Season 18: Getting the Hang of Things
November 09, 2024
Let's start with the characters this season. I'm not gonna split it into sections like I did in the S17 retrospective, but I am still gonna go over them individually. Starting with the new characters for the season, this season covers both the new characters introduced in Tale of the Brave with new characters like Samson and the Slip Coaches. And while Tale of the Brave is undeniably a fantastic movie, I'll admit the new characters in there were kinda pointless, other than Gator, of course. In fact, I think Reg only got, like, one scene, and it barely lasts a minute. Here, every character from the special is given a spotlight, from Timothy in No Steam Without Coal, Reg in The Perfect Gift, Gator in Long Lost Friend and a ton of Marion-centric episodes. You can definitely tell the writers had a ton of fun writing for Marion, since every episode with her is a ton of fun. And like I said in my Marion and the Pipe review, this was my first introduction to Olivia Colman before films like The Favourite, The Mitchells vs. The Machines or most recently (at least if you're in the UK), Paddington in Peru, and I'm glad the team got the most use out of her talent that they could. But the MVPs of this season are undeniably the returnees: Toad, Oliver and Duncan. I listed Toad first as he's arguably one of the most prominent returnees in the whole CG era next to Daisy, getting two spotlight episodes while Oliver surprisingly didn't get one - and both are easily the highlights of the season. The same can also be said about Duncan's returning episodes, but he is debatably held back by a pretty bad render. And then you have Henrietta, who became a full-fledged character in this season instead of just Toby's coachor. She and Toby have a really nice dynamic that's explored more and more in future seasons, they have chemistry akin to an old married couple that really suits them, and Maggie Ollerenshaw is a perfect fit for the role. That leaves Samson, the token newbie of the season...well, there's also the Slip Coaches, but those guys aren't really characters in the traditional sense - just kinda plot devices. I think the Grumpy Passenger has more memorable character traits. Back to Samson, my biggest gripe with him is that they do the "too proud to acknowledge when something's gone wrong" shtick with him a few too many times, which comes across a little more annoying than funny. And this doesn't really go away in the Samson-focused episodes until Season 22, so until then he's probably one of the more one-dimensional newbies of the bunch. But still, the characters and how they're used is just one piece of the puzzle. What about the episodes themselves?
Well, that's the next thing I wanna analyse. One thing to praise that I didn't get into in the last section was that they got pretty experimental with the characters that got paired up with each other. You got pairings like Duncan and Rheneas or Samson and Harvey or Caitlin, Annie and Clarabel, or the one they really wanted to push in this season, Duck and James. The episodes with Duck and James are absolutely hilarious. Their banter is straight out of one of those classic buddy comedies, they play off each other really naturally. They even focus on some of the more obscure side characters in a few episodes like Scruff and...okay, I think it's just Scruff. In fact, Samson at Your Service, as mid as that episode was, had a fun novelty of having a ton of characters with something to say. It doesn't make up for its bad writing and Samson's poor characterisation...but it's a nice novelty. But putting aside the characters in the season, are the episodes themselves good? Well...70/30. Some of the episodes like Emily Saves the World and the Samson episodes are legit pretty bad. The Samson episodes are held back by the writing for Samson himself and Emily Saves the World suffers the same problem as last season's Steamie Stafford: it feels right out of the Miller era, but made worse by the fact that it plays out more like a cartoon. I feel like the only reason it's really remembered is because of the opening where they reference a bunch of old episodes, and even then I think it's a bit of a cheap gimmick. But the highs of Season 18 are really, really somethin', some of which debatably being highlights of the whole era, such as Last Train Before Christmas, Duncan and the Grumpy Passenger and Old Reliable Edward. Plus, the railway realism aspect is done a bit better than the last season. It's not perfect, but they have episodes focused on emergency cables, broken signals, even just grumpy passengers that make for some interesting ideas.
Lastly, I wanna go over the morals of the season. I won't go on this too much, since a lot of episodes cover basic morals like "work together" and "tell the truth", but what I like about some of the morals is that they show some unique lessons that tie into the railway in some way, such as "don't pull emergency cables for little things" or "engines that run on oil are just as useful as those that run on coal". It's a nice element that aren't just good morals for kids, but also help these episodes really stand out in the crowd.
But again, the worst part of Season 18 is, once again, the music. Eggplant LF gave us two songs this season alongside Let's Be Brave for Tale of the Brave. And while the songs for the season are just standard pop fluff, Let's Be Brave is legitimately horrible. Not only is it a bad song on its own, but it directly clashes with the tone of the special. Tale of the Brave is a more dramatic, character-driven story, and they end it with a cheesy pop song about being brave? Seems a bit disingenuous, especially if you factor in that it replaced an extended version of Our Tale of the Brave, which is a beautiful song that fits perfectly with the film.
In total, is Season 18 a perfect season? No. Is it still a pretty good one? Absolutely. It's not without its duds, like the music and a pretty weak newbie, but with its unique morals, engaging storylines and fun use of characters old and new, it really has stood the test of time. And with Season 19 coming after, did they keep the momentum going? Well...that's a story for another day.
ThomasNATION will soon be posting a retrospective called "Season 19: One Step Forward, Another Step Back".
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