Season 6, Episode 12
First US Airdate: November 28, 1992
Bebop impersonates Leonardo after learning of the Turtle’s unexplained disappearance.
We’re heading into the final stretch of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles season six. “Leonardo is Missing” is the third of four consecutive episodes written by series mainstay David Wise.
Today’s adventure opens with Leonardo reading in the Lair when a distress signal is heard from Donatello’s workshop. Leo attempts to make contact using the microphone connected to Donnie’s computer but finds the cable has been damaged. A chain of events follows with Leo digging out the portable tracker device but knocking over a bookcase in the process, also inadvertently losing his Turtlecom. With the other Turtles absent and Splinter meditating, the leader of the team heads off to take care of things himself.
Later, Mikey, Donnie and Raph return from the arcade to find Leonardo gone, his Turtlecom left in the workshop in what appears to the other Turtles to have been the scene of a fight. Fearing the worst, they begin their search.
We head to the Technodrome next, which is... in the Arctic again somehow? You’ll recall that all the way back in the season premiere, “Rock Around the Block”, the Turtles implausibly used the power of “Wu Wei” to send the rolling fortress to the bottom of the ocean. Presumably this story was supposed to air before that and somehow got knocked back to near the end of the season. As was their M.O. while in icy confinement during season five, Shredder and Krang are again seen fixating on “The City”, that place in the United States of America where the Turtles live that shall never be called by its real name. Krang discovers “a highly concentrated source of energy”, one powerful enough to blow the planet off its axis, the subsequent alteration of the climate melting the ice that has been restraining the Technodrome. As a bonus, The City would be frozen, becoming an easy target for the villains to take over. Krang goes on to reveal to Shredder that he has components waiting to be assembled for a Hyper Thruster, a machine that can be used to initiate the axis shift. The Foot Soldiers will put this together outside of town while the alien brain travels with Shreds to find the energy source.
The Turtles are patrolling the city in their van searching for Leonardo when they spot a hole blown in the wall of a bubblegum factory. Wandering inside, they find a raid taking place of baseball cards, and eventually track down Bebop and Rocksteady carrying out the crime. Hijinks and slapstick follow as the Turtles use gum to battle their old foes, but ultimately are pinned down beneath some rolling factory equipment. Picking up on the fact that only three of the Turtles are present, Bebop and Rocksteady scoop up their cards and escape via transport module. April arrives on the scene, and after learning from the Turtles of Leonardo’s disappearance, pledges to let them know if she stumbles upon any clues as to his whereabouts.
Shredder is venting to Krang about “those blasted Turtles” when Bebop and Rocksteady return to the Technodrome, eagerly delivering the news that one of the green teens has vanished, though Bebop concedes that he doesn’t know which one as “they all look alike”. Rocksteady confirms that “it’s the one in the blue mask”, allowing Shredder to narrow it down to Leonardo, one of the few times we ever hear him refer to any of the Turtles by their individual names. Hatching a plan, Shreds has Bebop stand in a holographic cloaking machine, which allows the mutant warthog to take on the appearance of the leader of the Turtles.
Act two opens with Bebop lamenting having been turned into a Turtle, but Shredder assures him that this is merely an illusion. The villains leave in the transport module to enact the next phase of their plan, with Krang tagging along as he intends to make sure “there are no foul-ups". Upon arrival, Shreds gives Rocksteady and Bebop (as Leonardo – let's just call him Bebonardo) orders to create as much chaos as possible within the two-hour life cycle of the holographic disguise, keeping the Turtles busy. Meanwhile the real Leonardo is briefly seen wandering through underground tunnels, using Donatello’s tracking device as he heads out of town.
In a car dealership, Bebonardo – who I should note retains Bebop’s voice – re-enacts the opening of Commando (minus the murder) as he drives a sports car through the showroom’s window. After causing havoc on the city streets, he returns the car by smashing it through another of the dealership’s windows, leaving it as a total wreck. Back in the Lair, Splinter is informed of Leonardo’s disappearance and has the other Turtles join hands with him as they perform “an ancient ninja mind probe technique”. Notably, during the exercise, Splinter refers to Leonardo as his son rather than his pupil or student, a rarity in this incarnation of TMNT and perhaps a sign that the influence of other Turtles-related media such as the live-action movies is bleeding over a little into the cartoon. Our heroes experience a shared vision of three dinosaurs in spacesuits charging through a cave but are left clueless as to what this could mean. The exercise is interrupted by April via Turtlecom, who informs our heroes of reports that Leonardo was sighted at the car showroom, and they head off to investigate.
As Krang guides Shredder through a gravel pit in search of the energy source, the Turtles arrive at the dealership. The salesman, still traumatised from his interaction with Bebonardo, flees the scene upon noticing them. Elsewhere, the imposter Turtle continues to cause upheaval, stealing a youngster’s skateboard and writing “LEONARDO WAS HERE” with impressive cursive penmanship in wet cement. Later, Bebonardo and Rocksteady see a John Tesh-type announcer appear on a big screen TV on the side of a building and decide to take over the broadcast. Vernon reaches April by radio to inform her that Leonardo has been spotted at Skyscraper Square, and so she heads to the scene with the Turtles in the news van.
Krang and Shredder eventually hit upon a hole in the gravel pit, which leads to an underground tunnel where an enormous rolling vehicle is kept. Shreds notes that this isn’t a spacecraft, and “must have drilled itself up from the centre of the Earth”. Rocksteady checks in via Com-Link, receiving vanishingly rare praise from his boss for causing so much trouble with Bebop. In what seems like an innocuous moment that will have repercussions later, the mutant rhino asks where Shredder and Krang can be found if needed, confirming their location at the gravel pit.
Donnie, Mikey and Raph watch as Leonardo appears on the giant skyscraper-mounted TV, but soon pick up on him having Bebop’s voice. They confront the imposter at the broadcast station moments before he returns to his normal form, and another battle follows between Bebop, Rocksteady and the three Turtles. This time around things play out differently, with the two henchmen swiftly tied up. The Turtles press Rocksteady and Bebop for info about Leonardo’s disappearance, but neither knows where he is; both mutants helpfully blab about Krang’s displacement scheme, with Rocksteady sharing that the energy source was found in a gravel pit. Meanwhile Krang has set up shop at a sports track and finds that further amendments will be required to his Hyper Thruster, assuring a complaining Shredder that as he’s waited years to take over the world, “a few more hours won’t make a difference”.
With the captive Rocksteady and Bebop in-tow, the Turtles travel to the tunnel beneath the gravel pit. There, they find themselves face-to-face with the three dinosaurs from Splinter’s vision, who appear ready to attack as act two ends.
The final act opens with the revelation that the dinosaurs are friendly, as Leonardo emerges to introduce them to the other Turtles. Speega – the T-Rex and apparent leader – explains that his group are the descendants of a group of dinosaurs that avoided becoming extinct millions of years ago by taking refuge at the centre of the planet. Since then, they’ve taken on the task of working to protect other endangered species and were working to protect a rare type of flower when their transport driller was damaged. It was their distress signal that Leonardo received in the Lair, and with his help not only was the flower saved, but their vehicle was repaired with scrapyard parts. The dinos are ready to return to their home at the Earth’s core but have now found that the energy source used to power their vehicles has been stolen, and so the Turtles head off with their new allies to stop Krang and Shredder.
The Turtles take the fight to their old enemies, but the dinosaurs opt not to participate, with Speega explaining that their code of conduct prevents them from causing harm to living things. After Leonardo points out that the Foot Soldiers are merely robots the trio has a change of heart, turning the tide of battle. This gives Donatello enough time to sabotage the Hyper Thruster, hooking it up to a nearby PA system and causing it to overload. A charred Krang retreats to a transport module, where Shredder insists that in future, he’ll take charge of their schemes; the alien warlord doesn’t want to hear it, wailing that he’s “had a very bad day” as the villains make their exit.
The Turtles return the stolen energy cells to Speega, who asks if there’s anything he can do to help our heroes for their help. Leonardo responds that all they need to do is continue their work in protecting endangered species. The T-Rex remarks that, given man’s disregard for the environment, it’s likely they’ll have to return sooner rather than later.
We close things out in the Lair, where Leonardo apologises to the other Turtles for his disappearance. Splinter chips in to get the last line of the show, suggesting that ancient ninja wisdom instructs that if you need to make an unexpected exit in a hurry, you should “always leave a note”.
Season six of TMNT continues to surprise me – at a point where I’m sure many viewers would have long since tuned-out it feels as if the show is experiencing something of a mid-life renaissance, largely by way of examining what worked in the past and re-interpreting those themes. Tales of imposter Turtles are nothing new to the series, going all the way back to the Crooked Turtle Gang, and Bebop and Rocksteady adopting disguises has also been done before, but Bebop’s antics here as he pretends to be Leonardo provide enough entertainment value that the proceedings never feel tired.
As with “Donatello Trashes Slash”, where Donnie’s anxieties bookended the show but didn’t play into the main storyline, I had a definite sense that there was still more story to be told here. For what on the surface is a Leonardo-centric episode we spend a lot more time with Bebop pretending to be him, the real Leo’s adventures with his new allies happening entirely off-screen and only spoken of upon his return at the story’s climax. Speega and his associates must rank among the most intriguing guest stars to appear in the series, the other two dinosaurs never even talking or being given names. Their existence almost feels like some kind of backdoor pilot concept for a spin-off show that never got off the ground. There’s also the small issue of their resemblance to the Triceratons, who remain conspicuously absent from the Turtles cartoon universe – for now.
The Turtles encountered a hidden civilization of non-talking, vanilla dinosaurs way back in season three’s "Turtles at the Earth's Core", which at the time felt like it should have been a huge discovery for everyone involved only for it to immediately be abandoned, never spoken of or referenced again. It’s tempting to imagine that the backstory for Speega and his team ties into that lost world somehow, and that perhaps some of the dinosaurs in that realm developed intelligence, splitting off from the ones we saw to do their own thing. It would be nice to think that something came of that entire facet of TMNT ‘87 lore that was unceremoniously dumped as quickly as it was introduced.
Lending credence to the idea that that was supposed to be an early season six episode – perhaps even the first – and was never intended to show up this late in the running order is the fact that this Leonardo-centric adventure will be followed next time by another Leo story, which seems like the kind of thing you’d try to avoid when finalising the running order. We’ll re-join the leader of the team for our next Turtlethon entry as he confronts his fear of serpents in “Snakes Alive!”
