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“Night of the Dark Turtle”

Season 7, Episode 14 First US Airdate: October 30, 1993

Donatello adopts a new, aggresive persona following an accident.

“Night of the Dark Turtle” first aired in the US as the second half of a double bill alongside “Elementary, My Dear Turtle”, the concluding episode of the Vacation in Europe arc. David Wise returns as the writer of this story.

In the Lair, Michaelangelo walks into the living room to find the other Turtles watching a broadcast, where April appears to be running away from an enormous dinosaur. This turns out to be part of a report on the new animatronic dinosaurs that have been unveiled at the city’s Natural History Museum. Mikey suggests that he’d have wasted no time in fighting the dinosaur if April had been in actual danger, leading to Donatello countering that his reliance on inventions is a smarter approach. The other Turtles are dismissive of this idea, but Donnie doubles down, insistent that he could take on Shredder himself if he had to. The conversation is brought to an abrupt halt by his early warning system, which picks up unusual vibrations underground. Convinced this might be connected to Shredder, the Turtles rush off to investigate.

Across town at a government research laboratory, we see Shredder’s Scheme of the Day unfold, as he pressures a scientist into handing over the Micro Blaster, a device resembling a AA-size battery which he declares is a super-powerful weapon. Bebop and Rocksteady almost immediately manage to destroy the gizmo, while the reluctant inventor escapes in the commotion. Shredder sends The Boys after him, and after being pressured by Krang, decides to try and fix the weapon himself.

Having spent some time searching in vain, the Turtles trace the source of the vibrations to the government facility, and inside find Shredder – flanked by a group of Foot Soldiers – repairing the weapon. In the ensuing battle, Donatello goes toe-to-toe with Shreds, leading to a chain reaction of events where the Micro Blaster rolls away as nearby machines begin to malfunction. Shredder hurls Donnie into a bay of scientific equipment, leading the Turtle to be electrocuted. With the fight having drawn the attention of a pair of security guards, both Shredder and the Turtles make their respective exits.

Above Earth, a group of spaceships are seen approaching. Voices are heard discussing how easy the planet will be to conquer, one of them addressing someone by the name of “Captain Zorax”.

Donatello comes around while being tended to in the Lair, his voice and persona much more hard-edged than usual. He immediately grabs Leonardo and begins venting his frustrations at being pulled away before he could finish Shredder, adamant that he “nearly had him”. He attempts to leave but is restrained by the other Turtles, who encourage him to cool off. Splinter then intervenes, ordering his pupil to clear his mind of his “vicious thoughts”. This only serves to make Donatello angrier: in a heated tirade, he points out that it was Shredder’s fault Splinter was turned into a rat, and that Shredder is “responsible for everything evil that ever happens!” (A slight exaggeration, as anyone who had to endure the endless parade of mediocre villains present in seasons four through six could attest).

After being blocked from leaving the Lair for a second time by the other Turtles, Donatello appears to concede that it would be better for him to stay home and recuperate. In truth, he retreats to his workshop, where he pulls off his bandana, declaring that he’s “sick of these stupid masks!” Echoing Batman’s origin story, he adds that “criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot”, and as such he requires a new disguise to strike fear into their hearts. Instead of a bat, he finds inspiration in a pile of comic books that he had angrily knocked onto the floor upon his arrival, taking special interest in one titled “Midknight Avenger” (mistakenly rendered in one shot as “Midknigt Avenger”, which takes the edge of what had up to that point been a dramatic and effective scene).

Later, Shredder skulks around the government research lab, but finds that the number of security guards has been increased following his previous visit, and determines he’ll need to change his approach. Back in the Lair, the Turtles find Donatello has placed a group of pillows under his bedsheets to trick them. I don’t know why he bothered as he hasn’t left yet, emerging to shock his team-mates with his new persona: the heavily Batman-inspired “Dark Turtle”. After being confronted again, he uses a Turtle bomb device to fill the Lair with smoke and storms off to confront Shredder.

Act two begins with the other Turtles heading up to the surface and confronting Donatello, trying to convince him that taking on Shredder by himself is dangerous. The Dark Turtle uses a grappling hook to evade his former team-mates, leaving them floored as he escapes. (Leonardo remarks that Donatello has “gone totally bats”, but is warned by Michaelangelo to watch his language, lest they get into trademark infringement territory.) The attempts by the team to reason with their old comrade are cut short by Splinter, who informs them that they’re needed urgently in the Lair.

In a hideout at the docks, Shredder is seen negotiating with a mobster called Wolf Jackson to gain assistance in raiding the research facility. Meanwhile the group of spaceships seen approaching Earth earlier have now arrived, landing in the middle of a busy city street. From them emerges Captain Zorax of the Triceratons, a group of alien dinosaur warriors. Zorax declares that he’s claiming the planet for his Empire.

Splinter draws the attention of the Turtles to the readout on Donatello’s early warning alarm system, indicating an incident unfolding in the midtown area. Despite Raphael’s insistence that the machine may be as screwy as its inventor, the group rush off to investigate. Meanwhile, the Dark Turtle is seen capturing a mugger, hoisting him on a sawn-off streetlight to pressure him into revealing the current whereabouts of the Shredder. After learning that the masked villain is working with Wolf Jackson’s men, the Dark Turtle leaves the mugger pinned to the wall.

Shredder and the group of mobsters work together to lure the security guards at the government lab into being captured. Meanwhile the Triceratons are rounding up citizens when the Turtles arrive to confront them. Zorax tells the team that he doesn’t normally like battling his fellow reptiles but is prepared to make an exception for the green teens, as his men open fire with their laser weapons.

Bebop and Rocksteady have been wandering the city off-screen throughout this story in search of the scientist who created the Micro Blaster, and now find themselves confronted by the Dark Turtle. The Boys initially mock the masked hero, but find themselves tied up and pressed in regards to the whereabouts of Wolf Jackson. After Bebop unwittingly reveals that the mobster operates out of a hideout on the wharf, the Dark Turtle leaves Shredder’s underlings tied up in much the same way as he did with the mugger earlier.

In an exciting fight sequence – albeit one that I suspect has been edited down to bring it in line with CBS broadcast restrictions – the Turtles find themselves outmatched by the Triceratons, who point out that they’ve conquered half the galaxy, and it’ll take more than our three heroes to stop them. Meanwhile the Dark Turtle barges into Wolf Jackson’s hideout, dragging him outside and threatening to drop him into the water surrounding the pier if he refuses to reveal the whereabouts of Shredder. Jackson coughs up the details, and winds up taking the plunge anyway.

The Turtles re-emerge in their van ready to counter-attack, but find the Triceratons have implemented the next stage of their plan, having created a stargate, a giant wormhole that Earth will be pulled through until it arrives among the Triceraton homeworlds, where it’ll be asset-stripped. Raphael suggests that things can’t get much worse, but Mikey counters that he shouldn’t be so sure as there’s still one more act to go.

Figuring that they’ll need the assistance of Donatello in sabotaging the stargate, the Turtles shoot down the proposal from the Triceratons to work together as “fellow reptiles”, escaping in their van. Meanwhile the Dark Turtle finally makes good on his promise to confront Shredder at the research facility. Like Rocksteady and Bebop, the masked villain doesn’t take this threat seriously at first, but after dealing with an array of different gadgets and weapons, he too is captured. The Turtles arrive in time to find Shredder being dangled over a railing by the Dark Turtle, and wind up saving their old enemy, breaking his fall and preventing him from being dropped onto a mobile generator. Michaelangelo attempts to restrain the Dark Turtle, but the would-be superhero winds up falling onto the generator instead. Bebop and Rocksteady emerge to rescue their boss, the three villains making their exit.

As per the rules of TV amnesia the second bump has restored Donatello to normal, and he learns from the other Turtles about the current situation with the Triceratons. After Leonardo points out that Zorax repeatedly showed reluctance to battle his fellow reptiles, Donnie suggests they pay a visit to the Natural History Museum.

Only three minutes remain until Earth is pulled through the stargate when the Triceratons are confronted by a group of enormous dinosaurs, who smash the machines holding residents of the city hostage. In truth, the dinos are being operated by the Turtles, and while the ruse initially works, Zorax reluctantly gives the order to open fire on his fellow reptiles to prevent the entire mission from failing. Adopting his Dark Turtle disguise again, Donatello confronts the Triceratons, declaring himself to be the ruler of Earth. As a demonstration of his might, he uses the Micro Blaster to decimate a nearby tank and the stargate generator. Terrified by the sight of this, the Triceratons rush to their ships and retreat into space.

Later, in the Lair, the other Turtles talk amongst themselves about how impressive Donatello was in his exploits, with Raphael remarking that as the Dark Turtle, Donnie was “so crazed he made Casey Jones look like a wallflower”. The group overhear Donatello aggressively wondering where “that Shredder” is in his workshop, and fear he’s returned to his superhero persona; in reality, he’s simply looking for his automatic cheese shredder, as he has a craving for pizza.

As we start our exploration of what might be considered the legitimate portion of season seven, I think it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on the changing fortunes of TMNT, and how this is affecting the direction of the series. If 1990 represented the height of Turtlemania, 1991 the end of the boom period and 1992 a year of managing the decline, then 1993 must represent the point where the Turtles are now well and truly in trouble. Almost six full years have passed since the broadcast of the first episode of the series, an eternity in kid-vid terms, and much of the audience from the early days is now growing up or simply losing interest. Between seasons six and seven the third live-action Turtles movie arrived in cinemas, widely considered to be at best a major disappointment and at worst a box office bomb, and to my mind it’s difficult not to see this as both an indicator of waning interest in TMNT as well as a failure large enough to damage the reputation of the Turtles moving forward.

From my own personal experience, time has muddled my memories of watching what might be termed “Late-Stage Turtles”, but my recollection is that in 1992 UK viewers watching on Sky One wound up getting seasons five, six and the European vacation portion of season seven almost back-to-back. It was... a lot, and I finally found myself burned out. I could have sworn that this was one of the last episodes I saw, and that we got at least the first few proper season seven episodes immediately after the European vacation arc at the tail-end of 1992, but that doesn’t seem to line up; certainly the episodes as presented on DVD all have 1993 copyrights, so that seems implausible. It’s possible I’m mixing this up with “Leonardo is Missing”, a similar Turtles-meet-dinosaurs episode that would have been in broadcast rotation during this period.

What I do know for sure is that I parted ways with the Turtles soon after the European Vacation episodes wrapped up in late 1992. It wasn’t an “I don’t like this show anymore” thing, but more a logistics issue: when satellite transmissions on BSB’s old Marcopolo DMAC system ended on January 1, 1993, we didn’t have access to Sky One in the family living room anymore. (I could still watch Sky upstairs, but it was far less convenient.) In September of 1993 Sky’s channels became subscription-only, putting a paywall between me and any future episodes of TMNT; it wasn’t until late 1994 that I’d see the Turtles on Sky again, the show by then demoted to weekend airings only and looking far different than it had the last time I’d seen it, season eight then fully in effect. It’s funny in retrospect that I had hung in there right up to the beginning of this season before starting to mentally tune out, unaware that only a scant few shows remained before the series headed in a dramatic new direction.

Though it might not be immediately obvious, the beginnings of that new direction can be found in “Night of the Dark Turtle”. It’s clear that David Wise has been tasked with righting this now rapidly sinking ship and has immediately set about subtly altering the tone of the series, upping the action and science fiction elements and perhaps drawing upon the Mirage comics for further inspiration, as well as bringing in some of the earliest TMNT comic book foes in the Triceratons, a surprise inclusion this late in the show’s run. Donatello’s genuine anger – if only due to his accident – at everything Shredder has done would have been unthinkable in seasons two through six, and it’s hard as a viewer to disagree with him even if his approach may be questionable. The Dark Turtle’s more aggressive tactics when fighting crime are scuppered by those Saturday morning rules and regulations meaning he can’t inflict any actual punishment; at best he can drop Wolf Jackson in the water, the implication being that Donatello would normally just let the mobster be. Nevertheless, there’s a sense that the show is finally shedding its goofier tendencies, if only out of necessity, and that perhaps the days of cream pie fights as conflict resolution are behind us for good.

Of the remaining episodes in this season, all but two will be penned by David Wise. His next contribution will see the Turtles deal with an entirely different kind of alien in “The Starchild”.

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