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turtlethon · 1 year

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“A Turtle in Time”

Season 10, Episode 4 First US Airdate: October 5, 1996

The Ninja Turtles of the past travel to the present to save the lives of their current-day counterparts.

The tenth season of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles continues with “A Turtle in Time”. This episode, written by Jeffrey Scott, is the second chapter of a three-part adventure which began with “The Power of Three”.

We begin with a “Previously on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” recap that rushes through the events of the prior episode. Curiously, this is comprised of entirely new dialogue and animation rather than utilising clips from the show itself. After that we pick up where we left off, with Lord Dregg in the process of using the mutagen siphoned from the Turtles to absorb their power, while also robbing Shredder and Krang’s intelligence. Now bigger than before, and with a throbbing brain to signify his enhanced intellect, Dregg taunts the Turtles, informing them he can see their memories as well as Krang’s. The same can’t be said of Shredder, who used his gauntlets to sever his connection to the conversion machine before the procedure could take place.

With the transfer completed, the severely weakened Turtles attempt to take on Dregg, who in addition to absorbing their strength now possesses their ninja skills. After being defeated, the team are placed in a set of energy cages alongside Krang and April. Shredder, however, has gone missing, and re-emerges at an opportune moment to free the now-dying Krang. The pair go on to launch an attempt to escape from the ship. Meanwhile April uses her Turtlecom to reach Carter, informing him of their predicament.

Shredder is in the process of setting co-ordinates to return to Earth when Dregg arrives to stop him, his enlarged brain taking on the appearance of Krang to signify to us that a duplicate of the Dimension X warlord’s mind resides within his own. Given how much time Krang has spent with Shredder over the years, Dregg can anticipate exactly what Shredder will do. Shreds points out that despite this Dregg can’t read the minds of his own minions, and uses the carelessness of the bat-men to take advantage of one of them blowing a hole in the side of the ship: In the commotion that follows, he utilises the transporter to return with Krang to Earth. The two villains arrive in the nuclear power plant where Dregg had set up shop, fighting off more of his minions and covertly placing a control chip on a system motherboard as an act of sabotage before escaping.

Back aboard his ship, Dregg draws upon the intellect of Krang to consider evil schemes he can use to take over the world. (This is an odd choice of action given that Dregg’s obviously been far more successful in both world domination and defeating the Turtles than either of his predecessors – we discussed this in a previous Turtlethon entry and I believe Shredder and Krang’s win/loss record over the course of the series was something like 2-120.) The show is fixated on virtual reality and simulations this season, and so Dregg has his computer display the results of a scenario in which the vortex transporter is used to transport a piece of the sun into the heart of Earth’s cities. Intent on holding the people of Earth to ransom by burning their cities, he reveals to Mung that if humanity refuses to comply, he’ll turn the entire planet into a second sun, before using the same approach on every other populated planet in the galaxy. The villain orders Mung to target “the largest city in the United States” - the show has never fully gotten over the aversion it picked up a few seasons in about outright saying that the Turtles live in New York – and the plan begins to be implemented as act one ends.

When we return, we’re... still workin’ on the plan, I guess, but Mung reveals that the vortex transporter isn’t working. Krang’s intellect informs Dregg that he’s underestimated the intelligence of Shredder, which is a very un-Krang-y thing to say given that he spent the first seven seasons of the show calling the guy a bonehead (or variations thereof) in almost every episode. Footage is relayed of Shredder taking the subspace amplification chip from the transporter’s motherboard, preventing anything being moved a distance greater than 1,000 miles. Dregg is furious, but Mung suggests an alternate strategy in which they instead dematerialise one hundred tons of steel from Earth’s structures, shipping it to the power plant where the microbots will use it to create an invasion force that can take over the planet.

Carter tracks the vortex transporter to the nuclear power plant. Sneaking inside, he teleports himself onto the Dreggnaught. The ally of the Turtles attempts to free them, but Dregg’s forces are too great, and so he returns to Earth to draw up a new plan. Elsewhere, Shredder fights off a pair of bat-men before breaking into a research lab, intent on saving the rapidly ailing Krang.

In the Lair, Carter laments the loss of his mutant powers, which would have been useful in fighting off Dregg’s forces to free the Turtles. Splinter points out to him that Donatello’s ray “only neutralised the mutagen”, his genes still permanently altered. The team’s sensei tells Carter that “when the power is needed, the power will be there”.

Seeing that the Turtles are gravely ill, April feigns being unable to breathe, tricking one of the bat-men who are acting as guards. After electrocuting him she frees the Turtles, cajoling them into a nearby ventilation shaft. Back in the Lair, Carter is still moping about his current situation until a conversation with Splinter encourages him to embrace the concept of time itself. Bouncing a radio message off a star 10,000 light years away – a trick he performs by looking up an internet search engine on Donatello’s PC – Carter summons Landor and Merrick, the resistance warriors who battled Dregg’s regime twenty years in the future in the season nine episode “Carter, the Enforcer”. He explains to the rebel duo that he needs to provide the Turtles with a transfusion from “four live mutant Turtles”. (The word “blood” isn’t used, presumably for the same reason that Morbius craved “plasma” in the Spider-Man cartoon around this time.) Since to my recollection there’s only one other living mutant Turtle in this continuity and it’s Slash, who hasn’t been seen since season seven, this presents a problem. The way Carter has elected to resolve this is hella convoluted and will require us to retread events covered in a previous Turtlethon entry, so bear with me as I break this down.

Carter asks Landor and Merrick to retrieve “the Turtles of the past” so that they can provide the necessary transfusion for their present-day counterparts. Because nothing’s ever easy and just to RAISE THE STAKES a little more, Landor explains that the presence of two sets of Turtles at one point in time will set up a time warp paradox – the past Turtles must be returned to their own time within 24 hours, or both groups of Turtles will cease to exist. Believe it or not, there’s something of an in-universe precedent for this as the green teens faced a similar predicament in season 5’s “Once Upon a Time Machine” when they travelled to the year 2036 to meet their future selves, risking the destruction of both the future and the past if they stayed too long.

Landor and Merrick head back to the climax of season eight’s finale, “Turtle Trek”. As you may recall, the Turtles were sent on a wild goose chase by an alien named Gargon who had secretly been manipulated by Shredder into placing the green teens in danger. After the Turtles were lured into the clutches of a tentacled monster in Dimension X, Shredder emerged from the Technodrome wielding an enormous cannon. He would go on to be defeated by the Turtles in the original chain of events but it’s here that we jump back into things, with the cannon being blown up as Mikey and Leo toss Shredder into the vat of glop. In a nice touch as these events unfold the instrumental version of the original TMNT theme song plays to emphasise that this is taking place in the past, although technically by this point in the series it had been abandoned.

Michaelangelo and Leonardo are understandably confused by the arrival of two strangers who at this point in the timeline they’re entirely unfamiliar with. Immediately events begin to diverge as Shredder pops up from the bottom of the vat with a huge bazooka – was he keeping it there just in case, in the goo? - and obliterates the platform the Turtles are standing on, forcing them to cling to the edge. Raphael and Donatello arrive to provide backup but are similarly perplexed by the two newcomers standing in their way. Before the time-travellers can explain the current situation Krang shows up, accompanied by a rifle-wielding Foot Soldier who knocks the other two Turtles off the platform. All four members of the team lose their grip, plummeting towards the ground as Landor and Merrick transport them out of danger and into the future.

The Turtles of season eight arrive in the lair of season ten, where they’re introduced to Carter, who they’re yet to meet in the linear passage of time. Landor assures them that they will know Carter “in exactly two years and fifteen days”. It’s not clear if he’s implying that this is how long has passed between the end of season eight and now, or if it’s how long passes between their encounter with Gargon and first interaction with Carter. I’m inclined to believe it’s the former, as a two-year time skip between seasons eight and nine would be just... bonkers.

[NOTE: For the record, two years and fifteen days doesn’t add up to the amount of time between the original airdates of “Turtle Trek” and “A Turtle in Time”, the real gap being one year and eleven months. If we’re really going all-in on this and assuming the adventures of the Turtles have taken place in real-time, two years and fifteen days having passed is closer to the commencement of the Red Sky era in “Get Shredder!”, but hey, points for effort I guess – attempting to orchestrate this kind of thing accurately given the lead-times for television animation would be incredibly difficult.]

Landor and Merrick explain the current situation to the past Turtles, before leaving to return to their own time. Elsewhere, Mung and Dregg carry out their steel-theft scheme, destroying bridges and other structures. Back in the research lab, Shredder has provided a transfusion of his own life energy that has revived Krang, and the two begin plotting to strike back against Dregg. Unfortunately for them Krang’s bubble walker is one of the steel sources teleported away, as is the structure of the building they’re standing in, which begins to crumble around them. Act two ends with the past Turtles and Carter crossing a bridge as it teleports out of existence, causing the vehicle to tumble towards the water below.

We open the final act with the van landing in a trash barge, which luckily for the Turtles is heading in the direction of the power plant. Inside the facility Mung is seen ordering the microbots to convert the stolen steel into invasion craft for Lord Dregg, while aboard the Dreggnaught the present-day Turtles join April in seeking out the ship’s transporter room. By accident they instead end up in the fusion engine area, the vent shutting behind them and closing off their only means of escape: Donatello points out that should Dregg activate the ship’s engines, it’ll mean their certain demise.

Carter and the past Turtles infiltrate the power plant and use the transporter to board the Dreggnaught. The green teens find themselves face-to-face with Lord Dregg for what for them is the first time, an enemy that from their perspective in season eight they have no prior knowledge of. Carter intervenes to save Leonardo and Donatello from being blasted by Dregg, and after winding up in the line of fire himself manages to wilfully trigger his mutation. In the battle between the two that follows the engines are momentarily activated, only to be unwittingly shut down again thanks to the actions of the past Turtles.

Donatello instructs April to redirect the fusion stream into the engine wall, generating an explosion that blows a hole in the room, providing both her and the present-day Turtles with a means of escape. The resulting impact also temporarily incapacitates Dregg, allowing Carter to toss him inside moments before a second blast occurs.

For the first time, the past Turtles come face-to-face with their present-day selves, carrying them onto the teleportation platform and back into the nuclear power plant. Far from being in the clear, both sets of Turtles, April and Carter find themselves face-to-face with the “invasion force” generated from the stolen steel: a gigantic, multi-pronged robot. As with the previous episode, we end today on a cliffhanger with the “TO BE CONTINUED...” caption appearing.

It feels premature to judge this story with one chunk of it still to come, and we’ve covered much of the ins and outs of the time travel aspect already. Instead, I think it’s worth focusing on the role of Shredder and Krang, who have been on the back foot ever since returning in the previous episode. While still antagonists, for us as viewers the good will they built over the first eight seasons of the show makes it difficult not to root for them, particularly when Dregg’s actions lead to Krang being on the verge of dying for much of this outing. While the show doesn’t dwell on it, we see a different side of Shredder here as he goes out of his way to save Krang from Dregg, something even more apparent later when he gives his old collaborator some of his own life force to save him: at this point, having lost the Technodrome, their Foot Soldiers and even Rocksteady and Bebop, all they have left is each other.

Next time on Turtlethon we’ll conclude this trilogy with “Turtles to the Second Power”, as we head into the final four episodes of the series!

#teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt #tmnt 1987 #turtlethon #ninja turtles #lord dregg #1996 #dregg #A Turtle In Time #landor #merrick #landor and merrick

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turtlethon · 1 year

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“Carter, the Enforcer”

Season 9, Episode 7 First US Airdate: October 28, 1995

Lord Dregg creates a robotic clone of Carter.

“Carter, the Enforcer” is the penultimate episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles season nine. This story is credited to series regular David Wise.

On TV, Lord Dregg announces that due to the threat of an imminent invasion of Earth he’s developing a new weapons system called the Star Shield. The Turtles watch this from the Lair as they angrily polish their weapons and complain about their new arch enemy turning public sentiment against them. Splinter pops in and gives the team a pep talk, reminding them of the importance of fighting for their principles even when the whole world appears to be against them. Throughout this Raphael remains cynical and bitter, having apparently reverted to the same stance on humans that he had back in season seven’s “Night of the Rogues”.

The Turtles and Carter head to the site where the Star Shield is being constructed, having April tag along so they can get footage of what’s really happening there. After sneaking in, the group find the platform under construction by humans and already almost complete. They watch as HiTech speaks to Dregg via video call, a conversation filmed by April which reveals the warlord’s true plan: to attack Earth ahead of schedule, blindsiding everyone.

HiTech becomes aware of the presence of the Turtles and their allies, opening fire on the vent they’re watching from and chasing them out of the building. Human security guards open fire on the team with some of the goofiest weapons to ever appear on the show, laser guns that even Nerf’s designers would consider gaudy. A military jeep follows the Turtle Van, but the green teens lose their enemies and return to the sewers by dropping through a hole in a dug-up road. April announces that she “still [has] friends in the news business” - the inference apparently being that she was largely shunned after her exit from Channel 6 – and she intends to use her contacts to raise awareness of the filmed conversation between Dregg and HiTech. Conscious of the fact that she’ll now be a target and the Turtles can’t be seen protecting her in public, Carter offers to tag along.

Dregg learns from HiTech that their earlier interaction was caught on tape, but the villains hatch a plan, intent on striking back by capturing Carter. While April is in a meeting at a news station the young friend of the Turtles is restrained, attempting to use his mutant form to escape. Meanwhile April pleads her case to a bespectacled station boss who may or may not be intended to resemble Charles Pennington from the first live-action movie. Upon seeing the footage, he immediately assumes it must be a deepfake – not a term that was in-use in 1995, but it’s effectively what he’s accusing April of creating, given Dregg’s reputation as being a wonderful guy. He adds that no station in town will air the footage given April’s reputation, having “been in league with those Turtles too long”.

Outside the building, Carter struggles to fight off the TechnoGang, eventually reverting to his normal form. An attempt to use his Turtlecom is cut off when it’s shot out of his hand, and a blast from a stun ray leaves him powerless as the villains load him into their ship. (They also take his motorcycle, because... I don’t know, maybe the Technogang really like bikes.) When April emerges from the station building, she assumes Carter must have left out of impatience. Later, she relays the news to the Turtles that no station was willing to air the footage. Left with no official means of getting the word out about Dregg the Turtles decide to get underhanded, instructing April to meet them at the broadcasting tower.

The Turtles are in the process of hooking April’s mini-cam up to the tower’s broadcast equipment when Carter re-emerges, silently approaching the group but saying nothing. A man and a woman in futuristic garb appear out of nowhere, opening fire with laser weapons on the teenager: soon Carter himself whips out a blaster and engages the duo in a shoot-out, the TechnoGang arriving to provide him with back-up. The first act concludes with the baffled Turtles watching as Carter reaches into April’s mini-cam and crushes the tape.

Carter makes his exit as the TechnoGang are driven away by the mysterious duo, whose names are revealed to be Landor and Merrick. Picking up on their names, the confused Turtles ask April to examine her records and try and find out who the pair are. The team go on to confront Landor and Merrick on their own, demanding to know why they fired on Carter, and are told this was necessary to save their lives. It turns out that Landor and Merrick have travelled back from twenty years in the future, intent on stopping Carter, “a Dregg spy who infiltrated [the ranks of the Turtles]” with orders to kill them.

While the idea that he was a bad guy all along would certainly salvage the failed Carter project for us as viewers, the Turtles refuse to buy it, pointing out he’s helped them on plenty of missions. Merrick and Landor counter that the Turtles are losing to Dregg, the launch of the Star Shield imminent. Carter returns, opening fire upon the group with weapons mounted on his motorcycle. After Dregg’s mothership is summoned Landor and Merrick are backed into an alley, left with no option but to use their technology to vanish alongside the Turtles.

Our heroes find themselves standing in the ruins of a city they now barely recognise, and are informed by Landor and Merrick that this is the world of twenty years in the future, now ruled by Lord Dregg. They watch as a downtrodden group of human workers returns from their daily duties and a woman breaks off from the group in search of scraps of food; after being spotted by members of the TechnoGang she’s classified as a “looter” and imprisoned aboard a spaceship. The Turtles are furious at the sight of this, but are warned by Landor not to intervene: “around here, you only pick the battles you can win”. Prisoners, the team learn, are taken to Command Central, Dregg’s headquarters, a place from which no-one ever returns.

Landor and Merrick take the Turtles to a facility where they observe enslaved humans being made to build an endless supply of warships, integral to Dregg’s ongoing efforts to conquer other worlds. Soon the two time-travellers are spotted and captured by the TechnoGang: after fighting off a group of the troopers the Turtles hijack a ship for themselves and head off to pursue their new allies.

The green teens make their way into Command Central, taking out a guard who was interrogating Landor and Merrick before freeing the duo. The pair inform the Turtles that to get their time travel device back they’ll need to face Dregg’s enforcer, “who rules our world with an iron fist”: if the title hadn’t given it away the enforcer is Carter, now twenty years older and clad in a grey jumpsuit.

After being confronted by the Turtles the future Carter brushes off the return of the enemies he assumed he’d finished off decades before (when in fact they just time-travelled). A fight breaks out during which the Turtles are shocked by how powerful Carter in his normal human form is, forcing them to escape via an air shaft.

While still wandering through the ship a furious Raphael launches into a diatribe about how no humans from their own time besides April ever had their backs. He lays into Merrick and Landor, who point out that as they were mere children then they were in no position to help. Merrick goes on to reveal the events in the timeline which led to the current situation: “Carter destroyed [the Turtles], and a short time later Dregg launched the Star Shield.” Though the Turtles were saved by being pulled out of their own time before being finished off, the dystopian world of the future still exists as the Turtles aren’t around in the past to stop Dregg. The only way for Landor and Merrick to change events is to get the time device and send the Turtles back to the nineties so they can stop the Star Shield from being launched.

While all this is going on, Donatello remains suspicious of the future version of Carter, whose strength in his normal form makes no sense. Landor and Merrick have no knowledge of Carter’s mutant abilities, which raises further questions: right on cue, the former friend of the team arrives to attack them, an action which triggers Donatello and Raphael’s own mutations. Ripping off Carter’s attire, Donnie reveals the android exoskeleton underneath, destroying the robot before the two Turtles revert to their normal forms.

Using the recovered time device, Landor and Merrick encourage the Turtles to take the fight to Dregg in the past, as this is the only way the future can be saved. As the green teens return to their own time, Landor and Merrick are seen confronting a group of approaching TechnoGang troopers for the last time, their fate left unseen.

Back in the nineties, Dregg learns of the apparent termination of the Turtles. Left with no further need of the team’s friend, he orders that an unconscious Carter is jettisoned out of an air lock into space. For better or worse, Carter recovers and shakes off a pair of TechnoGang underlings. He takes a ship back to Earth, but not before entering a set of instructions on a nearby control panel.

In her apartment, April peruses county records on her PC’s huge-ass CRT monitor, noting that both Landor and Merrick are listed as city residents. Meanwhile the Turtles are transported back into the hangar where the Star Shield was being constructed. The team watch as a ship lowers, Carter emerging from it, and assume they’re about to face Dregg’s robot replica once more. It soon turns out this is the human version, who has managed to print off a set of blueprints for the Star Shield. After learning of everything that’s transpired, Carter finds himself face-to-face with his android clone, who’s swiftly destroyed.

The team watch as the Star Shield is launched and take the ship the real Carter returned to Earth in on a sabotage mission. After a few failed attempts by Leonardo to get a shot at the platform Raphael takes over, declaring “this one’s for Merrick!” Members of the TechnoGang are seen diving out of the enemy spacecraft moments before it’s destroyed in the resulting crash.

Having successfully completed their mission, the Turtles land and receive a message from April, asking them to meet her at North Gate Park. Later, the team emerge from a manhole at the park and are pointed by April in the direction of Landor and Merrick, two small children playing together. The Turtles resolve to keep up the fight against Dregg to provide them with a better future than the one the team journeyed to during their adventure.

Season nine has been a difficult one, but “Carter, the Enforcer” bucks the trend by being surprisingly enjoyable, doubly so given its focus on the title character. It achieves this largely by increasing the pressure on the Turtles still further, the sense that public sentiment really has turned against them (and April) by now starting to feel like something tangible rather than just window dressing. It helps that the unstable mutations of the Turtles and Carter are barely a factor in this story at all, perhaps a sign that their novelty has already worn off.

Time travel has proved to be a reliable go-to for interesting TMNT outings throughout the entire run of the series, but by now has resulted in a group of conflicting and seemingly incompatible future timelines. Season five’s “Once Upon a Time Machine” gave us our clearest glimpse into the futures of the Turtles and April in their twilight years but feels like the least canonical of any of these adventures. More recently, season eight’s “Enter: Krakus” saw a Robocop-esque traveller from the future head into the past to stop mutant villain Titanus, revealing along the way that April eventually becomes a world-famous reporter. On top of these we also had the apparently not-fictional character Professor Moriarty travel from the past to create a future where he was ruler in season seven’s “Elementary, My Dear Turtle”, but the less said about that the better. I think it’s safe to say by now that the timeline has been rewritten so many times that none of what we’ve seen in any of these episodes represents the actual future facing the Turtles, the Red Sky episodes themselves feeling like a big “What If?” continuation of the series after it reached a natural conclusion at the end of season seven.

One episode remains in season nine, the last ever to be credited to David Wise, as well as the last to feature Rob Paulsen as Raphael. We’ll see how that plays out next time, as we explore “Doomquest”.

#Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #TMNT #TMNT 1987 #1995 #Turtlethon #Carter the Enforcer #Carter TMNT #TMNT Carter #Ninja Turtles #Lord Dregg #Dregg #Landor #Merrick

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