Balthazar:
I know that he's also simultaneously a fan of the Belvision cartoons.
Yup! And the Ellipse-Nelvana series too! And the live action films! And the Young Vic stage show.
All have been enjoyable, and all without changing one iota of the enjoyment I get from the books.
To go on to the broader questions being raised, I think the first thing that has to be discussed is this notion that changes were made "unnecessarily"; it seems to me to be discourteous to those involved to assume that changes were just handed down willy-nilly – I'd counter and say that they probably had a reason for
every change that was made.
They had budget restrictions, deadlines, technical limitations and the difficult task of rendering Hergé's drawings in motion with as much fidelity as they could. Add to that what broadcast regulations will allow you to show, especially to children, and the choices they made seem reasonable to me. It’s accepted that books in their way are selective - one has to actively participate in the reading of a book; TV on the other hand has to be suitable for those who encounter it in all sorts of ways, willingly or unwillingly (from in their own home to on the screen in a shop window or on the wall in a café).
These are adaptations, not verbatim transcriptions, and work in a different way to the books.
Hergé was working over decades, and could make (by comparison to TV cartoons) lavish use of variety. Animators have to work to fixed model sheets, and avoid making mistakes when drawinsgs which have to be shot by the camera-person next to each other might be drawn by people miles appart, or not even in the same country. So Tintin wears his blue jumper, plus-fours, lace-up shoes and white socks on every practical occasion, not his yellow shirt, black tie and socks, brown jeans or his loafers, because the cels will be rendered more accurately, and possibly used in more than one episode to reduce expense and time.
I think the Skut point has been discussed before, but the practical (and therefore not really unneccessary) streamlining of things like when a character is introduced is to make it easier for the broadcaster to keep shows on in rotation; a viewer can enter the "loop" at more and more points the fewer and fewer "mile-stone" events that occur. Some are unavoidable, others are fairly trivial.
There's no critical plot or character advantage in having Skut introduced and then re-introduced; nothing really hangs on it. So it helps the flow of the series if you just ignore the problem, and let any viewer come across him in whatever order they encounter the episode.
Further, it allows for episodes to be used as and when needed by a broadcaster (if another programme or event has to be cancelled, and they need filler material), without worrying unduly about continuity.
Likewise,
Red Sea Sharks, although not held up to the scrutiny of Congo perhaps, has had a very negative response from many communities and regions of the world, where the depiction of the pilgrims is seen as both racially offensive and paternalistic, added to which the original French had an out-dated use of language, which combined to make the group appear overly simple minded.
Given the choice of dropping the story entirely (which was a possibility), or re-jigging the action to remove the problem elements (much as Hergé did when he changed Palestine to Khemed, etc.), then I think the solution was effective.
One final point - I'd politely disagree with Balthazar about returning this thread to a portmanteau of points. I'm not sure what purpose could possibly be served in just creating a list of changes or "mistakes", but should such a thing be needed, it would be better served by an article.
Experience shows that – just as for the books – discussion is by far easier when it's focused on a single story or point. Lumping every "problem" into one thread is neither really a general discussion, nor easy to follow, and risks repeating things which have already been covered somewhere on a previous page.
So I'd counsel that, as for albums, if there is a specific issue in a story, it gets dealt with in an episode/ topic specific manner (labelled with the “Ellipse-Nelvana†tag in the title).