Hugo & The Airship: ThomasNATION Review (by MrOliver and Team)

Hello, MrOliver! Ollie takes the pen to write one of the last two review of Season 20, "Hugo & The Airship." Most agree that the episode was not good at all... What does MrOliver think? Read:

Hey guys, its MrOliver here to review "Hugo & The Airship!" Let's begin...




So here we are with Part 2 of the generic “meet this season’s new Character” Episodes; the first being "Engine of the Future." 

"Hugo & The Airship" is based around the New Engine - Hugo wanting to fly after getting the Idea from the other Engines who mistake a blimp in the sky for him. 



The Episode is pretty Average. We start off with a recap on who Hugo is; The music used in this Opening scene is amazing, Chris Renshaw has proven himself with so many great tracks this season - This mixed with the great Direction and animation starts the Episode off on a high point. 



We then go to The Fat Controller at Knapford - showing Hugo off to the Railway board who are wary of Hugo due to his design. This is a nice thing to see, as it states many problems people had with Hugo’s basis; We also get some nice Comic relief like the Inspector who only says ‘Hmmm’...



The third Scene is set at Vicastown Bridge where Henry is coming home from the mainland. As the bridge is lowering we see a Blimp shaped sort of like Hugo and with a similar colour scheme. 

Henry and eventually the other engines think this is Hugo flying. I can kind of see where they are going with this, Kids can easily come to the conclusion that two things that look sort of similar are one in the same, I’m sure many of us did this as a kids with certain engines! 



After This, we go to Knapford station where James and Emily are discussing Hugo; James comments that he always knew that he couldn’t have been a real engine. I don’t get this scene, James was one of the engines who forgave Hugo in the last episode so why is he now saying this? Shouldn’t this be someone like Diesel, ‘Arry or Bert?



Hugo arrives on the Scene and they begin to discuss the airship when suddenly Percy bursts in in a very humorous moment where he says how he's just seen Hugo in the sky before seeing Hugo sat two platforms away, - He’s so surprised that he manages to run straight into a line of trucks. 

But, Why are the trucks there? Nobody knows?! Seems a bit silly to leave them on a line Percy was presumably going to go straight through. 



We then cut to pretty much the same thing but with Thomas, Annie and Clarabel. This scene doesn't really offer much bar A few more shots of the blimp and Thomas’ regularly scheduled appearance. 



After comments from the other Engines and a chat with Skiff, Hugo decides he wants to Fly like the Blimp. To do this he goes to the top of Gordon’s hill and we then go through a veryyyyyyy overblown bit where Hugo tries to fly, Obviously to no avail. This felt like a quite boring sequence, aside from some good music.



He eventually gives in and heads back to Knapford where he is so Distracted that he forgets to turn his propeller off while in the Station, - in front of The Fat Controller and the Railway Inspectors. 

This would have made a good subplot - Maybe the Inspectors could've said no and the engines had to convince them (to make Hugo stay) or maybe there could've been Accident and Hugo felt super guilty about it? It could have played his naive side really well, but no, they sort of just skipped over. 




The Episode ends with Skiff being shoehorned in, - The scene is not too bad, its quite funny and the characters seem natural enough... but why is Skiff at Knapford? Its never explained.