Thomas Comes to Breakfast (Thomas & Friends)

Thomas Comes to Breakfast is the eighteenth episode of the second season of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. It was first broadcast in the UK on November 19th, 1986 on ITV and March 26th, 1989 in the US with Ringo Starr's narration, and December 18th, 1991 with George Carlin as the narrator on PBS as part of Shining Time Station. It is based on the story of the same name from the Railway Series book, "Branch Line Engines".

Why It Rocks

 * 1) It shows us the actual railway logic of why trains shouldn't move on their own, which was shown before in "Old Iron".
 * 2) Thomas barrelling straight into the stationmaster's house is a classic and memorable scene.
 * 3) "Look what you've done to our breakfast!"
 * 4) The episode itself is faithful to the original Railway Series story.
 * 5) The settings of Ffarqhuar Sheds look great.
 * 6) Percy and Toby's sleeping faces are created graciously.
 * 7) The Japanese dub of the episode is also great.
 * 8) Spectacular music from Mike O'Donnell and Junior Campbell like in every Classic era episode, especially the "Danger Theme".

The Only Bad Quality

 * 1) The Fat Controller gets cross with Thomas and sends him away to the works for wrecking the stationmaster's house, when it was clearly the clumsy cleaner's fault. There's no reason for the Fat Controller to blame engines for things that were entirely out of their control like this!

Trivia

 * This is Michael White/Whitehousefilms' favorite Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends episode.
 * It was also Reverend Wilbert Awdry's favorite story, along with "Thomas Goes Fishing".
 * This is the first episode of the second season to air in the US. It infamously made a few continuity errors, such as Toby, Donald and Douglas being introduced before their respective introductory episodes.
 * A large-scale model of Thomas was used for the scenes inside of the house.
 * When the narrator says "The stationmaster was furious!", the wall set-up behind the stationmaster is different in the restored version.
 * In George Carlin's US narration, when the stationmaster's wife shouts "Now I shall have to cook some more!", the sound of the door being banged sounds quieter than in all the other dubs for this episode, including both dubs by Ringo Starr.
 * This is the only episode in the television series that shows Thomas without his head lamp due to damage from the crash.
 * The events of this episode are mentioned by James in Journey Beyond Sodor, and Edward in Big World! Big Adventures! during the song "Where in the World is Thomas?". The scene where Thomas is in the stationmaster's house was even recreated in CGI during the song.
 * This episode was rerun back-to-back with the fourth season episode "Bulldog" on Storytime with Thomas.
 * Footage of the episode was used as a reference to the original story read aloud by Christopher Awdry in the exclusive YouTube documentary "70 Years of Friendship". Christopher also stated that this was one of his favorite stories.
 * The British YouTube channel WTLNetwork remixed the Thomas the Tank Engine theme with the "Look what you've done to our breakfast!" line into "The Breakfast Song".