ThomasNATION Reviews - Mystery Boxcars
June 04, 2022
I'm sure you guys all know the story of 'All Engines Go'. Without going into too much detail, the fandom didn't react well to this new storytelling formula, and soon everywhere you went online, you'd see it: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, you name it, they were ticked beyond belief. But now that the fandom's flames of hatred for this controversial reboot seem to have settled down for now and now that some time has passed since the first season wrapped up, are their views still valid? Let's find out as we dive into another episode of the confusing world of 'All Engines Go' with Mystery Boxcars.MYSTERY BOXCARS: Kana is upset when she keeps running out of power, but a mystery scavenger hunt is just the thing to cheer her up.
Let's talk about the American narration of the original 'Thomas & Friends' television series: now we all know that when Thomas the Tank Engine first aired on Shining Time Station in the U.S., series creator Britt Allcroft changed the terms trucks to cars as well as goods to freight and so on in order to use terminology that the new target audience would be familiar with. Now this is understandable, but Britt Allcroft also changed the titles of numerous stories when they were released in America: 'Thomas and Gordon' became 'Thomas Gets Tricked', 'The Sad Story Of Henry' became 'Come Out Henry' and so on and so forth throughout the first few seasons. This has always struck me as strange as there was really no reason to do this when the titles didn't mention trucks or The Fat Controller. But as time went on in the franchise, it seems as though those American terms have started to seep their way into the original U.K. dub of the series with two of the most infamous examples that come to mind are Season 7's 'The Grand Opening' and the 2016 full-length special 'The Great Race' when Skarloey's brake van and the vans that Thomas shunts as part of the Shunting Challenge at the Great Railway Show are referred to as 'boxcars' for some strange reason. With this new chapter of Thomas the Tank Engine history feeling heavily Americanized, how will mystery vans-I mean, boxcars, play a part in today's story?
Well, remember the riddle that Mrs. Kyndley gave to Percy back in Season 5's 'Happy Ever After' when asking him to find a good luck package for her daughter who was getting married that day: something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue? Imagine that but if you replace the hunt for a good luck package with a scavenger hunt to put a mystery charging pad together for Kana and you pretty much have this episode in a nutshell: now we have seen the engines go on mystery hunts for special prizes before in the original series with episodes like 'Happy Ever After' like I said or even later examples like Season 10's 'Thomas and the Treasure' or Season 22's 'The Case of the Puzzling Parts', but I'm gonna make the bold statement that I actually enjoyed these types of stories from the original series since you never knew if the engines would even be able to find their special prize or what their special prize could be and part of the fun was simply following the clues and figuring out where to go next-if anything, it was like a trivia contest for those who have been a fan of Thomas The Tank Engine for a long time like myself in trying to remember familiar faces and places around the railway! But hands down, the best character out of the episode's entire cast is Gordon The Big Engine himself: not only is it great to see him having a bigger role again in this reboot compared to his last few appearances as a side character, but having Gordon putting together this whole scavenger hunt in order to help cheer Kana up from feeling upset about running out of power really harkens back to his Classic Series persona of being the senior member of the main fleet as well as using his superior strength and years of experienced wisdom to help smaller engines out of trouble. Now this is the true Gordon that I and many fans in the community want to see when it comes to this franchise!
'All Engines Go' may be heavily Americanizing the British charm that made Thomas The Tank Engine so timeless, but that doesn't mean that it can't still make memorable stories out of this new adventure for the franchise. Yes, while 'Mystery Boxcars' may share similarities to other stories about mystery scavenger hunts for treasure from the original series, I still had a lot of fun with this episode regardless and it's always good seeing more character development coming out of an engine like Kana who many long time fans originally hated at first but have since slowly but surely warmed up to her thus I'm gonna give 'Mystery Boxcars' a rating of a 3.5 out of 5.
Final Rating: 3.5/5
About the Author: True Blue
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