ThomasNATION Classic Reviews - Merry Winter Wish
December 14, 2024
You know, I love Christmas. I mean, who doesn't? And Christmas has always been a big part of Thomas in both the books of The Railway Series and the episodes of the television series. And to be honest, that's no surprise as The Railway Series itself was penned by an Anglican vicar. Thomas' Christmas history started back in 1952 in the book Toby The Tram Engine with the story "Mrs. Kyndley's Christmas". Interestingly enough, this was the only Christmas story to ever be featured in a Railway Series book. Then, the television series came along, and Britt Allcroft asked the Reverend W. Awdry to write a Christmas story for the final episode of the first season set to air on Christmas Day. The result was "Thomas' Christmas Party". The tradition of the Railway Series spin-offs to coincide with the television series continued into the second season with "Thomas And The Missing Christmas Tree", this time written by Christopher Awdry. After Season 2, the episodes were written by the writing staff and remained fairly good for the most part. That is, except for one major issue.
Starting in Season 6 with "It's Only Snow", the term Christmas was dropped and the term "winter holidays" was born to create a more inclusive holiday that all denominations could relate to except they couldn't because the holiday being celebrated was very obviously Christmas. Just to clear one thing up, political correctness doesn't bother me in appropriate context like what an ethnic group refers to be called. But when it's trying to hide the fact that Christmas is in a children's television show, it's just ridiculous. Ironically, "winter holidays" offended more people than it comforted for the reasons I previously stated including the Reverend W. Awdry's late daughter Hilary Fortnam. She publicly called out HiT Entertainment on the ridiculousness of "winter holidays" and even got them to change it back to Christmas for, ironically enough, the UK release of "Merry Winter Wish" and all future Christmas themed episodes. For that, we all owe Hilary our thanks and praise - her father would be proud.
But speaking of celebrating Christmas on the island, that brings us to this week's review which is actually of that very titular episode from Season 14 which was delayed by a whole year in the UK after having previously been released in the States. And after many years of not having watched this episode since the original DVD release, it shouldn't come as a surprise to any adult fan who may be reading this review that this episode is bad, and I personally didn't enjoy it. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that kids would like it though. But to me, there are no positives for this episode except for the animation supplied by Nitrogen Studios. But sadly, that would not save the episode from being written badly whether it be me having to question why "The Star of Knapford' comes from the mainland when it should stay at Knapford or how the star just flies away being unrealistic even though I think it could very well be a reference to how "explosive" a lot of the crashes during the HIT Era were portrayed back when they were still using model trains on model sets if you know what I mean.
But overall, "Merry Winter Wish" only serves as a reminder to be careful what you wish for when it comes to this holiday season because you may end up being the one who gets this piece of coal in your stocking. And while that might be useful for the engines, for me, it's just a clump of dirt, and that's why I'm going to give this episode a rating of a 1/5.
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