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“Divide and Conquer”

Season 10, Episode 8 First US Airdate: November 2, 1996

Lord Dregg absorbs the powers of a group of alien warriors as he prepares for a final encounter with the Turtles.

After ten seasons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reaches its final episode, “Divide and Conquer”. Jeffrey Scott is credited as writer for this milestone adventure.

The Turtles battle a plasma blaster-wielding alien near an airport, who has one eye on a stopwatch the entire time. Michaelangelo takes out the bad guy by piloting an old airplane; when Leonardo confronts this mysterious attacker and demands to know his intentions, he snatches the team leader’s belt and teleports away. Talking amongst themselves, the Turtles note that this is the sixth time in the space of a week that a foe has appeared out of nowhere and then vanished again, with Michaelangelo’s grappling hook getting nabbed in one of the previous encounters.

We go from an airport to a spaceport/cantina, where it’s revealed that Lord Dregg survived the destruction of the Dreggnaught in the previous episode and is challenging assorted alien lowlifes to defeat the Turtles within 90 seconds, promising power and wealth to whoever can pull it off. Back on Earth, the Turtles head home in their van, still trying to figure out the story behind the assorted bad guys who’ve been popping up lately. Michaelangelo discovers a tracking device which had been placed within his shell, and hurls it out the window, but it’s too late to stop their next challenger from materialising in the back of the vehicle: a blue-skinned, four-armed woman who shape-shifts into a rhino-like alien as the Turtle Van is sent flying off a cliff. The vehicle lands safely thanks to an in-built parachute, but not before the invader snatches Donatello’s bo staff, disappearing seconds later. Confused as to why their opponent would flee when she had the upper hand, the Turtles note that the tracking device resembled Dregg’s microbots. Back at the spaceport, Dregg selects five aliens, including the two who most recently clashed with the Turtles, to participate in his next scheme.

Still trying to figure out what’s going on, the Turtles reach April to ask if she’s heard of any unusual alien activity recently. We’ve touched upon our ace reporter’s apparent Internet addiction throughout this season already, but I think it’s also worth noting how odd it is that she sits in her home at night, working in her office, and wears her new jacket the entire time when she isn’t going anywhere; I guess it’s too late in the day to justify the creation of an alternate indoor attire for her now. Back in the Lair, Donatello tracks the transporter energy from which the assorted aliens have been appearing back to the black hole Dregg had been sent into. Convinced that they’ve overheard an intruder nearby, the Turtles sneak out of the workshop only for Leonardo to almost end up thumping Splinter – somehow, they managed to forget that he lives in the Lair, too. The team are encouraged by their sensei to join him in meditation to calm their nerves.

Mung oversees the breeding of new swarms of microbots when Lord Dregg arrives, demanding a cannister of the robots to use in his Scheme of the Day. The underling points out that they’ll require all the microbots for the creation of their invasion force, and is sort of half-assedly knocked to the ground for what Dregg views as insubordination. Dregg launches into a tirade about how he doesn’t care about timetables and had nearly defeated the Turtles when he “had the power of Shredder and Krang”. (There’s a little bit of revisionist history going on there on Dregg’s part, as of the two of them he only managed to absorb Krang's abilities.) Now obsessed with gaining revenge against the Turtles above even his desires for galactic domination, Dregg declares he needs “something special” to finish off his enemies once and for all. When Mung points out in the politest and most conciliatory way possible that this is misguided, Dregg unleashes his laser eye beams to punish his flunky, missing him and instead hitting a tank full of microbots. Scooping up a handful of the tiny robots, Dregg places them in a cannister and makes his exit. For the first time, Mung is clearly furious, yelling at his departing master that he’s “gone mad”. Teleporting aboard the Dreggnaught – which was seemingly destroyed for a second time at the end of the last episode, so presumably this is the third version of the ship – Dregg sets the microbots to work, enacting the next stage of his plan.

In the Lair, Splinter oversees a training session for the Turtles, during which it’s revealed he’s taught them a new move in which they leap onto the back of their enemy, restraining them from behind. The team are told that if they perform the Flying Claw well, they won’t need to learn any further attacks. Back on his ship, Dregg watches as the microbots complete the creation of the morphogenesis exoskeleton, a suit which he dons before using it to absorb the five alien warriors he recruited. Ready for his final battle with the Turtles, Dregg prepares to teleport to Earth.

It doesn’t take long for the Turtles to pick up on the transporter activity. Heading up to the surface, they confront Dregg in a construction site in his new get-up. The team assume their old enemy must have arrived with a group of his underlings, but soon discover he doesn’t need troops now as he uses the exoskeleton to become a giant who towers over them. Dregg announces that the warriors that had been sent to dispose of the Turtles were the most powerful in the galaxy; now, having absorbed them, he’s become an enemy that the green teens will never be able to defeat.

The Turtles work together to turn Dregg’s new abilities against him, wrapping one of his arms – which has transformed into a lengthy chain - around one of the construction site’s girders. This doesn’t work for long as Dregg is simply too powerful, and is able to bring down the entire structure. The Turtles run for cover but again, Dregg has an answer for this, turning himself in an enormous ball and hurtling down the street after them. Dregg uses x-ray vision to pursue our heroes as they escape into the sewers, dropping a robotic arm through the ground and briefly pinning Michaelangelo. The Turtles escape into the lower drains of the sewers, flooding in the area above them as they leave to slow their foe down; a resulting surge of water knocks the warlord into the air.

Returning to the Lair, the Turtles tend to their accumulated injuries. Splinter suggests to the team that “when the hermit crab wants to impress its enemies, it gets a bigger shell”. This gives Donatello an idea, as he rushes to his workshop to bring up the schematics for Krang’s android body on his desktop PC. As you may recall, Krang’s duds had the ability to grow to giant-size, something showcased most memorably in “Shredder & Splintered” but also later in season six’s “Krangenstein Lives”. To get what they need, the Turtles will need to travel to Dimension X and retrieve it from the Technodrome, a risky prospect given that the team had written off the idea of ever using Donatello’s dimensional portal again at the conclusion of the previous episode.

April’s Internet addiction leads to her having a hallucinatory episode, as she sees the vision of Lord Dregg’s face appear on her monitor. Okay, that’s not technically true: this is the real Dregg, who emerges from the screen to take shape in her apartment in his new super-sized form. The villain sends a transmission to the Turtles over their communications systems, threatening to send the captive April to “the labour mines of Dimension X” if they don’t show up to rescue her. The Turtles opt to split up, with Leonardo and Raphael setting out to save April while Donatello and Michaelangelo head through the portal.

In a nice touch, the old Technodrome theme music returns as Donnie and Mikey approach the now dilapidated fortress. The Turtles make their way inside, unaware that they’re being watched. Back on Earth, Raph and Leo free April but are manhandled by Dregg, who threatens to finish them off with his integrated weaponry as we head into commercials.

Okay, here we go – the concluding act of the last ever episode!

Dregg gives the captive Turtles the choice of being killed by a liquid nitrogen ray or his carbine shredder, and while there’s perhaps something fitting about idea of the Turtles meeting their maker in the last episode at the hands of a shredder, that’s not how things play out. Instead, Leo and Raph use their surroundings to their advantage, dropping furniture onto Dregg and sending him crashing through the floor, marking yet another time that the Turtles have inadvertently destroyed April’s home and demonstrated zero remorse. Our heroes leave with April in the van, but Dregg remains undeterred. He bursts out the side of the building and – I shit you not – becomes MOTORCYCLE DREGG, popping a wheelie before speeding off to pursue the Turtles as I stop what I’m doing to try and contain my laughter one final time.

In the Technodrome, Donatello and Michaelangelo uncover Krang’s android body, but there’s definitely something off about it: for one thing, since when did it have fangs? Before the duo can retrieve it, the alien brain’s old suit reveals itself to be a shapeshifting creature that springs to life, opening its mouth to expose a forked tongue and going on the attack. From the sidelines emerge a group of creepy cyborg-like beings who the two Turtles fight off before finding the real android body under a pile of scrap metal.

Motorcycle Dregg chases the Turtle Van into a scrapyard, where it soon becomes trapped in a crane by the villain and is set to be dropped into a trash compactor. Meanwhile Donnie and Mikey opt to use the Technodrome’s portal to return to New York rather than their own, but struggle to get the failing systems in the fortress operational while also fighting off the assorted enemies now hanging around the place. Mikey’s last “cowabunga” begins as he leaps into the portal with Donnie, and ends as he emerges in the scrapyard on the other side.

Leonardo, Raphael and April face the prospect of being squished by Dregg in the trash compactor when the now giant-sized android body appears on the horizon, piloted by Donatello and Michaelangelo in Krang’s place. Dregg uses his assorted powers to attack the android, leading Mikey to suggest they increase its size even further, but Donnie explains the bigger it becomes, the more rapidly it’ll collapse: as it is, they only have about one minute before Krang’s old suit shrinks to the size of a ping-pong ball and explodes, with the two Turtles inside it.

Leonardo and Raphael use the roof-mounted blasters on the Turtle Van to fire upon Dregg, but he rebounds by again assuming his ball form, knocking down Krang’s body like a bowling pin. Changing shape again he takes on the form of a tentacled creature, resembling one of the five warriors he recruited earlier. With only seconds remaining, Michaelangelo suggests they do “THE MOVE, dude”. Taking the controls, Donatello has Krang’s android body perform the Flying Claw, capturing Dregg from behind. Mikey and Donnie escape and push Dregg through the portal along with the android body seconds before it's due to explode.

All of this brings us to the very last scene of the series. In the Lair, Splinter tells the Turtles that they are “truly exceptional students... and [he is] proud to be [their] equal”. This confuses Michaelangelo, who’s used to referring to Splinter as their sensei, but he explains that this would make him their leader or guide, something they no longer need: “like the lion,” he tells them, “You have no superior in the jungle of life”. Leonardo agrees that the Turtles can take on any challenge when a noise is heard from nearby. Rushing into the kitchen, the team find a bag of popcorn overflowing in the microwave: Raphael gets the last line of the series, remarking that the one thing they can’t handle is Donatello’s cooking.

And so, this is how is how Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ends, not giving us any substantive sense of closure but simply puttering over the finish line. That last scene, all 35 seconds of it, is the closest thing we get to a goodbye after all these years, a hurried acknowledgement that the Turtles are now equal to Splinter that honestly doesn’t feel earned: we just had a bunch of episodes in a row where the team were staring death in the face and the planet was in danger, today’s adventure feeling restrained by comparison. After pulling apart the adventures of the Turtles for a few years now, I went into this one expecting to feel... I don’t know, something, anything, but there’s almost nothing emotionally resonant in “Divide and Conquer”. I’m honestly disappointed.

Why did TMNT end in such an anti-climactic fashion? I’d speculate that, much like the conclusion of season seven, there was a desire to not fully close the door. Turtles as a property at least still had name recognition at this point, and perhaps Fred Wolf’s camp felt there remained a chance that a rival network would pick up the show for a few more seasons on that basis. It’s entirely feasible that an eleventh season would have seen either Dregg or Shredder and Krang return, but given how troubled the last few years of the show have been creatively, I’m not surprised this didn’t come to pass.

The first Turtlethon entry opened with an acknowledgement that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles debuted on TV only weeks after the series finale of Transformers, and this could be considered a passing of the torch: TMNT was, in many ways, the last great series of the 1980s “half hour toy commercial” era. As we close things out in the autumn of 1996, the Transformers have finally made a successful return to western animation with Beast Wars, which should give you some sense of how much the world has changed in the time between the premieres of “Turtle Tracks” and “Divide and Conquer”: that kind of half-hour computer generated animated show would have been unthinkable in the mid-eighties when Turtles was green-lit, but will come to dominate kid TV schedules as the millennium approaches. Which brings us nicely to...

AFTERMATH

Let’s do a lightning round covering how the various parties involved in the creation of TMNT fared after the show went off the air:

CBS pivoted to showing nothing but educational programming on Saturday mornings beginning with the 1997/98 television season. This came about as the result of strengthened regulation requiring that broadcasters air a set number of hours of informative fare each week, but also followed on from the budget cuts for programming mentioned in previous entries, and increased competition from cable channels such as Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. A few years later the network would be absorbed into Viacom, Nick’s parent company; Nickelodeon would go on to purchase Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as an IP from Mirage Studios at the end of 2009.

Fred Wolf Films, the successor to Murakami Wolf Swenson, would putter on for a few years after the loss of their meal ticket. In a newspaper article from the boom years of TMNT, Fred Wolf suggested that the studio wasn’t making any money from the success of the series at the time due to the huge financial outlay required to make as many episodes as they did, and that it wouldn’t be until the show had ceased production and began playing in reruns worldwide that they would begin to see a return on their investment. It doesn’t seem like things played out this way, the firm moving on to work on a few Zorro and Sinbad cartoons as the nineties closed out; their website, last updated in 2000, is somehow still online and suggests they were looking to move into web animation around that period, but as far as I can tell nothing ever came of it.

Playmates Toys had financed the initial effort to bring the Turtles to television and would keep the brand afloat at retail throughout 1997, in part by re-releasing older toys in new packaging. They would go on handle the figures for the next incarnation of Turtles a short time later, and in fact continue to hold the master toy license to this day, a line of figures based on the recent Mutant Mayhem movie currently running in parallel with (often shoddy) recreations of toys from the classic era.

Mirage Studios perhaps had the most to lose with the continuing decline of TMNT and the end of the original cartoon. To ensure the survival of the property and that they could continue to employ their roster of artists, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird made the decision to do business with Saban Entertainment, the production company behind Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers; this was the same series which, as covered in previous Turtlethon entries, had been a key factor in TMNT’s rapid decline in the kidvid marketplace to begin with. The Mirage/Saban alliance would lead to the creation of the live-action Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation, a disastrous series which would not only damage public perception of the Turtles further but also create a rift between Eastman and Laird which has only in recent years been patched up.

The four original voice actors for the Turtles are still active in the industry, and occasionally reunite on the convention circuit, often alongside Renae Jacobs (April). Barry Gordon, Rob Paulsen, Cam Clarke and Townsend Coleman reprised their roles as the green teens for the 2022 video game Shredder's Revenge. Between these stints Paulsen returned to Turtles for the 2012 incarnation of the show on Nickelodeon, this time as the voice of Donatello. James Avery (Shredder) passed away in 2013 following complications from open-heart surgery. David Wise is also no longer with us, having lost a brief battle with lung cancer in 2020, but both live on through their respective remarkable bodies of work, including their extensive runs on TMNT.

As I’m sure you know, Turtles continues to endure, not just in its 1987 incarnation but the countless versions which have popped up in the years since. Recently Viacom announced that they’ve finally reached an agreement to secure the broadcast rights to the original series: the first season is already up on YouTube for free (albeit in an altered form, and with a new theme song in place as presumably Chuck Lorre’s asking price for royalties was simply too high); the show is also in rotation now on Pluto TV’s Totally Turtles channel in the US and will be arriving on Paramount+ in short order. Personally I’m still hoping we get a nice Blu-Ray set of the series down the line at some point with the entire series in better quality than the occasionally substandard Lionsgate DVD prints.

So... now what? Next time on Turtlethon we’ll wrap up all the loose ends, reflect on the last few years of exploring TMNT and try to figure out what the point of all this was – as well as where we go from here. See you then!

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