ThomasNATION Reviews - The Super-Long Shortcut
July 15, 2023
You know, it's like we here at TN said before - with how every bad era of Thomas & Friends made their own slew of mistakes no matter which one you consider as the worst whether it be the Nitrogen Era or the 'Big World! Big Adventures!' era, there's one thing each of them nails for some reason and that's Gordon the Big Engine himself. And considering that this is his first major lead role in the All Engines Go reboot, I think it's interesting to discuss something I never see anyone talk about: Thomas and Gordon were kinda the main characters for the first season of the original Thomas & Friends series. This was their season. Thomas and Gordon have a rivalry that starts in the very first episode aptly titled 'Thomas and Gordon', Thomas is a cheeky little bugger and Gordon is pompous and self-important. Their journeys come full circle as they both have incidents separate from each other that humble them: Thomas gets stuck in the snow, Gordon loses the express to James, Thomas leaves his guard behind, Gordon bursts his whistle, Thomas gets fish in his tanks, Gordon runs into a ditch, you get the idea. This all comes to a beautiful close in the penultimate episode 'Down the Mine' where Gordon and Thomas grow so much as characters that they finally decide to put their differences aside. Thomas and Gordon hate each other in the very first episode and by the end of the season, they have formed an alliance and travel off together into the sunset. 'Down The Mine' is the spiritual finale to Season One in my opinion showing the end of the show's two main characters introduced at the very beginning - and with that in mind, I think it's already been made obvious that I absolutely love 'The Super-Long Shortcut' since it feels like something that was plucked straight out of the original Thomas & Friends series particularly Season 1. Heck, I'd even argue this is one of the few episodes of the reboot that is on par with the original series!
But that being said even though I think "The Super-Long Shortcut" is one of the best episodes of All Engines Go, I do have a couple of criticisms that are honestly debatable if they're just me being picky or if they're real problems considering the problems that this series has as a reboot of the original Thomas The Tank Engine. The first of these nitpicks being the fact that Gordon is somehow still able to work and make his delivery of bricks to Norramby even though he has lost a pin in his rear coupler (what is it with Gordon and his rear coupler always breaking in this reboot?!), his brakes are leaking air pressure which I'm just as shocked as you are that he is even able to move at all considering that engines are supposed to have an ejector which causes the brakes to come on if it fails as explained in the Railway Series story "Super Rescue" and he is running late with his delivery to where I kept expecting to see Sir Topham Hatt make an appearance to tell Gordon and Thomas that they have caused confusion and delay.
But to be honest, the second problem is one that has been a problem for All Engines Go since its inception and that is Thomas and Gordon using their wheels as hands to change the points thus making the lack of humans in this new version of Sodor feel all the more unsettling and once again just forgetting completely that every wise engine knows of course that the signalman works the points to make engines run on the right lines. I don't know, maybe it's just me asking for some realism in this reboot of a franchise that used to be all about realism but some of these problems that Gordon is facing could end up being very serious if left untreated.
But overall while Thomas and Gordon's route of a shortcut may have been super-long and super-bumpy at times, 'The Super-Long Shortcut' is still nothing short of a shining example of an episode that stays true to one of the earliest of friendships in the franchise and that is why I'm giving this episode a rating of a 4 out of 5.
Final Rating: 4/5
About the Author: True Blue
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