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turtlethon · 3 months

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The other one is much later in the show's run, in "Dirk Savage: Mutant Hunter", when we learn that Shredder continued to experiment on innocent people, over a period of years, to the point where there were so many mutants running around town that a politician could run on an anti-mutant campaign platform.

Do you remember exact dialogue on that? I watched that episode recently and the only thing I remember was that Tokka & Rahzar were stated to be the result of the Shredder experimenting on Zoo Animals, which I assume to be a reference to the Groundchuck and Dirtbag episodes.

As for the other mutants like the Giraffe lady and mutant bird, I assumed they weren't Shredder experiments but just people or animals that got hit by carelessly placed mutagen during the show's shenanigans rather than deliberate experiments.

Also I feel Baxter Stockman's harsh treatment from Shredder and Krang may have been because he was something of an outsider; being coerced into working for them and once trying to betray the Shredder. Rocksteady and Bebop's gangs were thugs that had been working for them to begin with, so I feel they'd get better treatment.

Upon reflection (and going back and watching the opening of the Dirk Savage ep again) I think you're right: the intent seems to be that the events in the zoo during the Turtleoids special have led to the creation of subsequent mutants over a period of a few years. I'm many months removed from watching the show at this point, so I was basing that on what I wrote at the time and my already potentially fuzzy recollections.

Regarding Shredder and the gang (and by extension, Krang/Baxter) I think where you stand on Shredder's willingness to undo their mutations probably depends on how evil you interpret him to be...

This Shredder is presented as a credible ninja master and criminal mastermind, and is the one who mutated the gang members...

This Shredder is considerably less capable, to put it mildly, and if we're being honest more in-line with how he's presented for the bulk of the series. Outside of his feud with Splinter and the Turtles, his desire for world domination seems to be entirely rooted in his own vanity and self-aggrandizement.

His villainy/competence isn't a binary thing IMO, I think it can be charted on a spectrum depending on the era of the show and who's writing, but as a trend it keeps nudging into ineffectual goofball gradually up to the beginning of season eight, when it dramatically swings back in the opposite direction.

On that basis, I think the likelihood of Shredder undoing the mutations of the gang and letting them go depends on which point in the show it actually happens. If we're assuming it's in the window between S1 and S2 then maybe not, but after the S2 opener the way he's presented changes considerably and he seems to be borderline subservient to Krang rather than the two of them being in a fifty-fifty partnership. At that point I could see him just releasing the gang on the basis that he has enough to deal with, and doesn't need them hanging around.

In regards to Krang (and his attempted vaporizing of Baxter), I've long been of the opinion that as an alien warlord he likely places little value on human life, but I kind of like the idea that the presence of Shredder, Rocksteady & Bebop in the Technodrome softens him a bit and prevents him from being a total monster, in part because their incompetence invariably scuppers all of his plans and stops him doing any significant harm in the end. It's notable that he ordered Baxter's execution while Shredder, Rocksteady and Bebop were all on Earth, and there was no-one around to reason with him; I don't know if I'd go so far as to say they serve as his conscience, but, y'know... something like that!

#TMNT #TMNT 1987 #Turtlethon #Shredder #Shredder TMNT #Imagine having Shredder Rocksteady and Bebop as the angels on your shoulder keeping you from being even worse

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turtlethon · 1 year

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"Dirk Savage: Mutant Hunter!”

Season 7, Episode 24 First US Airdate: December 4, 1993

A wealthy businessman starts an anti-mutant campaign that places the Turtles in danger.

Season seven of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles nears its conclusion with "Dirk Savage: Mutant Hunter!" As with most of the episodes during this stretch of the show, David Wise is credited as writer here.

The Turtles are investigating a series of appearances by a pair of mysterious creatures and are seen examining their footprints. Donatello remarks that since Shredder’s use of mutagen in the zoo “years ago”, new mutants have continued to appear in the city. This seems to be a call-back to the events of “Planet of the Turtleoids” that led to the creation of Groundchuck and Dirtbag. As that was in season five it’s true that for us as viewers it was a while back, but I believe this is the first time we’ve ever had in-universe confirmation that the events of the series have taken place over a period of several years.

Our heroes are alerted to a commotion at the nearby Crystal Palace Mall. Inside, a mutant wolf and turtle are terrorising shoppers. This duo will be familiar to anyone who’s seen the second live-action TMNT movie as Rahzar and Tokka respectively, though their characterisation here differs greatly from their movie appearances: rather than being BABIES – or, if you prefer, “stupid infants” - Rahzar is surprisingly eloquent while Tokkka sounds like... Beavis? I’m gonna go with Beavis. The Turtles valiantly take on these two new mutants but are outmatched, with both Leonardo and Michaelangelo going through the windows of one of the mall’s restaurants.

An interesting facet of Rahzar’s portrayal here is that from the outset it’s established he cares deeply for Tokka and considers him to be his only friend. Upon seeing Raphael and Donatello fight Tokka, Rahzar becomes furious, smashing the mall’s supporting pillar. Having left the complex in ruins, the two mutants escape; the Turtles emerge from the crumbling shopping centre but find their new enemies are long gone.

Later, in the Lair, the Turtles watch a broadcast on Channel 6. AJ Howard, an “eccentric billionaire”, is allowed to go into an anti-mutant diatribe in which he blames the many half-human, half-animals who have appeared in the city not only for the recent destruction of the mall, but for hurting the local economy and driving out business. He goes on to mention that the completion of his new skyscraper, the Howard Building, has been postponed until the mutant issue is dealt with. Beyond that, he has launched a full-on anti-mutant campaign, including promotional “down with mutants” wristbands. Announcing the next phase of his program, he introduces Dirk Savage, a burly and heavily armed man with an eyepatch who he declares is a “professional mutant hunter”.

Savage boasts about his intention to track down “every last one of you freaks”, a vow that understandably rattles the Turtles. The broadcast ends with AJ Howard encouraging citizens to request Savage’s services by way of a special hotline, 555-NO MUTANTS.

The Turtles head to Channel 6 and request April and Irma’s help in learning about Dirk Savage. April isn’t able to find much beyond him being “a professional soldier of fortune... he’s fought for governments all over the world!” Irma provides further details about Savage’s allegiances, noting that he typically fights against “rebels, misfits and other outcasts”. While at the station offices our heroes receive an incoming Turtlecom transmission from Napoleon of the Punk Frogs, who has just arrived in town with Genghis. It only takes a matter of seconds before Genghis manages to get his foot caught in a laser trap. From the bushes emerges Dirk Savage, who swiftly captures both frogs and carries them away.

Our heroes head to the spot where the Punk Frogs were captured, and determine this was indeed Savage’s doing: in a nod to the weariness that viewers may have been feeling after seven seasons of new supporting characters being introduced, Raphael notes that there are “eight zillion mutants in this series and [Savage] captures two of the good ones!” With no clear plan on what to do next, the team head back to the Lair to request Splinter’s advice.

Savage is seen transporting the Punk Frogs in his personalised truck to a special facility, where several mutants can be seen imprisoned in energy cages. The mutant hunter checks in with AJ Howard, who reminds him that the Turtles are still free: Savage assures his boss that capturing them is his top priority.

Splinter tells the Turtles that he senses Dirk Savage may be the key to solving their problem, and that they should focus on convincing him to change his ways by showing him his hatred for mutants is the result of ignorance. Later, while wandering the sewers, the Turtles discuss these words of wisdom. Donatello and Raphael are unconvinced by the idea that Savage can be reasoned with. Michaelangelo is then pulled into the air and captured in an enormous electromagnet, which Donnie helpfully explains has him “by the buckles of his bandoliers!” Before the team can free him, Dirk Savage appears, a gun in each hand and set to capture his enemies, as act one wraps up.

Act two opens with Savage angering the Turtles by calling them “mutant scum”. He attempts to capture all four members of the team, but after restraining Leonardo is pounced upon by Raphael and has a stream of water sprayed on him by Donatello from a nearby pipe. Ultimately the mutant hunter retreats, taking the tied-up Leo and Mikey with him. As he loads the two Turtles into the back of his truck, he makes a point of relieving them of their Turtlecoms, crushing the devices with his bare hands. Donnie and Raph head to the Turtle Van to give chase, but are alerted to further developments from April, who asks that they return to the station as Irma has made a major discovery.

Savage presents Michaelangelo and Leonardo to AJ Howard. The two Turtles are understandably furious and refuse to comply, but the billionaire forces them to don “compliance cuffs” - arm restraints that compel anyone wearing them to do his bidding. Napoleon, Genghis and the other assembled mutants can only look on as Leo and Mikey are brought to their knees. Meanwhile, Irma reveals her discovery to the Turtles: that Howard used to own a genetics lab which was suddenly closed, coinciding with the wealthy businessman’s disappearance for more than a year. (We can only take Irma’s word for this, as the report which appears on-screen contains no relevant information and seems to just be letters of the alphabet in sequence.)

While April and Irma are helping the Turtles, Vernon goes on-air with an editorial segment. Professing his allegiance to AJ Howard, he rails against the “nasty creatures” supposedly taking over the streets, before revealing that more than half of the city’s residents now wear the billionaire’s anti-mutant bracelets. Raphael is keen to give Vernon a piece of his mind, but is convinced to direct his energy elsewhere, as Donatello intends to infiltrate the mutant holding facility. Meanwhile, April and Irma will investigate the site of Howard’s in-construction skyscraper.

Donnie and Raph visit Mondo Gecko, making his first appearance since his debut two years earlier. As per the conclusion of that adventure he appears to still be residing in the sewers as a neighbour of sorts to the Turtles. Upon learning of the activities of Howard and Savage, Mondo agrees to assist, angered by the capture of his good friend Michaelangelo.

Savage places a table of food in an alley, luring Tokka and Rahzar into the open. This turns out to only be partially successful, as he’s able to capture the snapping turtle but not his partner. After escaping, Rahzar can only watch from a nearby rooftop as Tokka is loaded into the back of Savage’s vehicle and transported away; enraged by the loss of his buddy, he vows revenge before howling at the moon. On his way back to the mutant detainment facility Savage also encounters and captures Mondo Gecko. This time Donnie and Raph are ready, and follow the mutant hunter in the Turtle Van.

As April and Irma arrive at the Howard Building, which is covered in an enormous sheet and surrounded by guards, Donnie and Raph watch Savage unload his mutants at the facility. After he leaves again our heroes use a vent to gain entry to the mutant detainment building. Inside, they watch – along with the captive Leo and Mikey, as well as the other jailed mutants – as AJ Howard places his special cuffs on Mondo Gecko and Tokka. After an off-hand remark from Mondo about how the billionaire will never be able to kill destroy the city’s entire population of mutants, Howard reveals that isn’t his intent, and that his captured prey will serve as his own personal army. The assembled mutants are shocked as Howard removes his rubbery face mask to show his true form: that of a half-man, half-slug.

The impact of Howard’s revelation is watered down considerably by the fact that when we return for the concluding act, he’s seen pulling off his mask again, this time spouting new dialogue as he does so about being not only a mutant, but the greatest one of all. He further explains that it was an accident in his genetics lab that led to his current form (hence his year-long disappearance alluded to by Irma earlier). Donnie and Raph emerge to confront Howard, but through his compliance bracelets the slug turns the jailed mutants against them, forcing the two Turtles to retreat to their van. With his true intentions now known, Howard declares that he needs to implement the next phase of his plan immediately and marches off with his new mutant army.

Donatello is beginning to warm up to the idea suggested by Splinter earlier about Dirk Savage acting as a potential ally. From a phone booth, he calls the hunter’s hotline and leaves a message indicating that two mutant turtles have been spotted. Meanwhile April and Irma watch as Howard relays a message to the guards surrounding his building, informing them that as the mutant issue has been dealt with, they can stand down. With the coast clear, the two ladies sneak inside, finding what initially appears to be a relatively innocuous building.

Savage takes the bait, arriving at a fish market to find Donatello and Raphael. Before he can capture them Rahzar intervenes, still livid at the capture of his friend. The Turtles battle the mutant wolf, ultimately using one of Savage’s own restraining weapons to deal with their foe. It’s only after being saved by Donnie and Raph – and subsequently lectured by them about how not all mutants are bad – that Savage learns he was working for a villainous slug-man the entire time.

AJ Howard guides his army to his new skyscraper, revealing that its true name is not the Howard Building but rather the Mutant Building, a towering statue of his true form mounted on its roof. As he pulls away the sheets at ground level, April and Irma have made it to the top, and head inside to find a control room. Donnie and Raph are informed of this discovery and head off with Savage to confront the bad guys.

Michaelangelo and Leonardo are taken to the top floor by Howard with the other mutants, and due to the compliance cuffs are forced against their will to capture April and Irma. Both ladies are made by Howard to wear his “Down with Mutants” cuffs: far from being a mere propaganda tool, the slug reveals these are miniature versions of the restraints worn by his army. Soon, he announces, they’ll be used to bring everyone in the city wearing them under his control. Across town at Channel 6, Vernon is seen gushing about the bracelets to a surprisingly wary Burne Thompson. As the bracelets are powered up April’s rival is seen marching out of the room, his boss furious at the idea of him taking orders from anyone else.

Dirk Savage is also wearing one of Howard’s anti-mutant bracelets, which activates as he flies the Turtle Blimp, accompanied by Donnie and Raph. Despite this setback the team manage to open fire upon Howard’s statue, and the resulting destruction of the control room breaks the control of the bracelets over the humans who had been wearing them. Howard still has sway over the mutants, but only temporarily – it doesn’t take long for Savage to snatch the control unit out of the hands of his old boss and destroy it.

A further complication arises as the building begins to shake. Howard reveals that the explosion which destroyed the control room must have overloaded the building’s power generators. Donatello drops a dizzying number of ropes from the Turtle Blimp, allowing everyone to fly away safely before the entire skyscraper blows up.

Later, Savage makes a brief apology for the way he’s treated the assembled mutants, pledging to try and understand them in the future and offering his help if needed. Michaelangelo suggests this is almost a happy ending, but something is still missing: the Punk Frogs then step in, offering to buy the Turtles a jumbo pizza, and this is enough for Mikey to now be entirely satisfied.

Michaelangelo might be content with this conclusion, but I’m considerably less impressed. For the most part “Dirk Savage: Mutant Hunter!” is an exceptional episode even by the standards of what has been a surprisingly strong season. While the series was set up around the premise that the wider world would be hostile to the Turtles – in this continuity that was established from the outset as the reason Splinter trained them to be ninjas, a means of defending themselves rather than to kill Shredder – only season three’s “Turtles on Trial” explored this idea in depth. In the years that followed, the Turtles became real-world celebrities who spent more time selling cereal, raising awareness of public transportation and going on tour as musicians than they did being depicted as underdogs struggling in a world that didn’t understand them. Arguably this fed back into the series, as the team have spent years wandering around mostly without disguises, meeting little resistance from the residents of the city and often being treated as celebrated heroes. It’s only here – in the seventh season of the show, as the need for the Turtles to serve as real-world pitchmen and role models for hire fades away, that we begin to see a re-alignment take place, freeing the team to become ninjas who reside in the shadows once more. To that end, here we return to the idea of a media-driven narrative turning opinion against the Turtles. These themes felt worryingly prescient when I wrote about them in the Turtlethon entry for “On Trial” a few years back and viewed through the lens of this episode seem just as relevant to our real-world political and cultural climate now. The difference is that while the season three approach to this story resulted in an effective story with an ending that felt all too plausible, this one manages to stumble right before making it over the finish line.

I don’t know what it is about season seven: for some reason the overarching theme for this year seems to have been terrific stories that invariably wind up with half-baked, unsatisfying conclusions. (Baxter’s final appearance is the most obvious example of this.) Whereas Clayton Kellerman’s insistence on continuing to profit by directing hate at the Turtles even after being saved by them felt all too real, here Dirk Savage’s willingness to cast aside his hatred of mutants so readily comes across as entirely inauthentic. Far worse than this, though, is AJ Howard’s fate being omitted from the end of the show completely. Did he feel any remorse for treating the mutants the way he did? Was his perspective changed after being saved from the exploding buildings by the Turtles, or would he simply vow to get revenge? We’ll never know, and it’s one of the great missed opportunities that this villain – part Ross Perot with his pie charts and presumably paid TV broadcasts, part Richard Nixon in voice and general demeanour – didn't get used again. I could easily envision an alternative direction for seasons eight through ten where it’s Howard who becomes the main villain of the series as Shredder and Krang fade into the background, a cartoon counterpart to Null from the Archie TMNT Adventures continuity whose influence and power make life much harder for the Turtles.

Comparisons to “On Trial” notwithstanding, there’s no shortage of other things going on here that are genuinely interesting. The revelation that Shredder’s schemes led to the creation of a variety of unseen mutants is intriguing, but even here there’s a sense that much more could have come of this: we see several mutants in this adventure who are all original designs, but they could so easily have been existing characters from the Archie comics or the toy line. It’s not hard to imagine the likes of Scratch, Panda Khan or Halfcourt receiving cameos here, or even Ace Duck finally getting some proper screen time. At least we get guest appearances from Tokka and Rahzar, albeit years after their debut in The Secret of the Ooze. This is more relevant to Turtlethon entries for the live-action movies – which I still intend to do before this project is over – but the inclusion of this duo in the cartoon after so long feels particularly odd given that they were effectively an unsuccessful attempt to outdo its own Rocksteady and Bebop. Perhaps Playmates were keen to have Tokka and Rahzar incorporated into the show, as both did have a couple of action figures at retail during this period.

Without a doubt this episode is going on the Required Viewing list, but with the caveat that as good as it is, it had the potential to be something far greater than what we ultimately received. We say goodbye to the remaining Punk Frogs and Mondo Gecko here for the last time, with the conclusion of season seven and the classic era of TMNT looming on the horizon. Before then our attention must turn back to the Technodrome Crew for the subject of the next entry, “Invasion of the Krangazoids”.

#Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #TMNT #TMNT 1987 #Ninja Turtles #Turtlethon #1993 #Dirk Savage: Mutant Hunter #Dirk Savage: Mutant Hunter!#Dirk Savage Mutant Hunter #Dirk Savage #AJ Howard #A.J. Howard #Tokka #Rahzar #Tokka and Rahzar

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