This episode is...meh. It's the first episode I can say really feels like HIT had a part in. And maybe that's just a bit of cynical thinking. After all, the proceeding episodes aren't the best that Thomas and Friends have ever done. But at the same time, they at least felt like stories that would have been done a little better if Mitton and Allcroft had more freedom. This one...it's pretty run of the mill.
As is the Zero portion today. It's essentially setting up what Zero was doing for the war, and also setting in motion plot points that have already happened. If you've been following this for long, you'll recognise the references all right.
Greatwestern1522: Ha! Sort of.
AaronCottrell97: That's such praise! He's so boring otherwise, aside from his character, so that means a lot.
Reality Rejection Service: Fergus is a complex engine. At least in my version. XD.
Bronze Shield: They are very...enthusiastic, about their job.
Game-Watch: That's actually referenced here.
MattPrice01: The insular nature of that should hopefully end around this point. We're going back into the history of the universe of this story now, so hopefully you'll catch more references here. And thanks for the praise for Fergus!
JD145: Ah, Arry doesn't count. We've got NEW ARRY now!
UGX7: Hopefully the reveal of what the old man actually is will change your mind. I hope to do it in a really interesting way.
Radical Sandwiches: Quite so. You'll see more of that as time goes on. Though whether that is a time loop or not is...something that we will find out later.
Shin-Dan Kuroto: That's fair.
Hughie96: That's basically what he is. I've got in my mind a sort of Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes/New Tricks style copper. And yeah, he has a unique design and the start of an interesting personality. The limitations with the model though, do explain why they weren't using him after this. I empathise with your own struggles. It's a pain.
CUE THE THEME!
Did you know how pretty the Skarloey Railway is?
No?
Then we're going to spend the next twenty minutes informing you of it.
All right, Rheneas and Skarloey love working on the most wonderful, serene, calm, attractive, alluring, gorgeous, heavenly part of the otherwise shithole known as the Island of Sodor. It's so wonderful here that you could literally vomit and, upon touching the ground, it would turn into rainbows. That's just how pleasant the Skarloey Railway is. Please ignore the fact that we are showing you a ton of stock footage right now, our cameras burst into flames when matched with how lovely the railway is. So lovely, in fact, that it has been known to cure the world's ills if you stay here for more than two minutes.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER.
-And that, in turn, concludes how handsome the toilets are in this facilit-Hmm? Move on with the story? No way! The script says I get to extol the virtues of a Skarloey way of living and damn it, that's what I'm going to do!
No, YOU'RE being pedantic.
Also, something something love to puff through forest and over rivers. Though not, for the record, through the rivers and over the forests, as that would be ridiculous. Unless you were in the storyline portion of the story, in which case, that's pretty normal.
There was an old bridge that crossed over the largest river of the lot of them. This has not been mentioned before because shut the hell up, it's a big Island! Also because technically speaking it was a death trap to try and get decent shots of. The supports were beginning to rot, and the engines didn't like to use it unless absolutely necessary.
Or for a prank. That had backfired several times in the old days when it had belonged to the Mid Sodor Railway. Just ask Tim.
Who is Tim?
Exactly.
One day, Skarloey chuffed happily along. As he passed Skarloey Lake, he wondered to himself whether the next generation would be smart enough to avoid crashing into large bodies of water while drunk. He wondered if something noble would be lost if that was the case. And then he wondered whether or not the next generation would be a bunch of overly PC replacements for him and his kind.
Such was life.
He didn't see the broken rail until it was too late.
And why didn't he see it? Well to be blunt, he should have gone to Specsavers!
...That's a joke few people outside of the UK will get.
"OOF!" said he, his nose resting against the broken bit of rail. "Who put this there!?" As he dangled, he decided to take in the view of the river. Right now he was currently reassessing his opinion of what he had done with his life. Namely getting out of his shed every morning and not just going back to sleep. "HEEEEEELP!"
Rheneas quickly arrived, having been busy staring at a bit of wall to entertain himself, and rescued him. "Golly gosh oh cripes!" he said. "You were in a real pickle chum!"
"God I forgot how annoying you can be when you're like this, boyo."
...
A few days later (A few, weepy days later for the elder engine), the Fat Controller arrived with news. "The Old Bridge has been repaired! ...Eh, sort of. Apparently the owner of t'company has a fetish for impractical and old bridges. But the trucks for the workers have been left there. Off you pop, Skarloey!"
"Yes sir." He didn't want to go on the bridge again, but he forced himself to head off.
Now for some reason, he didn't take the long route and get the trucks via the Lakeside path. Instead, he decided to be a drama queen and take the shorter route, but the one that would force him to actually cross the bridge.
Skarloey was beginning to wonder if he needed something stronger than alcohol. Like glue. He started across, looked down at the running water and began to back right the hell up. Not today, thought he!
"Come on Skarloey!" said his driver. "It's safe now!"
"YOU SAID THAT ABOUT THE LAKE!"
He and his driver, who had no real control anymore so he didn't bother, went home. Rheneas's driver, bored out of his mind, said that they would pick up the trucks as long as Skarloey's driver stopped throwing scrunched up paper every time they met.
It was agreed.
"You can't live your life being scared!" said Rheneas, entering his preachy mode. "You'll have to cross that bridge sooner or later!"
"OR WHEN YE COME TO IT!"
"Thank you Duncan, I was going to try and avoid that pun, but whatever."
"I HAVE NAE SHAME!"
"We've always known that." grunted Rusty, who was knackered after having to repair yet another bloody bridge so soon after having to repair the entire line. This series could not have come for a worse time for them. Now Rheneas had to take Skarloey's work as well as his own.
And every day, he had to cross the bridge.
You can see where this is going, can't you?
Finally, the Fat Controller came to see Skarloey. "OI! MATE! You won't cross the bridge, you'll stay in here and shunt trucks! I can't have engines who won't do as they are told! ...Apart from all the ones that do!"
"Fine by me, guv." said Skarloey. The Fat Controller felt defeated somehow.
...
The next morning, Rheneas took the little coward's trucks, as per usual, before puffing through the peaceful countryside to wherever it was he had to go. He was beginning to wonder if there was any point in seeing whether that there personality transplant had actually worked. To this day, he still felt relatively empty.
"Good golly gumpkins!" said he, slipping back into his old bland ways for a moment. "What the hell!?"
He had been crossing the bridge, quite unaware of it all through his thoughts, when he came to a rather sudden stop. His water had been completely depleted. "BOTHER!" he said, managing to somehow make it sound like the worst of the worst in terms of curse words. News soon spread up and down the line, in particular to the yard.
The yard manager hurried up to Skarloey. "Oi! Lazyguts! Rheneas has come a cropper!"
"Oh...suppose I had better go and help him." yawned Skarloey, as he set off at a snail's pace. Rheneas had been very smug earlier, and he looked forward to rubbing the incident in his face. He didn't realise that he had appeared to have gone cross-eyed as he set off. Upon seeing just where Rheneas had broken on, the old engine could be heard to wonder "But can't we just leave him there?!" before grumpily setting off. The river seemed deeper than ever.
A whole...I don't know five centimetres? I mean look at it. It's practically a paddling pool for god's sake. Rheneas had an expression on his face which indicated that he really didn't want to be on this episode.
"I must rescue my friend...or brother...or whatever we are this week!"
The bridge groaned as Skarloey crossed.
"Lose some weight!" hissed the driver, and was ignored, again. Elsewhere, someone dropped dead from induced boredom.
Okay, to make a long and boring story short (Too late!), the driver coupled Rheneas up to Skarloey and they set off back over the other side and essentially the whole thing was over. Yes, I do want to be done with this, why do you ask? I've been dragged at the crack of dawn for THIS SHIT!? I was better off doing Boys from the Black Stuff, not...whatever this is!
"Thank you." said Rheneas later. "You were so gosh darn brave to go across a few feet of bridge and help me."
"Shove it up your smokebox, boyo." said Skarloey, who wanted this episode to end. Ah right, he loves his journey more than ever and he is no longer scared of the bridge.
AND THAT'S IT! I'M OUT FOR THE DAY. YOU'LL NEVER CATCH ME, JOHNNY LAW.
...
"I'm going to win!?" Toby sounded incredulous. Duck looked embarrassed. "How long did you spend thinking that one up, eh?"
"I was PANICKING, all right!? I wanted to say something badass and it just sort of came out!"
Edward snorted. "So...what's the information say?"
Duck groaned. "Nothing that we didn't already suspect, but it's still disheartening to hear. Since the Duchess has been killed, the Iron Circle has gone to ground. Getting word about Scotsman is nigh on impossible, and Truro has essentially taken over fully. Boxhill's said that he's essentially cut off all ties with France and Russia, which isn't surprising given that the representatives of those countries are non-steam. What is surprising, however, is that he's talking about withdrawing completely from the Island AND from Shining Time."
"After all the stuff we went through?!" snapped Toby.
"It does make a bit of sense, though, doesn't it?" Edward sighed. "You don't have your victory the way you want it, so you just flat out deny it...Fergus. Is he trustworthy?"
"Yes." Duck said this without any hesitation. "He's morally rigid and completely inflexible. And that means no matter how corrupted the upper echelons have gotten, he'll have stuck to his guns and done his job. I don't like him. He's a throwback to the seventies in all the worst ways possible. He's got Pug's people skills and Jinty's ability to care about said people. But he does a good job, he's loyal to a fault and I think he is aware of how badly we've fallen."
"So what's his deal?" Toby asked. "I know he's supposedly ex-Sudrian Police, right?"
"Right. He was the original spy here. But unfortunately, he was posted to various smaller, less complex areas of the Island. And besides, his attitude did not lend one to bear their soul to him. You'll have worked that out by now." Duck sighed. "And he was sort of shoved around a bit. Let's see...he was working at the docks in 84, then from 86 to about...92, he was basically the go-between for the Sudrian and English police, which was a nice cushy job that got him out of the way. Then when you were kidnapped, Stepney, he was sent over to basically watch over the Bluebell until...well, things got sorted out." He gave a sympathetic glance to the golden engine. "Not my idea."
"No, it's fine."
"Er, from there he was put on the Peel Godred line, out of the way of you lot. And throughout most of that, he was my way of making sure that the information that I gave got through to the right channels." Duck sighed. "Not his fault that it turned out a lot of the information was already known to the Other Railway."
"...What's stopping that from happening this time?"
"Simple. We're not sending information off. We're getting information in." Duck winced. "And there is one...other thing that might cause some sort of alarm. A specific order came through from the company regarding a certain black diesel that we all know and hate."
"Damn." said Edward.
"Damn indeed."
...
1935.
"So...I don't...really...get it."
That's because you're not supposed to. You are an incredibly stupid man who has two redeeming qualities. One, you are very easy to manipulate. Two, you can go up and act as the face of something that should keep us both in pocket for quite a bit.
That was what Zero would have liked to have said. Instead, he smiled and waved his hand. "Ach, dinnae worry about it...Norris. Popular name over here, so it seems. Ye just have to go out there and pretend to be Harry Topper. I'm much better with tha figures than the crowd itself. I book the acts, and ye do the introduction! Everyone loves ye, and we both get paid."
That, the feckless Norris could understand. After all, half of his family had worked for the circus and/or fairground. And the other half had been attractions. It was agreed. In front of the scenes, Harry Topper was a rather loud, flamboyant and slightly insane sounding man. Behind it, he would be one hell of an entrepreneur.
Soon, Captain Zero was left to his own devices. He sat and looked over the map of the Island. There was a lot to be done. According to this list, and to common sense, war was on the way. And that could be very useful indeed. But first, a few phone calls. He had to get things just in the right place first. And that started with a Mr Drampf.
His son had nearly run him across the road as he had exited the low rent airport. And while that would have normally pissed Zero off, it presented an interesting opportunity. Harry Topper wasn't the only identity he had taken. After all, in public, Topper was going to be represented by the slack jawed yokel he had just seen out of the door. And thus the creation of ex-navy (Not a lie) and recently knighted (most definitely a lie) officer had been necessary. According to the list, there was something involving Drampf in the future. He didn't know what it would involve outside of 'politics' but at the same time...well, one could never be too careful, could they?
But before he got down to that, something caught his eye.
The Ministry of Defence were apparently moving in soon.
Perhaps, reasoned Zero, he could kill two birds with one stone here.
After all, the famous electrical engine that the MoD bragged about could be an asset worth looking into.