The Skarloey Five (Thomas & Friends)

The Skarloey Five
The five worst episodes from an already bad season (Season 12) or how to write The Skarloey Railway episodes but in a bad way.
Series: Thomas & Friends Part of Season: 12 Episode Number: 5, 9, 11, 16, 19 Air Date: September 4th, 2008 - September 25th, 2008 (UK) Writer: Sharon Miller (3 episodes) Simon Spencer ("The Man in the Hills" only) Mark Robertson ("Duncan and the Hot Air Balloon" only) Director: Steve Asquith Previous episode: Rosie's Funfair Special Next episode: Best Friends

"Mountain Marvel", "The Party Surprise", "Duncan and the Hot Air Balloon", "The Man in the Hills", and "Push Me, Pull You!" are five episodes from the twelfth season of Thomas & Friends. It aired between September 4 to September 25, 2008, in the UK.

Why All Five of Them Caused Confusion and Delay

In General

1. The primary criticism of these five episodes is that all five of them have none of the same charm from the previous Skarloey Railway episodes from Seasons 4-7, and to a lesser extent, Seasons 9-11. Even though Seasons 9-10 weren't perfect seasons for the Skarloey episodes with episodes such as Skarloey the Brave, at least some episodes are worth coming back to, while Season 12's Skarloey Railway episodes all fall off the rails in different areas that can easily be avoided or prevented.
2. The charm from the Railway Series Skarloey Railway stories, as well as the charm from Season 4-7's Skarloey episodes here is nonexistent given the fact the writing feels even worse than the three Wimpy Skarloey episodes from Seasons 9-11.
3. Each of them is predictable and formulaic like your typical Season 12-16 episode. A controller of the railway announces something special, and the engine volunteers, engine screws up three times and later gets into trouble (either unintentionally or on purpose), the engine goes "iT's AlL mY fAuLt!1" and they apologize, go back and fix their mistakes, all are happy, and that's it.
4. The pacing is bland and dull, not only is it extremely boring to the point the pacing is like a snail's pace or a sloth trying to climb up the stairs.
5. Compared to the worst Skarloey Railway episodes from Seasons 9-11, there are way too many obvious mistakes presented. From continuity errors to out-of-character moves, stupid moves, to pretty much everything that shows how wrong all five of those episodes are.
6. Like usual, the narration constantly pointing out the obvious or whatnot barely stays quiet. It even ruins some scenes such as the crashes in "Push Me, Pull You!" and the one crash scene from "Mountain Marvel".
7. As usual for Season 12, the use of animation and live-action is still inconsistent. You might see for yourself.
8. These episodes don't even make kids learn anything given the fact none of them were given a moral, all except for "The Party Surprise" (while having a good model) and "Push Me, Pull You" (more info).
9. These were the episodes that ended the Skarloey Railway-themed episodes on a bad note since none of the five stood out. Because of this, the Skarloey engines would not return until four years later in both Season 16" and "Blue Mountain Mystery". Duncan wouldn't return until Season 18. However, Mighty Mac and Freddie were never seen or heard from again after those episodes.
10. None of these five episodes had any impact on the Thomas and Friends franchise given the fact that none of the events from those episodes were mentioned again. You can watch any episode you want from the 1984-2020 series, skipping the five Season 12 Skarloey episodes, and anything else too important would not be missed.

Mountain Marvel

1. Like its brother episode, "The Magic Lamp", the episode itself feels more like a TV advertisement than an actual episode.
2. The statue of Proteus isn't even a statue of Proteus, it's a Sir Handel statue!
3. Peter Sam's milk churn train has no brake van, which means that Peter Sam is screwed!
4. Peter Sam telling Duncan, Freddie, and Mighty Mac not to take the shortcut feels repetitive, not only has it taken 53 seconds to get to the point, but it would have been easily cut short to 10 seconds before getting to the point.
5. Plot hole: How come Peter Sam's brakes were dysfunctional in the first place?
6. It started the second downfall of Thomas & Friends, and it didn't recover until Andrew Brenner became the head writer in season 17.

The Party Surprise

1. There was no introduction given to Colin. There is no backstory, no character build-up given to him, Colin was just there. He's the typical one-off character, only made for merchandising, as were many of the HiT era characters, and he has no personality to speak of. He would not be seen again after this episode.
2. For some reason in the UK version, Freddie has an Irish accent, but the other two episodes from the same season ("Mountain Marvel" and "The Man in the Hills") have shown that Freddie is given a Welsh accent, an accent that Angelis rarely uses.
   • And in one point where he says to Mr. Percival, his wife, and children, he says "The party is now at the Wharf" with James' Liverpudlian accent, and oddly sounds like it.
3. Of course, it's another one of those episodes that refers to Christmas as the Winter Holidays.
4. There is very little happening to the story of this episode since very little happens and it gets boring.
5. The train full of presents Peter Sam was hauling could have been transported inside narrow gauge mail trucks instead of flatbeds.
6. Freddie is an old engine, so he would know by now that he has to ask Mr. Percival about throwing the Christmas party at the wharf first before setting it up himself.
7. The narrator saying "Colin was puzzled, but he still had other work to do." is not only obvious but repetitive and irritating.
8. Two questions to ask about the scene following Mr. Percival scolding Colin:
   • How can Mr. Percival not see that the tree, lights, and presents were for the party?
   • Why would Mr. Percival order Colin to unload the three things if they were for his party?

Duncan and the Hot Air Balloon

1. This is one of the only episodes in the entire show that Duncan acts out of character. Granted, this episode wanted to show a good side of Duncan where he isn't so stubborn all the time, but that worked before previously like in "Duncan Does it All". Here with this episode, it portrays him like he's an actual idiot whose original personality has been thrown out for this one episode.
2. The hot air balloon is inflated on the flatbed. If you remember "James and the Red Balloon", the same balloon Thomas was delivering to Dryaw was deflated before it would become inflated later in the episode. Here because this episode is dense from any reality or logic, they show a fully inflated balloon.
3. Continuity error: Thomas does not remember what the red hot air balloon looked like despite having pulled it before.
4. The general episode is the model-era version/equivalent of "Up, Up, and Away!", which is an even worse episode than this episode, and to put one exception; "Duncan and the Hot Air Balloon" aired in 2008, three years before "Up, Up, and Away!".
5. The front buffers on Duncan's flatbed biffing the basket would easily break the basket.
6. Duncan's shenanigans, not only are they forced, feel rather pointless since Duncan can just deliver the balloon without making any ideas anyway because delivering the balloon to Mr. Percival's house is far too easy to come up with any ideas at all.
7. If Duncan was told to only deliver the balloon to Mr. Percival's house, then why the heck did he not tell Duncan that he was to pick up Mr. Percival's twin children earlier? This whole inconsistent mess could have been easily avoided/prevented if Mr. Percival sent another one of his engines to pick up the twins so he could give them his balloon ride before Duncan suggested his idea to set things right.
8. Duncan's flag would have been easily burnt by puffing really hot steam and ashes coming from his funnel.

The Man in the Hills

1. This is yet another one of those episodes in which Thomas is portrayed so stupidly that the story can happen.
2. Not only does this episode portray Thomas as completely stupid, but he's also blind in this episode, too. He thinks that a dairyman and even a miller are both the Man in the Hills, but he would know the difference between the three.
3. Two plot holes in the same episode lead to asking questions:
   1. If Duncan, Rusty, Skarloey, and Rheneas are taking decorations, flowers, banners, and balloons, then why are they not doing work?
   2. How did Skarloey, Rheneas, Duncan, and Rusty know which jobs they were given to each engine?
4. Sir Handel explaining who or what the Man in the Hills is sounds like poor research despite the episode paying homage to The Long Man of Wilmington.
5. What's even the point of saying that "no one has ever seen the Man in the Hills" if there are railway tracks beside it?
6. This is the episode that gave Thomas' flanderized personality the know-it-all trait. Would you think Thomas knows about the Man in the Hills?
7. Unlike the other three episodes, this is one of those episodes with the amount of alliteration and rhyming used.
8. Sir Handel says to Thomas: "You said you'd bring the best present of all! Now Mr. Percival doesn't have any presents, and we're all late!". But much to the irony of this episode, the narrow gauge engines are still not doing their work. What was even the point of Sir Handel saying that?
9. Transporting a birthday cake inside the engine's cab can cause the cake to melt by the time Thomas and Freddie get to Mr. Percival's birthday party at the end of the episode.
   • Speaking of which, this is actually considered a pointless idea since someone else (that is not an engine) would deliver the cake to Mr. Percival's birthday party on road instead of railway transportation by an engine.
10. Thomas' crew could have told Thomas what this Man in the Hills is instead of Sir Handel.

Push Me, Pull You!

1. Skarloey and Rheneas are 100% miscast choices since this idea for the episode could be for Bill and Ben instead of two brother engines who have lived longer on Sodor than any other engine.
2. The plot is downright abysmal: Skarloey refuses Rheneas' help to pull a train for a puppet show and ends up playing games with Rheneas when both decide to play tug of war to show which engine is the strongest.
   • This is another one of those rare episodes with both brothers acting like little kids rather than old wise engines.
3. Skarloey is at his absolute worst in this episode, as his flanderization has gone way too far.
   • When being asked for help from Rheneas considering that he is doing it very hard, Skarloey downright refuses help because he wants to be very strong. This is Skarloey at his most childish, even worse than how he acted in.
   • Somehow Skarloey doesn't get any consequence for his actions. Sure he crashed into a river, but he was never scolded by the Fat Controller or Mr. Percival. This normally happens back in Seasons 1-7, and even Seasons 8-11. But here, he has to go fix the mess he created because a story needs that to happen so Skarloey can redeem himself.
   • Sometimes, it's necessary for an engine/engines to fix a mistake they saw how they caused confusion and delay, but here, no one would be that stupid to let that slide because Skarloey was responsible for screwing around and he was the one responsible for causing the party stuff to be ruined. So no, there is no point in letting Skarloey go fix the mess but get no punishment.
4. Rheneas himself is also unlikable, (particularly at the beginning, though a little and nowhere near as bad as Skarloey) as he also battles to take the puppet show along with Skarloey.
5. There was no reason for Skarloey to run loose during the second and third strikes, which means the last two crashes for the episode were completely pointless and unnecessary the entire time.
6. This episode sends a bad message to children that you can refuse help from others all the time and cause a ton of problems.
7. Idiot move: When Rusty saw Skarloey losing control, he just straight up stops in Skarloey’s way. If Rusty still kept on going, Skarloey would have passed him! Why couldn’t he do that or speed up a little when he sees Skarloey losing control?
   • Not to mention, Rusty gets cross at Skarloey, even though he was the cause of the crash due to him stopping in front of Skarloey.
8. As typical as it is, the constant narration never shuts up during the crash scenes, which is obvious because the amount of narration in general never takes a break.
9. Although Skarloey is not portrayed as a hypochondriac pansy who is scared over the smallest things without any reason, he is still portrayed as a childish engine anyway. But unlike the wimpy Skarloey episodes, he's selfish.
10. Duncan and Rusty served no purpose to the story (neither did Thomas). Rusty and Duncan served as test subjects for the sake of the three-strikes formula to run rampant.
11. Like the typical Season 12 episode would be, the mixture of live-action and animation hasn't aged well (Well, especially for 2008 standards) and goes off and on in some parts.
12. The CGI faces for Skarloey are creepy. If you take a look at how bulgy his pupils are in his eyes, you can tell it's more creepy-inducing than nightmare-fuel-looking.
13. Overall, this is by far the worst of the Skarloey Railway episodes in not just Season 12, but the entire show. Not only that, it ended the Skarloey Railway episodes in the model era on a sour note. To quote a line from Johnny Test, "Woah. Didn't see that coming."

Redeeming Qualities

In General

1. The concepts for the other four Season 12 Skarloey episodes are interesting. A balloon ride for Mr. Percival's twins, a Man in the Hills, a party at the Wharf, and a puppet show train. If they were executed properly.
2. The narrow gauge engines would return to their normal personalities starting in Season 16 and also "Blue Mountain Mystery".
3. Although the narration inserting was annoying, both Michael Angelis and Michael Brandon still put their effort into their narration for both respective English dubs.
4. "Mountain Marvel", "Push Me, Pull You!", "Duncan and the Hot Air Balloon", and "The Party Surprise" are the only episodes without any alliteration and rhyming. The alliteration is used only when Peter Sam is telling Duncan, Freddie, and Mighty Mac not to go to a shortcut, and is proof the alliteration in that episode is minimal.
5. Thankfully, none of the specials from these episodes given to each of the engines were called "special specials".
6. The model and live-action work for Season 12 is still good if only HiT Entertainment stuck with either CGI or general live-action instead of both.
7. Fearless Freddie and Mighty Mac are still likable characters.

Mountain Marvel

1. It is quite nice to know Proteus was not forgotten, let alone give out facts this episode is a sequel to "The Magic Lamp".
2. One of the crash sound effects used from the Classic Series returns once again in the scene where Peter Sam crashes his milk train into the buffers after losing control.
3. There's no 3 strikes formula in this episode! Thank Jeebus!
4. The shot where the camera moves an angle a bit during the scene where Freddie stops by Peter Sam is quite nice to look at.
5. Out of all the episodes in the Skarloey Five, it is the least bad of the bunch as there are people such as Thomas Cynic and Can You See Fish who consider this episode decent/good.

The Party Surprise

1. Freddie and Colin's chemistry is a great idea for an episode if only the latter was also properly executed.
2. We finally get to see Mr. Percival's twin children, even though they were minor characters.
3. This episode does show a good moral that you should ask first before doing something later.
4. For once we did get a character who is a narrow gauge railway equivalent of Cranky, albeit only one episode.

Duncan and the Hot Air Balloon

1. The animation with the funnel smoke looks pretty good, although not the best.
2. Duncan reacting to the balloon floating down on the top of a bridge is somewhat funny.

The Man in the Hills

1. The episode was a semi-nice homage to the Long Man of Wilmington and pays some tribute to British culture.
2. There are only TWO strikes for this episode. That's right, just TWO!
3. The animation for the miller is clever and creative. He is fully white at first until when comes out of Thomas' cab, all the flour comes off after Thomas takes him to the Wharf.

Push Me, Pull You

1. Even though Skarloey still acted out of character in that episode, at least he no longer has his wimpy hypochondriac side maintained since it was never used again after "Skarloey Storms Through" from Season 11.

Reception

The five Skarloey Railway episodes from Season 12 weren't received well and met with negative reception from most of the fans of the original 1984 Thomas and Friends series due to the poor storytelling and predictable executions for each plot. Though a lot of fans said "Push Me, Pull You" is the worst episode out of all of the five for all the reasons why, and of course, no one was surprised or happy this was the send-off for the Skarloey Railway episodes in model form.

"Mountain Marvel" and "The Man in the Hills both received a 3.2/10, "The Party Surprise" received a 3.9/10, "Duncan and the Hot Air Balloon" received a 3.5/10, and "Push Me, Pull You!" received a 2.8/10 all on iMDB.com.

Trivia

• According to concept art, Colin was going to return in the 2013 special, "King of the Railway", but was eventually scrapped from the final cut for reasons unknown.

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