Season 22: Thomas Goes to Bollywood

When will the writers actually provide an entertaining story to go with the international setting?

I’m not going to question whether kids will be interested in the Bollywood industry or not (nor will I question why Ashima refers to her own railway as “the Indian railway”. Or why any of the railways around the world are only called the “insert country’s name here” railway). But to make a “story” that’s so thin with “characters” that are barely entertaining. That is when I begin to question: is this really worth it?

Frankly, this is the nadir of giving Thomas all of these roles. Because the writers would rather him be just an inquisitive character over anything else, he has no opportunity to display any other traits. He was cheeky here for two seconds, and he displayed his competitive nature in Number One Engine, but that’s about it.

You want to know how to make this better? Give James the title role and have him and Rajiv square off. Having two massive egos fight over a movie role would’ve been hilarious, and would probably have kept kids engaged better than seeing loads of nothing happening until they actually start filming at the end.

Also, the theme is completely undermined because... well, the actor was in no danger to begin with. They only wrote the ending the way they did to make Thomas feel special. It’s a plot contrivance to teach a lesson that also feels contrived because “we have to end this somehow!”

But this episode’s worst failing is that it completely negates the need for this to be an episode that revolves around locomotives. At least when Chuggington had scenes on movie sets, a) they had the sense to make the episodes ntertaining throughout, b) they fit in the world the writers had created since the show isn’t completely grounded and c) they created a character that was a believable action star. Replace all the locomotives in this with humans and the plot remains exactly the same.

Final Thoughts

I wrote a DeviantART journal when the Italian dub was first uploaded and said it was awful. Having watched an English dub, I find it to be just as bad, if not worse. The story is completely non-existent, the theme is OK, but completely undermined and contrived, and the characters are... well, bland! The promotional image I used for this review makes the episode look better than it is.

The only saving graces are Rajiv and knowing there’s a female railway manager in this world. But the former is completely wasted and the other has nothing to do with the story itself.

Frankly, this is the worst episode since Rocky Rescue. There’s so little redeemable about the final product that it can only get one rating.

Rating: Atrocious (-10/10)