a mostly Frida centric sketch dump of my TMNT iteration. technically the second drawing is just my design for Frida/Big Mama's assistant in Rise!
Iteration thoughts under the cut cause they got long....
So it might be odd to make a seperation AU and like draw it before I have even gotten really anything out for the first au itself but lmao I don't control this car we're just along for the ride. Some of the below is spoilers for my au 'canon' i guess, kinda?
Shadow, Kirby, and Carter are the only ones TRULY bad off in this i think, Shitty family business that gets violent, a beaten-into-shape foot soldier who still wants nothing more than to be a hero, and an alien lab rat to a villainous alien.
Not to say the others are doing Well either, Big Mama and Kitsune love their daughters in their own ways, but power is still prized above all for both women. Slash had a rougher start but hes a part of an mutant rights group that's willing to work dirty. he pretends to not like the silly name they've picked up around town. :)
Splinters the worst off tho, I didnt draw her but like she is Vastly worse off in a separated au.
I'm so interested in specifically what Big Mama and Frida's relationship would've been like in Rise so it's a decently sized chunk of my outline for this au so far. I'm really gonna trim it down so the project could actually get finished but i know that'll be a big arc even after I shorten it. I love BM as a character and like,,,, yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, spins her in my mind on loop.
Season 9, Episode 1
First US Airdate: September 16, 1995
The Turtles encounter an alien warlord and are monitored by a mysterious stranger.
“The Unknown Ninja” is the first episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles season nine. Mark Edens – a contributor to the series going all the way back to “Camera Bugged” - returns after a six-year absence for this collaboration with the debuting Bob Forward. This is the first episode of the show not written by David Wise since season seven’s “White Belt, Black Heart”.
Season eight marked a dramatic reinvention of TMNT and much of that is carried over to this year, including its clumsy, half-hearted title sequence. However, the art style used for the 1994 episodes may have met with a negative reception as the look of the Turtles has now changed again, the team now drawn in a simpler, wide-eyed style that seems to be trying to strike a balance between their look in the classic era of the show with their initial edgy Red Sky makeovers. We open with the green teens reviewing footage of a prior battle against a group of the same ninjas who worked for Megavolt in “State of Shock”. Donatello documented this encounter using a head-mounted camera, unimaginatively dubbed the “Turtle-Cam”. Raphael notes that in the background of the footage an onlooker riding a motorbike can be seen nearby, a stranger that he had spotted during their last few missions, and the group begin to wonder if there’s something to this.
Above the planet, a portal opens. From it emerges a large spaceship containing Lord Dregg (Tony Jay), who has arrived in our corner of the universe while attempting to evade being captured by the Galactic Patrol. His insect-like underling HiTech informs him that Earth contains supplies of the gold that they require, and so the villain orders that his TechnoGang are tasked with retrieving it. A smaller ship emerges from Dregg’s, ready to commence the mission.
The Turtle Blimp makes an unexpected return to the series after an extended absence as the team survey the area, attempting to track down whoever was watching them (a hell of a task given that there were 7.3 million people in New York in 1995, and as that the stranger was wearing a bike helmet they don’t even know what he looks like). Along the way, the Turtles spot someone blowing up the entrance to the Federal Reserve vault, and swoop in to intervene. A group of Dregg’s bug troopers, the TechnoGang, emerge and shoot down the glider, forcing the Turtles to leap onto a nearby rooftop.
Watching again is the mystery biker, who rides in and prevents the Turtles from being hit by a laser weapon mounted atop the TechnoGang's ship. The stranger continues to meddle in the affairs of our heroes, kicking Donatello to the ground as he does battle with one of the invaders. Ultimately the TechnoGang retreat in their ship without the gold, the biker also escaping.
Back in the Lair’s workshop we kick off a new sub-plot, as Donatello examines a beaker containing some of the mutagen which caused both the Turtles and Splinter to take on their current forms. Years on, the ooze is now beginning to become unstable, something that Donnie warns suggests the team could continue to transform. The Lair’s warning systems alert our heroes to the impending arrival of an intruder: It’s the biker again, riding around in the sewers.
After being cornered by the Turtles, the mystery man is forced to remove his helmet and reveal himself. The team are introduced to Carter, the new character being introduced in a desperate attempt to boost low ratings. Half Joe Camel and a third Fonzarelli, he’s one outrageous dude who’s totally in your face. From the outset he’s presented as having outsmarted the Turtles, tracing them back to their Lair despite their best efforts to remain unseen (something Shredder and Krang were unable to do despite eight whole seasons of trying). Carter asks to meet Hamato Yoshi, having determined that the fighting technique used by the Turtles could only have been taught to them by him. The Turtles remain hostile until Splinter intervenes, revealing to the youth his former identity. Splinter agrees to teach Carter the ways of the Foot, and just like that the series has found its Scrappy Doo.
Aboard his ship Dregg is informed by HiTech of the failure of the TechnoGang's mission due to the intervention of the Turtles. Seeking a way to rebound, he looks in on a boardroom at a firm called CopCore, where two robots are being unveiled. What follows is a beat-for-beat recreation of the scene from Robocop where ED-209 was introduced (albeit with a far less gruesome conclusion) as a man announces the rollout of The Intimidators, “the future of law enforcement”. There’s a hint of Minority Report thrown in here too – perhaps a nod to the original novella, but certainly not to the movie, which was still several years away – as we’re told the robots use neurological sensors to “detect criminal intentions and actually prevent the criminal from committing the crime.” Everyone in attendance has a good laugh when the robots begin issuing warnings, thinking it’s all a big show, but the bots soon begin to warn that the group have five seconds to comply, opening fire with their in-built weapons and blowing a hole in the wall.
Sitting in on this meeting is April, who like the Turtles has received a makeover for the second year in a row. There really wasn’t anything wrong with her season eight design but this revision is disastrous, her facial features now simplified and oddly doughy, coupled with a new limp hairdo that I assume was intended to keep her looking contemporary heading into the second half of the nineties but it absolutely does not work. Sneaking out of the room, she uses her Turtlecom to reach Donatello, and the team rush to her aid in the van. Carter is keen to join the Turtles but is told to stay behind and watch how things play out via the Turtle-Cam. Already he’s pissing and moaning, frustrated at being denied a piece of the action.
The Turtles do battle with the robots and are forced to take refuge in an elevator shaft, where the Turtle-Cam – worn during this mission by Michaelangelo – is soon destroyed. Fearing that the team are in trouble, Carter ignores their earlier instructions and rushes to their aid, accidentally splashing some of the contents of the mutagen beaker on his hand on the way out. Upon arriving at the building, he manages to unwittingly lead the Intimidators to the Turtles.
A bigger problem arrives as Lord Dregg emerges from his ship, announcing himself as the “Supreme Warlord of the Seven Galaxies”, intent on conquering the Earth. The Turtles turn their enemies against each other, diving out of the way to have Dregg’s ship open fire upon the Intimidators. The team then work to wear down both the law enforcement robots and the ship, but find themselves overwhelmed. Carter steps in, riding a rolling office desk to topple the Intimidators. Meanwhile Dregg, seeing the threat posed by the green teens, uses his ship’s equipment to revitalise the two robots, before taking Carter hostage and escaping.
Left to fight the robot duo on their own, the Turtles watch as one of the Intimidators self-destructs – a nasty going-away present for anyone capable of defeating them. Seeing an opportunity, Donatello connects a Turtlecom to the remaining robot, connecting it to his workshop’s computer. This grants the team with control of the bot and they use it as a makeshift vehicle, flying out of the building in pursuit of Dregg’s ship.
Aboard Dregg’s spacecraft, Carter remains caught in a giant claw. He writhes and struggles as he attempts to free himself, grunting about how he’s “gotta be strong” until he begins to mutate, a visual of the beaker from earlier superimposed over this sequence as apparently the show doesn’t trust us to understand what’s going on even after eight full years of watching assorted people and animals undergo this process. His new form is what I can only assume is the result of what market research and focus groups told the producers that mid-nineties kids would want from a new Turtles character: a mish-mash of Liu Kang, Vega and... I don’t know, a big yellow chicken.
Dregg again attempts to steal the gold, explaining to nobody in particular that he needs it to repair the weapons systems of his mothership, the Dreggnaught, ahead of his eventual conquest of Earth. An unexpected complication arrives in the shape of the Turtles, utilising the Intimidator to attack the smaller ship. As Carter uses his new martial arts cyborg form to break free, the Turtles confront the warlord. The giant mutant – whose real identity the Turtles remain unaware of – shoves them out of the ship moments before the detonator function of the Intimidator causes the craft to explode. Dregg escapes in a smaller vehicle, returning to his mothership in orbit above the Earth.
The Turtles, having been separated from the giant mutant who saved them, return to their Lair, lamenting that Carter appeared to have perished in the ship’s explosion. Now back in his normal form he returns to greet them, evasive in his explanation of how he escaped. Splinter remarks that “any young man who could survive such overwhelming odds surely has unusual powers”. Carter responds that he’s ready to begin his training under the team’s sensei, and now receives a warm welcome from the Turtles.
You might be able to sense my hostility in today’s entry towards the changes to the show’s dynamics being introduced here. While season seven saw a natural evolution and a necessary maturation for TMNT to keep pace with its now older viewership, season eight felt like a desperate roll of the dice to ensure the survival of the series, and while some aspects of this reinvention felt like an over-correction, I was surprised by how solid it was. We now find ourselves in a situation where somehow even this was felt to not be enough. There’s an insecurity on display here, the show second-guessing itself by redesigning the Turtles and April for a second time. The culmination of these changes has resulted in the series losing everything that made it visually appealing, looking instead like so much of the cookie-cutter animated dreck of the era (see the Double Dragon cartoon as an example of the glut of action shows which arrived following the success of Batman and X-Men, typically produced on a fraction of the budget with none of the craftmanship or charm, almost all of them long-forgotten). This occurs at the same time as yet another shift of animation studio, Dai Won being replaced by Shanghai Morning Sun Animation, who around this time were working on the similarly mundane American cartoon adaptation of Street Fighter. TMNT has certainly looked worse – there's nothing in here near the lows of the MW Dublin episodes – but much of the heart of the classic era is now gone.
Turtles has never been short of Scrappy Doos and Poochies – kid characters and/or super cool dudes who are supposed to be relatable to the audience and expand the appeal of the property beyond that of the main team. Zach and Mondo Gecko are obvious examples of this in the 1987 continuity, Keno serving a similar role in the live-action movies. Carter comes across as an attempt to find the sweet spot in a Venn diagram between all three. He reminds me of the common occurrence in long-running sitcoms where once the original child actors grow older a new, younger kid would be introduced to the show to recapture the magic of the early years. From the outset it’s clear that he’ll have an uphill battle winning over viewers who have gotten used to the dynamic of the Turtles as a quartet over eight years. He’s an interloper here, effectively inheriting the poisoned chalice of the “Fifth Turtle”, and based on my memories of seeing these episodes the first time around I have little faith in his ability to win me over in the short amount of time the show has left.
Similarly, Lord Dregg has big shoes to fill given that he replaces Shredder as the show’s main villain immediately following Oroku Saki’s reinvention as a competent character in season eight: how could any new guy come in this late in the day and possibly top the shocking destruction of the Channel 6 building? Tony Jay is no slouch as voice actors go, but so far Dregg is missing something. The Turtles have run into too many alien invaders over the years for this gimmick to be a novelty, and nothing in this episode elevates this warlord to the point where he feels like a significant threat to them, a challenge to our heroes big enough to justify him taking over from Shreds.
The evolution of TMNT in the Red Sky era continues, with further steps taken here towards long-form storytelling, teasing viewers with hints of events still to come such as the potentially-unstable mutations of the Turtles. We’ll see the continuation of that in the next episode, “Dregg of the Earth”.
