‘Tomas the Large Locomotive’, as a concept, has always confused me. So you’ve got a bunch of vehicles that are sentient, and according to supplementary material it’s all over the world. They even did a crossover with Budget the Brittle Helicopter, that series about the badly-made helicopter who offers low-quality flights to tourists, and all of those vehicles are clearly sentient as well. But the thing is, despite them having human intelligence and feelings, they aren’t TREATED like humans. They get retired in brutal ways, and when they’re no longer useful their humans just dump them like trash.In the last episode I watched with my kids, Tomas was carrying a shipment of hyperbaric chambers from a Melbourne company. Tomas asked his driver what hyperbaric therapy was, and the guy explained that oxygen chambers can be used for people with breathing and other health problems. Tomas said that he had trouble breathing sometimes because of the coal dust. The driver just laughed and said that Tomas was a silly engine, and they kept driving. True, later in the episode Tomas blew his top and drove all of his passengers right off the tracks and into a lake, because he has serious unresolved issues, but I don’t think that was anything to do with the hyperbaric chambers. Tomas gets upset at a lot of things.
But you get what I mean, right? Clearly, Tomas has some sort of locomotive asthma, and the driver just laughed it off. What a world! All these people with problems, and hyperbaric chambers not big enough for sentient trains, planes and automobiles. Although a counsellor for trains with anger management problems isn’t too much to ask. Might stop there from being so many late trains. Like, three per episode on average, in a kids’ show as well. I don’t remember this show being so dark when I was a kid. Although I do remember an episode where they walled up one of the naughty trains.
-Daniel