Saturday, 20 August 2016

The Thomas Creator Collective

For those who don't know, the Thomas Creator Collective is (from what I can tell) a pet project by HiT and Mattel for the official Thomas & Friends YouTube channel in which they hire another company to gather together the most talented fans on the site and create content (usually multi part stories) to be uploaded every Friday.

It's a great idea, and the people they have working on it are extremely talented. However, the execution... isn't that good.

That's not to say there aren't some good episodes: Henry's Fire Rescue and the shorter stories are brilliant; the pacing is really good and they do create some really good stories. But when it comes to the longer ones, that's where things start to fall apart.

Every single one can be described in the exact same way: Diesel vs Steam rivalry, use of Diesel 10, a race, chase or runaway, fan service callbacks to actual episodes and an overblown crash because (again, from what I can tell) this is what some data somewhere tells these companies that kids and fans will eat up.

Except that's not to case.

It seems that HiT, Mattel and whichever other company is working on these has forgotten a very simple saying: you can have too much of a good thing (or, in the case of the steam/diesel rivalry and Diesel 10, too much of a mediocre thing). Sure, crashes are fun, but when they're as overblown and frequent as the ones we see in the collective, it just gets stale and boring. Likewise every chase, race and runaway. It doesn't help that there's no variety to these incidents at all; practically all of them include the Troublesome Trucks in some way. Say what you want about series 5 (and I do a lot), but at least the action in that is varied and - with critical analysis turned off - the action packed episodes are fun to watch.

The current TV series has a similar balance of action based episodes with slice of life ones, and they pull it off brilliantly.  Sure, the latter ones can sometimes be less interesting or fun, and some of the action packed ones can be a bit stupid, but it's the perfect way to a) ensure that fans don't get sick of so much action and b) calm things down a bit so that the team can work on building character dynamics. Maybe if the TCC team were allowed to do this more often, and with a wider variety of characters, viewers wouldn't be turned off so quickly.

Not only that, but relying on one character too much in certain roles (the only antagonists the TCC series has had are Diesel and D10) has a similar effect. I wasn't much for Hero of the Rails, but having a character like Spencer as an antagonist (even if his motivations are never revealed and his turn comes out of nowhere) was a great way to shake things up a bit. Likewise James in Tale of the Brave and Sailor John in Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure. There needs to be something to shake up the formula soon, otherwise I feel it'll turn kids off.

Speaking of the kids, I've heard complaints from the defence force that they're "making stories for kids"... Alright then, let's just forgive series 9-16 of every one of their sins because they are made for kids! Yes, the writing teams for the show are professionals while the fans involved with the TCC are hobbyists, but they were hired and (possibly) paid based on their skill, which has hardly ever been given a time to shine in terms of writing.

I'm not going to deny that the models and sets look fantastic, the music is wonderful and the voice acting is good (although it can be hit or miss at times), but all of that is irrelevant when the writing is so formulaic, stupid and just plain dull (just watch Sodor's Finest where it's reaching its nadir). Again, no one really complained too much about series 13-16 as everyone agreed that the animation was great, and fan projects shouldn't be let off the hook just because they are who they are. It's like saying independent game developers shouldn't be criticised just because they're not in the mainstream "AAA" gaming industry!

To those who think these shouldn't be critiqued however, I shall just say "get stuffed" to you. I get your frustration towards those who hate for the sake of it, but their are viewers out there who have genuine problems with certain episodes. Hell, I've listed quite a few. And they should not be ignored, made to feel bad or be outright slated just for having the "gall" to try and make their TCC episodes better.

Those who refuse constructive criticism are basically saying that they refuse to grow. And when they refuse to grow, things stay the same. And when they stay they same, they become as tedious, boring and repetitive as recent collectives have been. The team can blame as many restrictions as they want, but that shouldn't excuse laziness on their end. They need to up their writing game. Fast.

I'm not being critical because I like it, I'm doing it because I care. I want the TV series to be as good as it can be, and I want the TCC to be a huge success. Sure they bring in the views and the revenue, but if they keep using the same characters, similar scenarios and constant chases, races and runaways, only one question really springs to mind: how long can it last?