It was a dark morning in Falmouth. Dark clouds moved overhead, and the sky was full of rain and flashes of lightning. Unknown to many, a submarine was moving in the depths, and snuck into the harbour before surfacing.

"Das ist alles, was wir tun," said the submarine commander. Looking to a man on his left, standing on the access hatch. "Viel Glück." (This is as far as we go. Good luck.)

The man on the ladder looked back. "Vielen Dank, hauptmann, dass Sie mich so weit gebracht haben. Ich werde dafür sorgen, dass das Vaterland Sie für Ihre Arbeit reichlich belohnt." (Thank you, Captain, for getting me this far. I shall see to it that the Fatherland rewards you greatly for your work.) He then opened the top hatch and boarded a boat before setting off towards the harbour proper.

The man looked back as the submarine dived, and laughed to himself. "Diese Engländer sind völlige Idioten. Wir haben uns ohne Schwierigkeiten durch ihre Marine geschlichen. Aber hatte die Luftwaffe zu kämpfen?" (These English are complete fools. We snuck through their navy with no difficulty. However did the Luftwaffe struggle?)

The boat docked on the beach, and the man collected his equipment and supplies from the boat- supplies, a false British uniform, and his Enigma machine for transmitting back to his superiors in Berlin. As he looked about, he spoke again. "Es sollte eine leichte Aufgabe sein, diese Stadt zu infiltrieren. Keiner von ihnen kann mich aufhalten – nicht einmal Hauptmann Roberts!" (Infiltrating this town should be an easy task. None of them can stop me- not even Captain Roberts!)

"That doesn't make any sense!"

"CUT!" shouted a voice, and suddenly all stopped. A man sitting in a chair looked over the scene, his green beard and hair making him look quite unhappy. "What is it now?"

"Sorry, Mr Zoom," Sunny said. "But for Agent Bohrmann to be mentioning Captain Roberts now doesn't make any sense. At this point in the story he has no clue who Captain Roberts is, and as a result this will create a plot hole later on."

Mr Zoom just stared at her blankly.

"What? People who have read the original book are going to notice."

Mr Zoom sighed. "Alright, Sunny. Reset the beach scene, but omit the last section of the final sentence!"

Falmouth had suddenly become a film set, albeit one of a different kind to previous years. The town had been taken over by a film studio shooting a WW2 movie there, based on a bestselling thriller by Creeping Jenny (her pen name, you understand). Sunny and her friends had been recruited as extras for the film, as well as the engines, and were currently being fitted into period clothing.

Zipp was not enjoying herself. "Can I at least wear pants?" she asked.

Pipp was also a tad disappointed. "Not enough poof for my taste," she said. "I prefer fifties fashion for that reason."

Sunny, however, was concerned. "I took a look over the script," she said, "and I was a bit concerned with all the stuff they've gotten wrong. Not just the opening beach scene, but other stuff too. They have a character mentioning the Enigma machine when nobody outside of Military Intelligence would have known what one was, Hitch pointed out an incorrect weapon for 1942, and there's also-"

Pipp glanced over. "Mr Zoom's just giving the audience what they want, Sunny," she said. "Most people won't be able to tell an STG Whatever from a Browning and Koch anyway. It's just a movie, Sunny, you should probably just relax."

"But given that a worrying number of people get their knowledge of WW2 and history in general from movies, doesn't that give movie directors even more of a reason to depict things accurately?" Sunny countered. "Christopher Nolan did for Dunkirk, and the results were great!"

"I don't think they have the budget here to rally all the Little Ships together or get an authentic Spitfire," Hitch said.

"And there's another thing! The end has a Mustang in Eigth Air Force colours fly in- two months before they arrived in the UK! And as they operated from bases in the north and east of England why would one be here?"

"Hurry it up please!" shouted a voice. "We need to shoot the train scene from when Captain Roberts arrives in Falmouth."

Sunny shook her head. "Hence why it makes absolutely no sense that Agent Bohrmann apparently knows who Captain Roberts is."

The Second Unit shot some footage from the dockfront, featuring Salty in the shot very prominently- despite, as Sunny pointing out, a Class 07 diesel shunter being completely innapropriate for the time period. Up above, Rebecca steamed in with a rake of coaches hastily repainted to hide the fact they were, in fact, BR MK1s.

"Is there any evidence for Bulleid locomotives running to Falmouth during WW2?" Rebecca asked.

"None that I know of," Hitch said. "The Spam Cans only entered production in 1945, as well, you know, and I suspect Merchant Navies were too heavy for the Brunel Bridge or the Withered Arm anyway."

He brought the train to a stop in the platform and sounded the whistle.

The actor playing the station master spoke up. "THIS IS FALMOUTH! THIS IS FALMOUTH! THIS TRAIN TERMINATES HERE! ALL PASSENGERS WISHING TO TRAVEL ONWARDS PLEASE USE OTHER TRANSPORT!"

Hitch shook his head at the parade of ineptitude on display. "Nice job telling the German spies on the train where you are, you dummy!"

Just then, the actor playing Captain Roberts stepped off the train. He was wearing an officer's uniform of the US Army.

Sunny was already concerned. "I thought Captain Roberts was British in the original novel," she said.

And then Captain Roberts spoke.

"What a fine little town this is. I should be able to root out that Nazi spy no problem."

Sunny was surprised, and noticed another actor walk over to him. "You're an American?" she asked. "Boy are you exotic. I should think you stepped off the screen of the pictures!"

Salty groaned. "That is some of the worst dialogue I have ever heard."

Sunny sighed. "Oh well. Mom got that a lot in Bristol, apparently."

"Bad dialogue?"

"No, people saying she sounded like a film star. I suppose if Hollywood is your only reference point virtually anything will do."

"Excuse me, Mr Zoom, but why is Captain Roberts American? He's British in the original book."

Mr Zoom looked at her. "Because Brad Pitt has a bigger box office pull than British actors is the simple answer. Though we wanted Hugh Laurie, another American."

"Hugh Laurie is British."

Just then, filming on the movie's climactic battle scene, where Captain Roberts was pinned down by fire from a Wehrmacht MG battery, commenced. Lots of pyrotechnics were being set off as the prop weapons were fired.

"Hitch, you're the expert. Did they have MG42s in these numbers at this stage of the war?"

"It does sorta fit for mid-1942, though they were first used in North Africa."

Captain Roberts stood there. "Why, it would take a miracle to get me out of here!"

Just then, the Mustang roared in from overhead, more explosive charges firing on the beach to simulate machine gun fire. The plane then pulled away, the shoot complete, and the actors playing the Germans began to retreat.

Hitch looked over when he heard the rumbling of treads. "Oh dear..." he said, as a tank rumbled into view.

"Time to turn Krauts to Swiss!" shouted a soldier from the tank.

Hitch had enough. He stood up and waved his hands. "Excuse me? What is that doing there?"

Mr Zoom looked over. "It's a WW2 tank. The audience won't care!"

"Yeah, it is WW2- but the wrong era and the wrong front. That's an IS-3, which entered production in 1944 and was used on the Eastern Front."

"Not everybody watching the movie will be a tank nerd, Hitch."

"But we do have a responsibility to do it properly," Sunny said. "The moviemakers of the 1960s didn't have all the stuff we have access to. I mean, Bovington Tank Museum is only that way, so you could have leased a period accurate Sherman for the shoot!"

Mr Zoom looked annoyed. "Start shooting, and ignore anything they say."

Sure enough, the shoot continued, and the movie was soon finished and released. Sunny and her friends did go to see it, but mainly to spot their cameos (for which they had been paid).

The result was painful. From the terrible dialogue to the ropey special effects, the resulting film was a bit of a mess- not to mention all the changes to the plot had rendered the story incomprehensible.

It was a fun night out, albeit for all the wrong reasons, and as they went home from the cinema afterwards, Hitch turned to Sunny. "Well, what do you think?"

Sunny shrugged. "That makes me glad that Hollywood doesn't have access to time machines."

Author's Note

This story combines elements from the Equestria Girls special Movie Magic and the Tell your Tale short Snow Business like Show Business.

Anachronisms in movies are something that cause me particular irritation, especially when they're easily fixed; I'm a little more lenient on train sequences as most movie crews are limited to what a heritage railway has on offer (hence why The Woman in Black has Southern Railway locomotives in what is supposed to be Cambridgeshire). This chapter has references to common bloopers in WW2 movies, as well as Hollywood's tendancy to insert Americans where they don't belong (two notorious examples being U-571 and Fury).