasler voices James instead, giving the character a more distinctive voice.
- To make matters worse, none of the voice actors from season 5 (John Sparkes, Sarah Hadland, and Joanna Ruiz) reprised their roles for the characters that they played, and even though Steve Kynman, Su Douglas, David Carling, Tegwen Tucker and the rest of the voice crew since season 6 do decent jobs at replacing the voices for the characters (except for Elvis Cridlington and the children), they don't sound as good as the ones given by John Sparkes, Sarah Hadland, Joanna Ruiz in season 5 or even John Alderton in the first four seasons.
- The music is rather bland compared to the previous five seasons, as most of it feels like the same melody every single time but with a few notes switched around. Even the rendition of the iconic rescue theme that was recomposed from the fifth season got dull and repetitive, as there is a section at the end not in the original that never seems to stop playing until the rescue is over.
- Though it should also be worth noting that the original rescue theme itself was retired from use in season 12.
- The emergencies are heavily watered down when compared to the first five seasons, as they're rather way too simple, not very threatening, or are rehashed from previous seasons, or in the case of the 11th episode from season 6, "Seeing Red", where Sarah trips over a pebble and hurts her knee, not very well suited for a fire emergency and more suitable for a hospital emergency. However, the worst emergencies these seasons have to offer are the ones caused by Norman, as he causes nearly every single emergency in seasons 8-10 and never learns from his mistakes from doing those emergencies, with the most infamous examples of these emergencies being when he ties James up in a room that has Joe's petrol cans in "Spy Games", and when he caused James to get stuck in the swimming pool changing room by gluing the inside of the keyhole on his changing room door in the infamous episode "Froggy Fantasy", which is considered by many fans to be one of the most infamous moments in the show to date, due to how delusional and despicable Norman was when he did that such a horrible thing to James. Thankfully, he got punished for it by doing chores after how disgusted the townspeople were at Norman trapping James in the changing rooms.
- The same can be said about the rescue scenes in seasons 6-10, as they are lackluster and lack a sense of action mainly due to how predictably solved they are and suffer from very slow pacing thanks to the terrible animation these seasons have. In the stop-motion era, the rescue scenes were portrayed as very serious and had the viewer fearing what was going to happen to the firemen and whether they would make it out alive or not, which is something that the CGI era completely lacks altogether. However, the rescue scenes somewhat improved in Season 11 and have been consistently solid ever since Xing Xing Digital stopped animating the series.
- Even though this was unintentional and was obviously beyond the scope of HiT Entertainment's and Mattel's control as they both originally had no idea what the animation team for the show could sneak in, there was one infamous scene in the season 9 episode "Troubled Waters", which involved Elvis accidentally stepping and slipping on a page of the Qur'an.[2] It spawned so much controversies and backlash that both HiT Entertainment and Mattel later realized this was a big mistake, and not only was the episode banned from future airings, but they also stated that they would no longer be working with Xing Xing Digital, one of the animation companies working for the show since the switch to CGI in the first place back in 2008, causing the show to be animated by DHX Media instead from season 11 onwards. The offending scene was later re-edited to have the page changed to a blank piece of paper, but even so, the damage had already been done by then.
- While this may not sound offensive at first, this is offensive to Muslims' strict customs and culture since the Qur'an is the Muslim equivalent to the Holy Bible and according to Wikipedia, shoving in any depictions of the Qur'an getting damaged or destroyed is considered sacrilege and disrespect to them. Thankfully, though the episode was banned from airing and Mattel never talks about it that much. This is another example of how bad the CGI seasons were and why this annoyed many Muslims and fans of the series alike.
- If this sounds familiar, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and LittleBigPlanet both had verses that were from the Qur'an in their soundtrack, the former being the Fire Temple, and the latter being the song Tapha Niang, which goes against the Muslim custom where the Qur'an verses are supposed to be said in silence. Both were eventually edited out in later copies and a version update.
- Sometimes, a few episodes can have major plot holes or notable goofs that can often make the viewers scratch their heads, with most of them being even worse than some of the goofs or errors that were made in the first five seasons. Some examples include:
- Nipper being seen in a photo with the Pontypandy Fire Brigade and not Radar in "Norman's Big Fossil Adventure".
- The rain not extinguishing the fire in the Heroes of the Storm movie. The funny thing is that rain-extinguishing fire was used as a plot device during the climax of The Great Fire of Pontypandy, which was made four years earlier.
- The aforementioned scene where Norman, Mike, Helen, and her van all disappear for approximately one-fifth of a second in the United Kingdom version of "Floating Cart".
- The aforementioned scene where Station Officer Steele was not moving his mouth when he says "Come here!" at Norman in the United Kingdom version of "Paper Plane Down".
- The door being open when Mike never opened it to begin with in "Hot and Cold Running Sniffer Dog".
- The aforementioned red line on the right side of the screen is "Sticky Situation".
- The wrapping paper goes through the floor when Norman opens up the present Mandy gave him for his birthday in "Sticky Situation".
- Mandy speaking in Sarah's voice when she says "and Norman" in "Sheep on the Road".
- Jupiter's wheels not moving when Sam and Elvis arrive in Jupiter for the second time in "Cry Wolf".
- Station Officer Steele's helmet was with the other helmets when he said Elvis hid it in "Norman's Big Fossil Adventure".
- There are even various instances of the new uniforms that were from "Heroes of the Storm" briefly appearing in some season 9 episodes even though said uniforms were not yet introduced until that special, including Sam doing so in "Norman's Big Fossil Adventure" and Elvis doing so in "Pontypandy Heatwave".
- Bronwyn's body from the waist down (apart from her feet) not being shown when Moose tells James to get help in "The Pontypandyness Monster".
- Though unintentionally most of the time, most of these episodes can show kids very bad morals. For example, in most episodes where Norman starts a fire, steals a vehicle, or even traps another person, he is never given much punishment aside from Sam telling him not to do that.
- The first five seasons had a bit of character development for Norman Price, which is notable by the fact that when he was the cause of the problem or even the emergency in the episode of those seasons, he would learn his lesson never to do it again. But here, there is no character development at all, with most of them, including Norman and Elvis, remaining the same as they were ever since the switch to CGI in season 6.
- While not as bad as in the Bob the Builder reboot, some of the main characters in the seasons are either completely absent or were removed entirely:
- Bella is completely absent during seasons 6-9 despite her café still being there. When she returned in season 10, it was revealed that she moved to Newtown, which makes no sense considering how successful her business was doing back in season 5.
- To make things even worse, Bella has still not been seen working at her café since her return to CGI and has only been occasionally seen helping to make pizza, which is another example of why these seasons feel like a completely different show to the first five seasons.
- Despite being introduced in season 5 and having important roles in many episodes of that season, Dusty was completely removed in season 6 for no reason at all and was likely replaced with Radar (who was one of the characters introduced in Season 6), an incredibly racist firedog stereotype.
- Rosa was also completely removed since Bella didn't make any appearances at all during seasons 6-9. What makes it even worse is that even though Bella returned in season 10, Rosa has still yet to return to the series.
- Though it was likely that Rosa wasn't brought back because her design might have clashed with Lion's design (who is another character that was introduced in season 6).
- Bella is completely absent during seasons 6-9 despite her café still being there. When she returned in season 10, it was revealed that she moved to Newtown, which makes no sense considering how successful her business was doing back in season 5.
- In a similar manner to how Bob the Builder and Noddy's Toyland Adventures had American-English dubs for United States audiences. which were kind of pointless to exist, especially for Noddy, since that show was supposed to have a British setting, and although it is more tolerable to listen to most of the time, seasons 6-11 were unnecessarily dubbed to American-English for United States audiences. Not only is it pointless because it takes half of the charm away from the not-so-good original United Kingdom dub, but it is also very unnecessary because Fireman Sam is supposed to be a show set in Wales, so there is no reason whatsoever to even dub a show to United States English if it takes place in a country that's part of the United Kingdom.
- What makes it even more pointless about seasons 6-11 having a United States dub is that when it did air in the United States before the release of the American-English dub on Amazon Prime Video in 2014, it only aired the original United Kingdom dub:
- When the show aired on Sprout (now Universal Kids) (and on Qubo from 2019-2021), the original United Kingdom dub aired, and even the versions that came out on Netflix, Tubi, and Roku uses the British-English dub.
- Something that makes the United States dubs for seasons 6-11 even more pointless to exist is that the first five seasons have never been dubbed into American English once. Season 5 retained its original United Kingdom dub when it aired on PBS Kids Sprout and on United States DVD releases (including the Thomas & Friends: Engines and Escapades DVD, since it contained "Fiery Finale" as a bonus episode), and the original series was localized to the United States in a rare three-episode VHS tape called "The Hero Next Door" released by F.H.E. (Family Home Entertainment) in 1989, and the United Kingdom dub still maintained. And when the first five seasons were released on other streaming services such as Tubi and Roku, the original United Kingdom dubs still maintained. Even the American Amazon Prime releases of the first five seasons retained their original United Kingdom dubs.
- However, begining with season 12-present, the show isn't dubbed to American-English anymore.
- What makes it even more pointless about seasons 6-11 having a United States dub is that when it did air in the United States before the release of the American-English dub on Amazon Prime Video in 2014, it only aired the original United Kingdom dub:
- The scripts for each episode are flat and badly written. As a result, the humor is less funny and comes off as bland, stupid, dull, and hard to laugh out of, such as Station Officer Steele's infamous line in the episode "Model Plane", "You made me crunch my lunch!".
- With that being said, these seasons are loaded with bad episodes, such as:
- "Paper Plane Down" (which started these seasons on a mediocre note and began the downfall of the series)
- "Hot and Cold Running Sniffer Dog"
- "Hearts On Fire"
- "No Nurse Like You"
- "Floating Kart"
- "Cry Wolf" (considered one of the worst episodes of the show)
- "Blow Me Down"
- "Off Duty Sam"
- "Magic Norman"
- "Norman's Halloween Heist"
- "Model Plane"
- "Jupiter On The Loose"
- "Open Day"
- "Night of the Norman"
- "Escape from Pontypandy Island"
- "Girls' Night In"
- "The Great Guinea Pig Rescue"
- "Three Legged Race"
- "Lighthouse Lock Out"
- "The Pontypandyness Monster"
- "Norman's Big Fossil Adventure"
- "Pontypandy Heatwave"
- "Froggy Fantasy" (possibly the worst episode of the entire show)
- "Sky Lanterns"
- "Spy Games" (also counts as the worst)
- "Cadet Catastrophe"
- "Monster Mania"
- "Blast from the Past"
- "Shape Up and Shine"
- "Alien Bug Hunt"
- "Wally Wizzo"
- "Great Billboard of Fire"
- "Escape from Dinosaur Island"
- "Norman Burns Up the Dancefloor" (which began the thirteenth season on a very poor note)
- "New Dog On The Block"
- "Too Many Peas, Too Many Plugs"
- "Fiery Football"
- "Fireman James"
- "Deputy James"
- "Firework Party"
- "The Why Files 2: The Beast of Pontypandy"
- "Seeing Red" (easily the most forgettable episode of the entire series)
- "Hot Potato"
- Some episodes even rehash ideas or stories from episodes of the first five seasons, the most notable example being "Three Legged Race" (which is a rehash of the season 5 episode "Fun Run"). Some other newer episodes even reuse several plot ideas from older CGI episodes. Many other examples of rehashed episodes and concepts include:
- "The Great Guinea Pig Rescue", which is a part rehash of "A Real Live Wire".
- "Floodlights", which rehashed "Santa Overboard".
- "Deputy James", which is a part rehash of "Fireman James".
- "Stuck In The Muck", which is a part rehash of "Bug Eyed Boy From Venus"
- "Bus Trouble", which is a part rehash of "Stuck In The Muck".
- "Run Norman Run", which is a part rehash of "Fun Run" (though it could be considered a decent episode).
- Many episodes rehash the single concept of overloading a socket, which was only done right in the season 5 episode, "Norman's Invisible Friend", just in different scenarios, examples of which are listed below.
- "Santa Overboard"
- "Floodlights"
- "Magic Norman"
- "Too Many Peas, Too Many Plugs"
- "Beware of the Fox"
- Not to mention, they tend to overdo specials and movies just to try and revive the series or create new sparks and interests in them, but all that's happening is them abusing the franchise even more and making it more of a cash cow. So far, there have been five movies in less than 12 years, all bad.
- To make matters worse, several of the episodes are written by people like Simon Nicholson (best known for his work on various kids' shows, mainly from Bob the Builder during the Project Build It and Ready Steady Build eras) and Andrew Brenner (best known for his work on his era of Thomas & Friends (seasons 17-21), as well as the last two seasons of the same show he worked on during the BWBA retooling before David Stoten took over starting in "Steam Team to the Rescue" and season 24).
- To be fair though, this was the start of Andrew Brenner working for HiT Entertainment, which eventually resulted in the Brenner era of Thomas & Friends. Without these seasons, Thomas & Friends may not have gotten any better after the Sharon Miller era.
- It's also worth noting that some of the catchphrases from the previous five seasons were butchered in this series to the point where they aren't quotable anymore and have lost their charm, such as Sam's classic catchphrase of "Great Fires of London!" which sounds pathetically bad as he says it with laughter as opposed to being almost complete shock due to how worried he was about another fire or incident was happening and he had to stop it from preventing people to get hurt or killed for that matter, which ruins the importance of the iconic catchphrase if one makes it be said funnily since it wasn't meant to be used for laughter in the first place and was meant to be used for the situation happening in the episode thus getting the viewer pumped to see the fire brigade in action.
- With that being said, these seasons are loaded with bad episodes, such as:
- These seasons rarely take themselves seriously, even if there's an emergency, while in the original five seasons, they always knew when to be serious.
- These seasons sometimes incorporate things like sci-fi elements, which feel very out of place considering the show had a down-to-earth, slice-of-life tone in the first five seasons, in which that tone is somewhat nonexistent here. Major examples of sci-fi use are present in two of the movies, Alien Alert and Norman Price and the Mystery in the Sky.
- While most of the new characters are good, some of them are just poorly written at best, with them getting very little introduction at all and just suddenly appearing in a scene of the episode later with no understanding of who that new character is or are, which makes less relatable and just added to the show to make more merchandise as mentioned below:
- The Chens are rather unlikable, especially Lily as she is extremely annoying and often takes the blame on others for things that they didn't do. The most notable example of her bad behavior can be seen in "Girls' Night In", where she tortures Mandy by causing trouble and blaming it all on her, which makes her very easy to hate.
- Derek is just as annoying and whiny as his cousin, Norman, and he sometimes helps him with his terrible deeds and emergency-causing actions, such as when he and Norman stole fire equipment to use them as oars in "Shape Up and Shine", and even when he tags along with Norman when he drives off in Jupiter in "Jupiter on the Loose", which was extremely immature for both of them.
- Lion is a bad replacement for Rosa, since he always tends to be a subject of either getting lost or being in a bad situation like Norman does when causing an emergency, as it often happened a lot during seasons 6 and 7, and he tends to be annoying at times and is nowhere near as cute as Rosa was in the previous five seasons, making him a poor addition to the cast of new characters introduced in the CGI series overall.
- Nipper is admittedly a rather bland and forgettable character when compared to Dusty, since he got zero introduction in his debut episode, "Seeing Red" and he is just a reskin of Radar (which is another character introduced in the CGI series) and his relationship with the Jones family is rather rushed and forced since he doesn't have much relationship with them and is only connected through Bronwyn's family, making Nipper easily one of the most generic Fireman Sam characters to date.
- Speaking of Radar, he is portrayed as an offensive firedog stereotype as he is a Dalmatian and is only used for emergencies and rescues, and doesn't even have any personality at all just like the other animal characters in the CGI era, which is ironic because Dusty from season 5 had an actual personality and felt cartoony yet real with semi-human emotions and motives, whereas Radar is portrayed as a generic real life firedog and nothing else.
- Not to mention that according to the Fireman Sam Wiki, the reason why Dusty was replaced by Radar was due to Dusty not being a Dalmatian and Dalmatians being more iconic rescue dogs for the fire service, which was a racist and stupid reason to scrap an adorable character, especially since Radar has no personality and is depicted as a racial firedog stereotype, which proves the writing team behind this era didn't care about the source material and tried to modernize the show in the worst ways possible.
- Another problem with many of the new characters is that most of them aren't given a proper introduction nor are they given any backstory at all, as they just randomly appear for no reason given. While season 5 did have the same issue, at least characters like Tom and Mandy had one to fully establish their characters and backstory, whereas the CGI seasons on the other hand just introduce them as if they were always there, which is forced since none of them were even in both the original series and season 5 for that matter.
- Some of the characters are cousins of characters from the original series and their designs are just rehashes of said characters, which is extremely lazy since the CGI series also introduced Charlie Jones, who is Sam's brother and was very distinctive from him, whereas Derek Price, Jerry Lee Criddlington and Annie Morris are just Norman, Elvis and Penny with reverted colors and different hairstyles (Annie also has buck teeth, and Derek has no glasses), and that's it.
- The show became a cash cow for Mattel, HiT Entertainment, Cartoonito, and Channel 5, to the point where it focuses way too much on introducing new characters, vehicles and locations (even going as far as to replace and redesign pre-existing ones like the Fire Station and Wallaby 1, the latter of which was replaced by Wallaby 2 in Alien Alert), but not for interesting story ideas and for new concepts to introduce, but just to sell toys and to milk out on a popular TV show, a problem that also persists in other shows like PAW Patrol, Peppa Pig and Postman Pat: Special Delivery Service.
- Speaking of which, the toys for the show are very poor quality now, as they have little paint on them, the paint they do have is poor quality and scratches easily and the toys have a very low amount of detailing, and have been reported to break within 40 minutes of a kid playing with it. Some reviews have also stated that the vehicles break easily. To make matters worse, it costs $40 or more to produce these toys.
- To promote these toys, the series often uses a very unnecessary number of vehicles for each rescue. In various cases, they can often use up to three rescue vehicles to save a cat from a tree or to put out a very minor fire.
- Some of the vehicles aren't very faithful to how they were in the previous five seasons and have been given completely unnecessary redesigns that look inferior to how they were in season 5, such as Jupiter, as the old fire engine was given a modern look in Seasons 10-present that looks very bloated and some of the iconic features from previous iterations of Jupiter were just completely gone such as the door logo, which originally was a newly revamped version of the old door logo, but got replaced by a more generic one that looks more like a real fire station badge and looks nothing like the ones from the first five seasons nor even the earlier CGI seasons for that matter, and was only done to make the show more modern.
- This was made even worse in season 15 when Jupiter was redesigned again with a more futuristic design that many fans hated when it was revealed, as Mattel decided to Americanize the vehicle for no reason other than money, and since most British fire engines don't even look anything what the new Jupiter looks like, this comes off as Mattel mocking the fans and ignoring the source material just for profit, as mentioned above in WINTHNDA#1.6.2 as to why this change is bad.
- Sometimes, there are times when the writers decide to put some unnecessary tech onto the vehicles to sell more toys and cash in on the show's success. One example is Norman Price and the Mystery in the Sky, the fifth movie in the series, where Elvis and Arnold give Venus a makeover (in which it's briefly renamed the Sam Mobile) that looks terrible, and there's also Set for Action where Jupiter is given another unnecessary (albeit short-lived, as it returns to normal by the end of the special) makeover that adds jet launchers above its wheels, which comes across as a literal marketing strategy and serves no purpose in the film other than to sell toys.
- It's another example of why these seasons are so different from the first five seasons and how much HiT Entertainment and Mattel ruined the show in general.
- Aside from the awful CGI animation, the overall production value of this era is pretty bad since it suffers from poor sound editing, awkward camera angles, occasional grammar mistakes in the dialogue, rushed pacing, and the aforementioned animation errors, which are heavily present in the earlier CGI seasons (with Season 6 being a prime example of this, in the episode "Model Plane" when a bunch of logs rolls down the hill and the wrong sound effect plays incorrectly in the same scene). This is likely due to these seasons being produced on a very low budget, which is an occurrence in most CGI shows during the 2000s. However, shows like The Penguins of Madagascar and Back at the Barnyard had far superior production values and a bigger budget than these seasons, which is ironic since all three shows are animated in CGI are produced with the same restrictions and have the same deadlines, but both TPOM and BATB are given more polish due to being produced by Nickelodeon (a major big name company in the TV business), whereas Fireman Sam is now being produced by Mattel (one of the biggest toy companies in the world) yet it's still being produced with zero care whatsoever.
- In fact, these seasons are cheaper to make than the older stop-motion seasons that have switched animation studios once and are a major contributor to why other shows by Mattel have ended due to being more expensive to make and less easier to market, since Fireman Sam has a major dominance when it comes to toys, and to make it relevant, they make tons of changes, which is the reason why many elements from the stop-motion series were removed and the reason behind the new firefighter outfits and the infamous Jupiter redesign. Most of them were done for money purposes only, thus making these seasons a massive cash grab.
- It tries to add in some cinematic elements and more drama in a few episodes, which is rather ill-fated for a more down-to-earth and laid-back show since the first five seasons had a slice-of-life tone and were set in a realistic setting in South Wales, and aside from the fictional town of Pontypandy, most of the elements of the stop motion era were very realistic and more akin to the real world, which this era decided to abandon for whatever reason, since it features villains and dramatic moments that try to build the story but fail due to bad writing and poor grasp of the source material, and aside from the aforementioned sci-fi elements, there are also fantasy elements and fictional elements that feel out of place for the series and make the show feel less down-to-earth and more whimsical and illusionary, which can also be seen as proof as to why these seasons are completely different from the first five seasons.
- And even when there were some downer moments, they were usually based on real-life situations rather than character arcs, emotional buildup, or a movie cliche that usually happens in most movies and TV shows nowadays, such as Mandy becoming sick with chicken pox (since kids themselves tend to occasionally catch chicken pox now and then at times) and getting her holiday/vacation canceled (which usually happens when someone gets sick at home) and that happened in Season 5, whereas the CGI series utilizes more fictional drama that feels out-of-place in the series and doesn't match with the coziness and wholesome tone of Fireman Sam while only using the action elements which are more cartoony in the CGI series this time around.
- These seasons can occasionally be rather offensive towards certain nationalities and races, especially with the portrayal of Bella Lasagne since she is now relegated to talk about pizza constantly, and Radar being depicted as a stereotype of firedogs and making him act like a real-life dog, or expanding Norman's concept of being a troublemaker from the first five seasons and depicting him as evil, which makes the show seem like it depicts troublemakers as being evil, which is not the case as they can be good people and don't mean any harm (which was true in the first five seasons since Norman was still a lovable character and still cared for others around him), which isn't the case for Norman in the CGI series as he only occasionally cares for others in a few episodes.
- Some parts of the original series and season 5 are retconned for no reason at all and it shows how ignorant the writers were towards the source material:
- In seasons 6 and 7, Sarah and James aren't even referred to or acknowledged Sam as his nephew and niece, as they never call him Uncle Sam and Charlie isn't even referenced to as his brother at all, which is disrespectful to the original series where Sarah and James were meant to be the nephew and niece of Sam and yet these two seasons just have Sam being separate from the twins and their parents. Fortunately, this was fixed in season 8 where James does refer to Sam as his uncle and Charlie is often mentioned as Sam's brother, but it's still something that proves the writers didn't do their research on the original series and didn't understand the source material of the stop motion era in the slightest.
- In the original series, Sam used to create all sorts of new inventions as a hobby, but in the CGI series, Sam's invention making hobby is not seen or mentioned once.
- In the CGI series, Station Officer Steele's real name was changed from "Basil" to "Norris" and it's not explained why.
- Another example is Bella's cafe, as it is now referred to as a restaurant, as seen in the episode where she returns where Bronwyn calls her cafe a restaurant, and it has become a pizzeria now, which doesn't make sense since in season 5, she only got a pizza oven to make pizzas and even then Bella still made other food and her cafe is way too small to be even classed as a restaurant anyways, meaning that the writers didn't acknowledge the original series at all and only see these seasons as typical kids show, thus why these seasons are also different from the stop-motion seasons.
- Norman now apparently hates chemicals for whatever reason, despite being very attached to them in the original series and being a genius in general. Considering that he found out Dusty was suffering in the season 5 episode "Joker Soaker" and also remembered the time he rescued Wooly in a flashback once, it makes this retcon baffling and idiotic as well.
- Although these seasons didn't completely kill the show, and are doing better in comparison to both of these reboots, these seasons overall have completely damaged the reputation of the Fireman Sam franchise as we know it and have completely ruined the show with little to no signs of them ever bringing the show back to how it once was. It has even gotten to the point where these seasons are now even more recognized by kids than the original four seasons and even season 5. Even after Mattel bought HiT's properties in 2012, the series has still not fully improved from any of its flaws, and even some of the stuff that they have improved like the animation and the rescue scenes in season 11 are still not enough to consider the show to be good again.
Redeeming Qualities
- Much like shows such as Bob the Builder reboot and unlike shows such as Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go, these seasons at least keep the show's original premise from the first five seasons, as every episode of these series still always has a moderate conflict that Sam (and/or someone else in the Pontypandy Fire Service) has to resolve.
- In most dubs, the show still uses the season 5 theme song during seasons 6-9 (albeit shortened to 30 seconds) and the newly re-recorded theme song for seasons 10-present is pretty good as well.
- Despite many of the voice actors not doing great jobs at voicing most of the characters, some of the voice actors in the United Kingdom dub and most of the voice actors in the United States dub either sound tolerable or do decent jobs at voicing some specific characters:
- Despite being weaker than John Sparkes' performance for Sam, Tom, Steele, and Norman and Sarah Hadland's performance for Penny, Steve Kynman, David Carling and Tegwen Tucker at least do good jobs at voicing Sam, Station Officer Steele, Tom Thomas and Penny Morris respectively.
- Even though they have the same voices as each other, the voices of Mike and Trevor are at least tolerable to listen to.
- The children's voices in the United States dub, most notably Norman, are pleasant to listen to and they sound more like children than their voices in the United Kingdom dub, mainly because the voice actors in the United States dub are voiced by actual children and not adults like in the United Kingdom dub.
- Colin McFarlane's performance as PC Malcolm Williams is pretty good as well.
- At least Andrew Hodwitz in the United States dub does a better job voicing Elvis.
- Norman's United Kingdom Voice by Steve Kynman is so bad and annoying that it might come off as unintentionally funny.
- Even though many of the main characters were flanderized beyond recognition, some characters were either fortunate enough to not get flanderized or are flanderized but are still likable and enjoyable, including:
- Sam
- Penny (despite not being as strict about safety and discipline as she was in seasons 3-5)
- Station Officer Steele (sometimes, despite his flanderization)
- Dilys Price (despite her aforementioned redesign)
- Tom Thomas
- Bella Lasagne (despite her absence throughout season 6-9 and her random obsession with pizza)
- Mike Flood
- Mandy Flood
- Helen Flood
- Trevor Evans
- Even some of the flanderized characters can still be likable in some ways. For example, Elvis Cridlington, despite being flanderized into an idiot, is still a friendly person and still loves rock music as he did in the previous seasons, there is still some episodes here and there where he is completely in-character and has his original personality, and as of season 13, surprisingly redeemed himself, as he is shown to be slightly less dumb. He hasn't made a bunch of mistakes and has been shown to be nowhere as incompetent and is a bit more intelligent, especially when compared to seasons 6-12. Furthermore, as of the thirteenth season, even though it was late for it to happen, Norman has been surprisingly redeemed somewhat, as his personality traits have been toned down to the point where he is much more well-behaved and no longer causes emergencies frequently as he did in the sixth to twelfth seasons, only doing so occasionally. He even calls the Rescue Team by himself when emergencies do break out in some episodes, including "Pontypandy Wonderland Part 2". Not to mention, Sarah and James redeemed themselves in season 13, because they started to fight less often.
- The CGI series did introduce some new likable characters, such as James and Sarah's parents Charlie and Bronwyn (revealed as Sam's brother and sister-in-law), mountaineer Moose Roberts, coastguard Ben Hooper, PC Malcolm Williams, new firefighters Arnold McKinley and Ellie Phillips, and the Sparkes (mechanic/inventor Joe, veterinarian Lizzie and wheelchair-bound Hannah).
- Although most of the attempts at trying to be funny fail very miserably, there are still a handful of good humor in the CGI series, such as:
- Elvis Cridlington pretending that his wheelchair is a fire engine and yelling "Nee naw, nee naw!" while coming down to help Steele and Norman (who are both trapped in the railings) in "Elvis Sings the Blues".
- Station Officer Steele chasing Elvis with a fly swatter in "Hot Air".
- Hannah at times makes facial expressions followed by a facepalm.
- Arnold phrasing many things in quick heavy technical terms.
- Ellie remarking in an annoyed/angry manner, like in one episode: "I'll give him [Mike Flood] a good day's work in a minute!"
- Steele yelling "Cridlington!" when Elvis acts silly, like juggling carrots landing on Steele's head/helmet.
- Steele getting blown back into the swimming pool when Elvis sneezed.
- Penny (with the jaws of life) helping Chief Fire Officer Boyce (whose foot was stuck in a bucket) at the end of "Bronwyn's Millionth Customer".
- Sam giving a one-liner at the end of "Open Day": "Sorry sir, Elvis has left the building."
- Seasons 11-13 are arguably the least bad of these seasons and a slight improvement over seasons 6-10, as the rescue scenes have started to become more satisfying and the animation (especially the lighting) has improved as well, and unlike Bob the Builder (2015), where DHX Media made the animation worse due to it trying to mix the realistic style that the reboot was going for with a cartoony style, they managed to make the animation in season 11 match the style that these seasons go for.
- As a matter of fact, the animation has had a massive upgrade in season 13, which can be considered to be another improvement to the series.
- More surprisingly, excluding the main problems such as the ugly rendering, the animation from the test pilot made by Xing Xing Digital looks superior to seasons 6-7's animation as more effort was put into the movements than on the final product in seasons 6-10.
- As a matter of fact, the animation has had a massive upgrade in season 13, which can be considered to be another improvement to the series.
- As mentioned before, Bella Lasagne returned in season 10 and is still a likable character.
- Some episodes of these seasons still do teach kids some good morals and fire safety tips.
- There are some references to the stop-motion seasons here or there at times, despite not being as acknowledged as much usually.
- A picture of season 5 in Steele's office in the earlier CGI seasons.
- A picture of Bella Lasagne in the original series in "Pizza Pandemonium".
- A picture of the old Fire Service and a reference to the original series in Set for Action.
- Bella's return in Season 10.
- James refers to Sam as his uncle starting from Season 8.
- Sadly, however, those are the only ones present in these seasons since there aren't as many as in Season 5, and never get acknowledged again (typical for the CGI series).
- There are also still a handful of good or decent episodes, such as:
- "Norman's Ark" (considered the best episode of these seasons)
- "Poorly Penny"
- "Sailor Steele"
- "The Wrong Smell"
- "Bronwyn's Millionth Customer" (a decent way to start season 8)
- "Sam's Birthday"
- "Space Train"
- "Float Your Boat"
- "The Prince in Pontypandy" (which started the eleventh season on a high note, and a good way to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the series)
- "Paddle On"
- "Red Hot Chilli Nibbles"
- "Run Norman Run" (Despite being a rehash of "Fun Run")
Reception
While the first five seasons were positively received and remain very popular by fans, season 6-present of Fireman Sam received a mixed reception from parents and television critics but received backlash from fans of the older seasons for having no connection to the previous seasons, unnecessary character redesigns, poor attempts of modernization, terrible new voice acting (notably the UK version, but with a few exceptions) and flanderizations of several characters.
At this time, the decline in quality of Fireman Sam wasn't too noticed for around a decade until James A. Williams uploaded a video in 2017 (later re-edited and reuploaded in 2022) discussing how the series went downhill after the switch from stop-motion to CGI in season 6, commenting that he refers season 6-present as a reboot because it feels like he is watching a completely different show. After the video was uploaded, it made many Fireman Sam fans (and in some cases, casual fans as well) realize how much the show has declined and it caused these seasons to gain more notoriety and backlash than they originally did.
Despite the negativity and complaints from fans, these seasons are still beloved by children (especially with the young Prince George (Prince William and Kate Middleton's child), being his favorite cartoon)[3] and the show has become even more popular after the switch to CGI, with many children mostly recognizing these seasons of the show even more than the original four seasons and even season 5, as well as the fact that Fireman Sam himself was a Top 10 UK best-selling character toy according to NPD Group in April 2011.[4] Even to this day, the show remains very popular.
Videos
Trivia
- The show has gained quite a few controversies during these seasons:
- As mentioned earlier, the season 9 episode "Troubled Waters" got banned due to a scene where Elvis accidentally steps and slips on a page of the Quran.[2]
- Along with Peppa Pig, the show as a whole got some accusations about being "sexist" because of the use of the word "fireman" in the title and in the show itself.[5]
- In 2019, Fireman Sam was banned as a mascot by the Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue service because they claimed he was "not inclusive enough".[6]
- In many episodes of the CGI series, a picture of the Fire Brigade from season 5 can be seen in Station Officer Steele's office.
- A pilot for the CGI series was uploaded on YouTube in 2008 by deviousdeseasel. It was deleted for a while, but it was eventually re-uploaded by a YouTuber named ஜூண்டூசி (joe) in 2020. The pilot was made as a test by Xing Xing Digital. It reuses audio from a few season 5 episodes, most notably "Fun Run" during the rescue scene, and "Firefighter of Tomorrow" during the scene where Sam and Norman are talking to each other.[7]
- According to Sam Barlow on Sodor Island Fansite, the CGI series was going to be extremely different from what it ended up becoming, as the Fire Station was supposed to become a military bunker, the Mountain Rescue Centre was supposed to be like a Bond villain's lair and the show was supposed to have a similar format to Thunderbirds. However, the producers realized that they were taking the series in the wrong direction, and they decided to keep the show as it was, but they still changed numerous aspects to keep it up with modern times and became the first HiT property to transition into CGI animation overall.
Episodes With Their Own Pages
Season 6
Season 8
Season 9
Season 10
External links
References
- ↑ https://youtu.be/IQvk_t2g2Rc&t=2m57s
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36900310
- ↑ https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a13794723/prince-george-tv-fireman-sam/
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/apr/18/hit-entertainment-thomas-the-tank-engine
- ↑ https://news.sky.com/story/peppa-pig-and-fireman-sam-accused-of-sexism-by-london-fire-brigade-11670565
- ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/49663380
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iBjZEQuSOk
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