Missed this post...
...Okay, I guess I should add something more substantial than that, huh?
I actually grew up on the Shining Time version of Thomas. I actually have some nostalgic fondness for those characters, like Mr Conductor and Stacy Jones and the Jukebox Band. So...I can't really fault the movie for including those characters, even if they don't make sense to anyone outside the US. I actually kind of missed them once they were removed from the show. It somehow felt...less, without them. But, that's probably just nostalgia talking.
I too had that feeling of "something missing" when watching Thomas on VHS as a kid when it was just the Thomas episodes without the rest of Shining Time Station. It was only the familiar voices of the narrators (Ringo Starr and George Carlin) that kept that sense of familiarity and connection to Shining Time Station.
When the movie came out, like I said in an earlier post, I was absolutely shocked and thrilled to see that series revisited in the movie, since by the time the film came out, Shining Time Station had been long gone from PBS and I never expected to see it returned to ever again (at the time, I didn't yet have cable TV, and so didn't at all know about the Shining Time Station reruns airing on Fox Family and Nick Jr. in the late 90s).
So seeing the world of Shining Time Station in the movie was a big surprise and real treat for me when I first saw the movie in the theater. My jaw dropped upon hearing the words, "Hello. I'm Mr. Conductor." I was also slightly confused about him being played by a different guy, since back then I hadn't seen any Thomas episodes past Series 4, and so knew nothing about Alec Baldwin narrating Series 5. So the movie was my introduction to his affiliation with the series (it might have even been my introduction to him as an actor at all).
I was equally confused about Billy being played by Russell Means instead of Tom Jackson, and was hoping more characters from the show would appear besides just him, Stacy, and the new Mr. C. No Schemer, no Jukebox Band, and none of the familiar recurring faces like J.B. King, Midge Smoot, Mayor Flopdinger, Ginny, Felix Perez, or Barton Winslow showed up. Out of all of them, only Stacy got a role that was anything close to substantial, and that was just when she drove Lily up to Muffle Mountain. After that, Stacy just disappears from the rest of the movie (in the final cut; the extended cut has more scenes of her, but she does absolutely nothing of import in any of those extra scenes). Granted, I didn't know at the time that the actors who played Midge, Ginny, and the Mayor had already passed away by then, but still.
Anyway...
While I still do find this movie, warts and all, incredibly nostalgic, the movie is not only completely frustrating as a Thomas movie (for all of the obvious reasons), but, speaking as a life-long fan of Shining Time Station... it also completely fails to work as a Shining Time Station movie. Thomas fans may get headaches from how much the movie ignored and contradicted established lore and continuity from Thomas & Friends (and its Railway Series roots), but it also ignored and contradicted so much of the established lore and continuity of Shining Time Station.
The movie talks so much about how there's magic in the world that is vital to maintaining the stability and harmony of the entire universe. That was
never a thing in Shining Time Station. In that show, the only magic that existed was confined entirely to just Mr. Conductor (and his family members), certain aspects of the station itself (like the Anything Tunnel in the station's mural), and a local wishing well that was mentioned a few times but never actually seen (its magic was twice brought into the station by Mr. C). The entire valley, let alone the entire
universe, was never portrayed as anything more than just an ordinary world (much like how the world of Thomas & Friends was).
The Magic Railroad itself being vital to the world's existence is something that the movie just made up. Admittedly, the STS show was very light on fleshing out the lore of the Conductor Family and their relation to the Island of Sodor. But what
was known was that the Conductors simply travel to Sodor and back to Shining Time Station (as well as to other destinations) via their Magic Dust's teleportation ability. There was never anything about the Conductor Family being some kind of guardians who help to maintain the balance and order of the entire universe. It was never that kind of "fate of the world is at stake" type of show.
As such, the world of Shining Time seen in the movie also feels only
superficially similar to how it was in the show. Namely, the fact that the town itself is even named "Shining Time"
at all is something that the show barely ever acknowledged. Outside of the town sign seen in the theme song, the show only ever referred to the town's name a small number of times (once or twice, at most), while the movie makes such a big deal about it for seemingly only one reason: To shallowly draw attention to the fact that this movie is a crossover between Thomas & Friends and Shining Time Station.
In the show, the whole valley was given greater significance than the town. Known as Indian Valley, it was home to the Indian Valley Railroad, on which all trains that visited Shining Time Station traveled. In the movie, the name "Indian Valley" is only ever seen on the side of Billy's engine, the Rainbow Sun, while "Indian Valley Railroad" is only
barely visibly seen on Billy's map of the valley that Patch looks at. It's like the show and movie swapped the significance between the name of the town and the name of the valley and its railroad. "Indian Valley Railroad" went from being a vital aspect of the show to a mere Easter egg/footnote in the movie, and vice versa with the town being named "Shining Time".
Two deleted scenes from the movie claim that "Shining Time" is an old railway term that refers to the beginning of a journey, when an engine's wheels start to spin and the rails shine. That goes completely against the final episode of Shining Time Station's third season. Titled "How the Station Got Its Name", the episode established that the station was named "Shining Time Station" after Stacy's grandmother, Gracie Jones, had saved a train from crashing into a horse-drawn carriage that had broken down on the station's tracks, by shining an emergency light from a signal lantern to warn the train. "I saw your light shining just in time!" said the train's grateful engineer. That was how "Shining Time Station" was coined.
Another, quite baffling inconsistency between the show and the movie is how the character of Billy Twofeathers was portrayed. In the movie, he's an all-knowing sage attuned to nature, magic, and the harmony it all brings to the valley. That is almost the exact
opposite of how he was in the show. While he was wise and knowledgeable about life experiences, railway history, and Native American folklore, he was more like a mentor or parental figure to the kids who visited the station. When it came to the subject of magic, however, he wasn't some guru who fully understood magic and its importance to the world. He was more like the straight man who was completely
bewildered whenever anything magical or supernatural happened in the show. He helped
ground the show in reality, always feeling surprised or confused by Mr. Conductor's magical abilities. In one episode, "Becky Makes a Wish", when some wishing magic accidentally ended up running amok throughout the station, Billy got so stressed out by all the magical chaos that he wished he'd never gotten out of bed that day. It nearly drove him nuts.
I won't bother comparing Alec Baldwin's Mr. C to those of Ringo or Carlin since their two Mr. Conductors were already established in the show as being cousins to each other, so there's no inconsistency there; Baldwin's Mr. C is likely just another family member. What IS inconsistent about him, though, is his gold dust. For starters, the movie consistently refers to it as "Gold Dust" and "Sparkle", two terms that were
not used in the show. Rather, the stuff was instead called "Magic Dust". A small thing, but considering that Britt Allcroft made both productions, one would think she'd have kept the terminology consistent. Then again, she also didn't keep any consistency between the show and movie with how the stuff even
works. In the film, the Gold Dust is stored inside Mr. C's whistle and Junior's kazoo, and is activated by their blowing into either object. In the show, Ringo and Carlin's Mr. Cs didn't need to blow into their whistles to use their Magic Dust. They could just activate its teleportation ability at will, or even wave their hand to perform other magical abilities (like whenever they would summon a Magic Bubble to play a music video for the kids at the station). Their whistles were only ever blown to start the Thomas stories, which were
not magical in nature. The whistle was just used as a tool for scene transitions.
Other differences are found in some of the movie's subtleties, the little details that the filmmakers put in to try making the movie feel more connected to the show, but which were done all wrong. For instance, the newspaper seen in the background of the Shining Time scenes in the movie is named "The Shining Times". Cute name, right? Well, that's actually a big slap in the face to the show's continuity. In the show, not only was the local newspaper actually named "The Indian Valley Gazette" (consistently in
several episodes, even), but "The Shining Times" was actually the name of a
fake newspaper, from an episode where the kids at the station decided to write their own newspaper with articles full of lies and exaggerations (it was an episode where they learned about journalistic integrity). Of the two newspaper names this movie could have chosen, it went with the name of the fake one instead of the legitimate one.
About the only thing from Shining Time Station that this movie got right was Stacy Jones. The correct actress, the correct look, and the correct portrayal. But, to be fair, Didi Conn had already played the character several years before, so she had the experience to get the part right. Though, even with her and Billy's larger roles in the extended cut, their additional scenes only amounted to the two of them just spouting more exposition, in which they make some
ridiculously large leaps in logic to uncover the secrets of the Magic Railroad, reaching conclusions without any real prompts that would have led them to those conclusions in any believable way. Very much like how Adam West Batman used to solve the Riddler's riddles with similarly huge leaps in logic.
TATMR may have gotten a whole lot wrong about the continuity and lore of Thomas, but the same is unfortunately just as true (if not moreso) for how much it botched the continuity and lore of Shining Time Station.
And yet...
There is... something... that has come out of this that I can say has a genuinely nice feel to it.
This is a fanmade sequel short, that fully leans into the continuity of the movie, but also brings Schemer into the mix. It is made entirely with models and figurines, and acts like Stacy, Burnett, and Schemer were all old friends who knew each since childhood (when the show made it
very clear that Stacy and Schemer only ever first met each other as adults in the second episode of the first season), so I guess that's tracks with movie's lack of adhering to the show's continuity.
Regardless, it is
extremely charming, and I can't help but consider it a guilty pleasure:
