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The sixth and seventh seasons continued the policy of action-packed storylines and new characters. New episodes that had been written by Britt Allcroft and director David Mitton were from then on scripted by hired-in writers. It was well received by young children at whom it was aimed and made $16 million at the box office however, no reference to the film has ever been made in the television series.

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Despite high production values and the popularity of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, the movie was criticised for being confusing, badly written, poorly directed, poorly acted and not true to the spirit of either the Railway Series or the television adaptation by UK audiences. It featured only a small number of characters from the television series and was rather more fantasy based. This season saw the introduction of new characters and more action-packed storylines.įollowing this season, the film ' Thomas and the Magic Railroad' was released. The fifth season was a radical departure, as it was entirely original. Only one original story was used, namely 'Rusty to the Rescue', but this took certain elements of plot and dialogue from the book Stepney the 'Bluebell' Engine. The narrow gauge engines were introduced, greatly increasing the number of stories that could be produced.

Season 4 was almost entirely based on the Railway Series, the last season so to do. In reality, they were not 'new' characters, but creations of the Rev. Some commentators took this as a response to a number of accusations of sexism that had been levelled against the series two years earlier. Awdry complained that the new stories were unrealistic and not true to the spirit of the books.įor the fourth season, the producers planned to introduce some 'new' female characters, including Caroline the car, Nancy the guard's daughter and The Refreshment Lady. The second was that the producers wanted more stories centering on Thomas, the nominal main character. The first was that many of the books not yet adapted featured large numbers of new characters, and so would be expensive to produce. There were two primary reasons for diverging from the original books. The third season was made at a cost of £1.3 million was a combination of episodes derived from the Railway Series, from stories in the Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends magazine and original stories. The series also adapted a story from a Thomas Annual, 'Thomas and Trevor', and an especially written stand-alone story, Thomas and the Missing Christmas Tree. This last book was unusual, in that it was written specifically by Christopher Awdry in order to be adapted for the series, as a contractual obligation of the series at that time was that it could not create original stories that had not previously appeared in print. The second season took stories from Book 9 to Book 30. The first season took stories from the first eight books, along with one specially written by the Rev. It was joined by a large version of James in the tenth season.įor the first two seasons the series was closely based on stories from the Railway Series.

Beginning with the ninth season, the Thomas model also interacted with the narrow gauge engines. In Season 6, the characters known as 'the Pack' were also constructed to a large scale, and large models of Thomas and Percy were made to interact with them.

Models were later constructed entirely from scratch.įrom Season 5 onwards, some larger scale models were used for the Skarloey Railway characters, in order to make it easier to fit the complex mechanisms into them while retaining a sufficient level of detail. Coaches and trucks were made using Tenmille kits. As well as the eye mechanisms, these bodies also include smoke generators. They used chassis made by Marklin with specially made bodies. The models were initially built to a scale of 10 millimetres to the foot. Each character has several different faces to convey different emotions. The characters' faces are sculpted from foam rubber. However, their eyes do move by use of remote controlled mechanisms. The use of a narrator removes the need to make characters' mouths move when they speak. In recent seasons, CGI has been used to generate smoke and other effects. Stop-motion is generally used for instances in which a human or animal character is seen to move. The locomotives and other vehicles move, but people and animals are generally static. The series is animated using live-action models, seen at the time of first production as the most effective way of realising the stories without the cost and expense of conventional animation. Each episode consists of a four and a half-minute or seven-minute story, told by a narrator.