Octonauts
Season 4, Episode 16: "Octonauts and the Surfing Snail" (11 minutes)
Ireland: Brown Bag / Silver Gate
CBeebies, Monday 27 November, 8:10
In a way, I think Octonauts is fairly similar to Go Jetters in its premise, being about a team of characters with different abilities who team up to save the day. This time, however, it has more of a feel of Thunderbirds, as it has more emphasis on a variety of fantastic vehicles.
After an incredibly intense theme tune, we are presented with a huge variety of animal characters aboard an amphibious caterpillar truck: Captain Barnacles the bear, Kwazii the pirate cat, Peso the penguin doctor, Dashi the dog communications officer, Shellington the biologist otter, Tweak the engineer rabbit, Professor Inkling the oceanographer octopus, and a group of bizarre fish-vegetable hybrids that play no part in this episode.
Busman's holiday
In this episode, the team are going on a beach holiday. When they arrive, Dashi teaches Peso and Kwazii how to surf: Peso is a natural, but Kwazii is having a lot of trouble. Dashi explains that not everyone can get the hang of surfing.
Dashi discovers two "surfing snails" who float on mucus bubbles that their bodies create (which I found out are real creatures called violet snails). However, things go awry when a large wave comes, which pops the snails' bubbles faster than they can replace them. It's time for the team to abandon their leisure activities and get to action!
So that the young viewers can understand what's going on, Dashi reiterates what happened, Shellington shows on his phone that the snails cannot swim and will drown if they are not rescued, and the Captain explains that their mission is to save the snails. They try to rescue the snails using a variety of vehicles (submarine, helicopter, jet-ski), but in the end it is down to Dashi and her trusty surfboard. Eventually she manages to catch them with a net.
Back on shore, the snails thank Dashi for her help. Dashi notes that the only thing that would make her happier, would be if Kwazii could stay on the surfboard long enough to enjoy it. With some encouragement from the snails, Kwazii tries again, and this time manages to stand and do some surfing.
Spirit of investigation
This episode didn't present a huge amount of academic content, really it was only the introduction of an obscure and interesting animal species. However, I think it introduces children to the idea of investigating the natural environment and asking questions, which are in themselves elements of the science curriculum. There are also many elements of SMSC education, including teamwork, perseverance (if you at first you don't succeed, try and try again), helping each other, encouraging each other, and so on.
It is also one of the few series I have seen so far that presents a variety of regional accents: the Captain is incredibly posh, Dashi is Australian, Shellington is Scottish, and the snails are Californian. This is a breath of fresh air, as the majority of characters on CBeebies still have the traditional "BBC accent," peppered with a few Irish accents.
I feel that Octonauts is more suitable for younger children than Go Jetters, as the concepts presented are more basic, the plot slightly simpler, and the animal characters being more "cute" and appealing. However, I do wonder if there might be some confusion due to the huge number of characters? Maybe it's just my aging brain but I was struggling to keep track of them all!
Available to watch online until 27 December 2017
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