Nia (Thomas & Friends)

Nia is a character that appeared in the Big World Big Adventures! movie, as well as seasons 22-24 of the original series and Thomas and Friends: All Engines Go!. She was created to replace Edward in the main cast. She wasn't well received by fans and critics of Thomas and Friends for her qualities.

Why She's Not So Helpful After All (Bad Qualities)

 * 1) She serves absolutely no purpose in the show other than replacing Edward the Blue Engine and is there to be a filler character, quite similar to Rebecca, who was introduced to replace Henry.
 * 2) *Speaking of her replacing Edward, she feels like a rehash of him, minus most of the likability and charm of him.
 * 3) She can be seen as a Mary Sue, considering the fact that her personality is mostly generic, bland, uninteresting, and boring.
 * 4) There is no explanation of why she lives at Tidmouth Sheds, as she just appears there without any introduction to her joining the steam team.
 * 5) She was one of the main reasons why the original series went downhill, and eventually resulted in its cancellation.
 * 6) Her reason for replacing Edward on the steam team gets very confusing as some websites say that she was put in because of criticism from feminist and social justice groups, but the Thomas & Friends fandom says that she was put in to fix the gender imbalance at Tidmouth Sheds.
 * 7) Like with all of the characters in seasons 22-24, her fantasy sequences are distracting, uncanny, painful to look at, and just plain unrealistic.
 * 8) She acted very annoying towards Thomas in the movie.
 * 9) She is also just shoved into the movie, basically does nothing the whole entire time throughout it, and adds nothing to the plot, also making her filler character of the film.
 * 10) She actually gets worse in AEG, since over here, in "Thomas Blasts Off", she tries pushing a rocket shell through a tunnel; in "Nia's Perfect Plan", she acts bratty and refuses to accept the fact that something is wrong with her plan. Plus, her new voice is extremely annoying and high-pitched due to the annoying voice performances from Sade Smith in the UK dub and Talia Evans in the US dub. While Talia Evans does try to sound lively as Nia, the same cannot apply to Sade Smith since it sounded like she was bored or just didn't want to voice Nia at all.

Helpful Qualities

 * 1) She is at least given a proper introduction, unlike Rebecca.
 * 2) Nia has a decent design in both Big Worldǃ Big Adventuresǃ and All Engines Go!.
 * 3) Her voice acting in Big Worldǃ Big Adventures! is very decent as Yvonne Grundy and Patricia Kihoro did pretty good jobs voicing her as her speaking and singing voices respectively.
 * 4) She's actually sympathetic.