More Cuts to Accommodate Big World, Big Adventures!

You know, the more I hear about Big World, Big Adventures, the less I want to know. It’s becoming clearer to me that Mattel are desperate - and I mean desperate - to get their little pet project off the ground. We already know about the downgrading of merchandise and the cynical reason why they’re changing the show’s core, but SIF has since revealed that series 21 also suffered cutbacks.

It seemed a bit weird that they’d only make 18 episodes for it. I’d put it down to the issues with Arc Productions and the Jam Filled takeover. But it turns out that Mattel intentionally cut eight episodes out of it in order to make BWBA happen. I’ll let the tweets speak for themselves:

Hardly our fault that 8 episodes of the series were cut.

— Sodor Island Fansite (@SiF_Tweets) December 13, 2017

Mattel confirmed there's only 18 episodes this year - plans changed to accommodate Big World Big Adventures development.

— Sodor Island Fansite (@SiF_Tweets) December 13, 2017

There were episodes written that were dropped. Rosie was intended to have at least one other episode.

— Sodor Island Fansite (@SiF_Tweets) December 13, 2017

I don't know whether Mattel like to shoot themselves in the foot. But this year alone, they have done so constantly. Cutbacks on merchandise, replacing well established characters with completely fresh faces, chasing trends that have already been taken, base breaking engine movements, and now this.

Frankly, the latest development is the one that annoys me the most. There have been scrapped episodes before; Jack and the Pack was apparently cut in half due to budgetary restrictions. But that can be forgiven since their loss didn’t affect too much in the long run.

• The Missing Coach was cut, but Break Van did a good job establishing Donald and Douglas and the predicament they were in. Besides which, the original story is already out there, so you can just read that.
• Gordon Goes Foreign was cut, but writing him out of service was fairly easy to do. And, again, the story is out there.
• The cut episodes for The Pack would’ve been nice, but the characters had already been established fairly well in 13. And because the episodes were all written to be self contained, removing half in the production process meant we wouldn’t be missing too much.

But series 21 is a different beast entirely.

That series gave Rosie a new look and, what was meant to be, a new job. The latter was never established in the episodes we got, nor was her personality. Both of which would seemingly be focused on in one of the cut scripts. As it stands, it's difficult to care about her and her showing up at Vicarstown in Journey Beyond Sodor (which was meant to be the last project of series 21, apparently) is never explained.

And then there’s all the new characters that kids had to digest during the series. Hannah probably wouldn’t have appeared again, but what about Bulgy? Or Carly and Big Mickey? Maybe Terence would have been given more time to shine? What about Trevor, who’s been given nothing since Three Steam Engines Gruff?

Speaking of series 20, do you remember Glynn’s episodes mentioning a railway museum being planned at Ulfstead? Whatever happened to that? Was it going to be given focus in some scripts?

This is why I’m annoyed by the cut episodes in series 21. So many things have been set up, but have been given zero pay off so far. What’s worse is that the writers are the ones that have been taking the heat for blatant meddling from Mattel’s higher ups. And will probably continue to take said heat unless fans follow SIF’s tweets. Or if fans end up reading this post.

All of this, however, reaffirms my opinion that series 21 is frustratingly good. That frustration already came from aspects I’ve already talked about. But on top of that, it comes from what the series could’ve been had Mattel actually allowed those eight scripts through the production process.

Maybe the scripts will be used again. Heck, maybe they’ll be used next series to fulfil the claim that half of it will take place on Sodor. But if they’ve been cut completely, that’s eight scripts that have gone up in smoke. All of which (the finale especially) were made for a series that was designed to establish the changes going into Big World, Big Adventures.

Now I was going to end things there, but I saw a tweet while writing this and it gave me more to talk about:

Couldn't help but notice a few similarities. Especially this one. pic.twitter.com/UclWrYYYYm

— DieselD199 (@DieselD199) 16 December 2017

Just... what do you even say to this?

First off, it's blatant plagiarising on Mattel's part. Second, the fact they felt the need to follow the leader to this extent reaffirms what I said the last time I talked about Mattel's nonsense: this show needs to end.

This proves to me that the show is creatively bankrupt. Some of that (repeated story ideas and themes) is down to the writers, admittedly. But this is corporate mandating at its most nakedly obvious. It's utterly pathetic.

And so I end this post with a question to Mattel (not that they'll read this, but I really don't care either way). By this time in a year or two, you see no uplift in your profits from the franchise. Those precious profits either become stagnant or they plummet. You don't become the market leader and fall further and further behind. What are you going to do then?

No, wait. Actually, I'm ending with this. To all those "fans" who are against Nia solely because she's from Kenya:

Go fuck yourselves, you worthless, racist fucknuggets.