There’s a real concern that the writers of Thunderbirds Are Go are lacking in imagination when it comes to thinking up rescue situations.
Whereas episodes like ‘Space Race’ thought up bold and exciting new ideas for the Tracy family to tackle, ‘Runaway’ goes with that tired old cliché of a runaway train.
We kind of expected better from a writer like Stan Berkowitz (Justice League), but sadly the plot fails to impress much. Yes, the idea of the superconducting train’s shutdown system being overridden by a mysterious outside force is a nice spin on things, but the episode ultimately can’t help but be a series of shots of a train flying down a track at high speed.
The highlight of the episode is certainly the character of Brains. Whereas the original series had Brains called out on missions every other week, this marks the first time in the rebooted show that he’s left Tracy Island. This new Brains is nervous and clearly not up for any physical action, as demonstrated when he zip lines towards the train from Thunderbird 1. It’s a great character moment that will hopefully be revisited in the rest of the season.
Unfortunately, the zip line moment is really the only impressive moment here. The rest of the episode consists of Brains trying to rewire the train, Alan moaning about not being able to help (till, by chance, he unwittingly does, in a moment of coincidence that feels rather tacked on) and lots of tired, overused Grandma’s cooking jokes (the writers need a new gag now, this one’s starting to wear thin!).
It just feels like an episode on autopilot, which certainly hurts, because up till now Thunderbirds Are Go has been anything but that.
It’s not awful, but it’s not as entertaining as previous episodes. Thunderbirds does big ideas better than any other show, so why are we getting simple episodes about runaway trains, with no cool imaginative spin on them?
Despite some great character development for Brains, ‘Runaway’ is slow and uninspiring, by-the-numbers stuff.
Aired at 8am on Saturday 9 May 2015 on CITV.
> Order Volume 1 on DVD on Amazon.
> Buy the complete Thunderbirds collection on Blu-ray on Amazon.
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