Jul 11, 2026 · 45 min · 12 segments
**Our reboot of Wildfur's The Engine: Industrial Strength is back on the table, and we show our hands (a bit) with some teaser chat about the project.** Wildman and Furman - back together! (Were we…
Andrew WildmanHost
Simon FurmanHost
left to talk about simon we've spoken about everything yes we're going to talk about um we're going to talk about our new little passion project so that we we're not starting that we're restarting
restart the engine yeah which is a it's just been there for so long in the background um and it needs to be done it so needs to be done and in some ways it's become as time has gone on and and when we looked what we thought about doing it and looked back at the you know the previous material done i always loved the material i always loved the idea the kind of the theme The environments, the characters, I liked designing them, all that kind of thing.
But this many years later, because that was, well, it was turning the century, wasn't it? So it was like 20, 25 years ago, really, that we were doing that stuff.
Yeah, you know, it was sort of just into the new millennium sort of discussion and all the groundwork and the various versions we did of it.
Because, you know, we did it as the little motion comic version that Adam helped us out with.
This sort of animation pitch I think went through a couple of variations and the biggest change with those different things that we did was obviously the comic one was a bit more, I mean not adult as such, but it was a bit grittier and then both some of the themes but also visually when we did it as an animation pitch we made it look like animation you know kind of redesign thing made it a bit more friendly a bit more colorful yeah you know colors that popped the characters very specifically had their own color way and all that kind of stuff to make it work in the world of animation but So that tended to change the potential age group that it was going to be targeted at.
But the one thing that it did retain was the thing that you'd always wanted it to be initially when you first pitched it was a bit kind of steampunk.
can
remember you coining it as steampunk Thunderbirds, which impacted exactly what it was.
So they were like... a crew who solved problems rather than being a battling force as such.
Yeah, it was that sort of enhanced Victoriana feel to it of a sort of Victorian age of machines and industrial revolution that just, it didn't sort of evolve in the same way.
And at the time, steampunk felt a very good fit for, you know, something, a sort of theme, if you like, and This idea of industrialization gone wild and out of control and on a scale.
And the problem with that over time that these machines were just sort of effectively out of date, big clunky things.
and and you know continually needed fixing and then there was a sort of more existential threat in there as well and some some boardroom shenanigans and evil industrialists and that kind of thing which some of which will still be in there definitely
Yeah, the steampunk thing was, like you say, was a thing at the time, very much at the turn of the century.
left to talk about simon we've spoken about everything yes we're going to talk about um we're going to talk about our new little passion project so that we we're not starting that we're restarting
restart the engine yeah which is a it's just been there for so long in the background um and it needs to be done it so needs to be done and in some ways it's become as time has gone on and and when we looked what we thought about doing it and looked back at the you know the previous material done i always loved the material i always loved the idea the kind of the theme The environments, the characters, I liked designing them, all that kind of thing.
But this many years later, because that was, well, it was turning the century, wasn't it? So it was like 20, 25 years ago, really, that we were doing that stuff.
Yeah, you know, it was sort of just into the new millennium sort of discussion and all the groundwork and the various versions we did of it.
Because, you know, we did it as the little motion comic version that Adam helped us out with.
This sort of animation pitch I think went through a couple of variations and the biggest change with those different things that we did was obviously the comic one was a bit more, I mean not adult as such, but it was a bit grittier and then both some of the themes but also visually when we did it as an animation pitch we made it look like animation you know kind of redesign thing made it a bit more friendly a bit more colorful yeah you know colors that popped the characters very specifically had their own color way and all that kind of stuff to make it work in the world of animation but So that tended to change the potential age group that it was going to be targeted at.
But the one thing that it did retain was the thing that you'd always wanted it to be initially when you first pitched it was a bit kind of steampunk.
can
remember you coining it as steampunk Thunderbirds, which impacted exactly what it was.
So they were like... a crew who solved problems rather than being a battling force as such.
Yeah, it was that sort of enhanced Victoriana feel to it of a sort of Victorian age of machines and industrial revolution that just, it didn't sort of evolve in the same way.
And at the time, steampunk felt a very good fit for, you know, something, a sort of theme, if you like, and This idea of industrialization gone wild and out of control and on a scale.
And the problem with that over time that these machines were just sort of effectively out of date, big clunky things.
and and you know continually needed fixing and then there was a sort of more existential threat in there as well and some some boardroom shenanigans and evil industrialists and that kind of thing which some of which will still be in there definitely
Yeah, the steampunk thing was, like you say, was a thing at the time, very much at the turn of the century.
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