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“Turtle Trek”

Season 8, Episode 8 First US Airdate: November 1, 1994

The Turtles journey to Dimension X alongside a new ally who may not be as trustworthy as he seems.

“Turtle Trek” is the final episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles season eight. David Wise is credited as the writer of this story.

Today’s proceedings kick off in a power plant, where Shredder, Rocksteady and Bebop install a transmitter to send the facility’s energy to the Hall of Science. The Turtles intervene to stop them, and a fight breaks out that spills into a factory nearby. Leonardo engages Shredder in a sword-fight and is on the verge of winning when Bebop intervenes, using a projectile to pin his belt to a spinning cog nearby. After the other Turtles step in to free him, the fight extends to a third building. This time Shreds uses a smoke bomb to keep his enemies busy, escaping with his henchmen in one of Berserko’s old tanks. The Turtles can only shake their fists in vain as they once again fail to stop their old enemy.

Returning to the Lair, the Turtles begin to argue amongst themselves as to which of them was responsible for Shredder getting away, something they never did the previous 130 times this same scenario played out, though given that he’s a competent villain now and not the ineffectual doofus from seasons two through seven I can see why they’d be rattled. Splinter intervenes, and just like in last year’s finale encourages his students to not worry about stopping his arch enemy. “We all live in what we radiate,” explains the team’s sensei. “Therefore, doing good should be your primary purpose. Because the good you do for others will come back to you in abundance.” The Turtles are perplexed by this, but intuitively understand that all will become clear soon enough – Splinter’s lessons, as we all know by now, invariably tie in to whatever predicament awaits in that day’s adventure.

At the Hall of Science, Krang uses the stolen energy to activate his new dimensional portal generator. After establishing a link back to Dimension X, he leaps through the portal to his home world alongside Shredder, Rocksteady and Bebop. The alarm systems in Donatello’s workshop alert the Turtles to the power surge, and the team begin trying to determine why their old foes would want to return to the Technodrome given that it’s now devoid of power.

Our heroes sneak into the empty Hall of Science and find the dimensional portal still active. The group are about to follow their enemies inside when they hear cries for help from nearby. In a holding cell is Gargon, a diminutive, scaly green alien who explains he was the victim of an experimental mutation carried out by Krang. Raphael is reluctant to free the captive mutant, reasoning that they should be focusing on stopping their enemies, but is reminded by Michaelangelo of Splinter’s earlier instruction that they focus on doing good above fighting evil. Gargon points out that he’s from Dimension X and can help the Turtles track down their enemies, and so the team free their new ally, agreeing to let him tag along. Arriving in Dimension X, they find themselves at a different location than expected thanks to a route scrambling function implemented by Krang, and face the prospect of being eaten by a dinosaur-like monster with huge fangs as act one ends.

The Turtles run up a hill to escape the monster, receiving no help from Gargon who cowers in a tree. The hill itself turns out to be an even bigger creature, and with some encouragement from the green teens soon awakes from its slumber to do battle with the smaller beast. With the two giants going at it, the Turtles are provided with a distraction, and able to continue their journey. Gargon informs them that he overheard Shredder and Krang discussing heading to the planet Balaraphon, “an arid desert world”.

As Gargon heads off to source a spaceship, the Turtles find themselves divided, unsure whether he should be treated with suspicion or given the benefit of the doubt. Leonardo again points out Splinter’s remarks that “the good you do returns in abundance”. Donatello jokes about the abundance of monsters they were forced to confront; for some reason Michaelangelo takes offence at this, assuming Donnie is “making fun of the sensei”.

For a single shot Donatello and Michaelangelo briefly resemble their pre-Red Sky selves in appearance as Gargon returns, explaining that he’s found a group willing to trade a spaceship for the weapons used by the Turtles. “They’re collectors of unusual armaments,” he adds, “and of course, your earthy weapons are incredibly rare here in Dimension X.” You’d think this would be the moment when the Turtles finally decide this guy is bullshitting them, given that they’ve been here multiple times and encountered enemies using equipment far more complex than swords, sais, a wooden staff or a grappling hook, but they continue to go along with this.

Gargon introduces the Turtles to The Wrecking Crew, a group of huge half-mechanical, half-organic aliens who look like they were designed by somebody who enjoys playing Smash T.V. while getting incredibly high. (Seriously, one is a half-man, half-tank... guy, another is an entirely different kind of tank-man, one’s a cyclops, still another some sort of rollerblade warrior... collectively these dudes must be the most bizarre unit to ever appear in the show.) The gang inform the Turtles that they’ll need to wager their ability to beat them in battle to be awarded a spaceship. Our heroes find themselves outmatched but begin using the equipment scattered around the Wrecking Crew’s hideout to defeat them; as per their agreement the Turtles quickly leave with Gargon in one of the ships belonging to the group.

We cut to the Technodrome, where Shredder and Krang say little of any importance. They’re greeted by good old General Traag, making his eleventh and final appearance here; a pretty good run for a guy who never got to do a whole lot beyond carry out the occasional order from his boss. He did a lot better than poor old Granitor, that’s for sure.

Aboard the spaceship the Turtles still can’t decide whether Gargon is trustworthy, with Michaelangelo insisting they give him the benefit of the doubt while Donnie and Raph wonder if his real intent is to get them killed. Enemy fire forces the ship to make a sudden landing, and the Turtles soon find themselves face-to-face with a unit of Rock Soldiers Warriors. The team are forced to run for cover as their ship is flattened during an attack by Krang’s army, who are advancing upon a village where innocent people are fleeing. Yet again, the Turtles find themselves unable to agree on whether to focus on their mission and head for the Technodrome or take time out to help the villagers, but remember Splinter’s words and ultimately decide to offer assistance. The green teens oust the troopers, hijacking their equipment and forcing them to retreat.

Taking one of the ships left in the battle, the Turtles and Gargon travel in the direction of an enormous pit, but soon wind up back on foot. Friction among the team has been increasing throughout the episode and worsens now, with Leonardo admonishing the others for constantly squabbling; the on-again, off-again tension between Leo and Raph that we’ve observed through the years during Turtlethon appears to be set to come to a head as the two prepare to throw down, but the team’s leader ultimately opts to relinquish his katana, declaring that Raphael “[isn’t] worth fighting”.

The group continue to argue as a purple, tentacled monster grabs each of them. Facing the prospect of being pulled into the nearby pit, the Turtles call for help from Gargon; the mutant begs for forgiveness as he backs away, unable – or perhaps more accurately, unwilling – to come to their aid. Soon the Technodrome rolls up, now rendered in an odd cream and baby blue colour scheme; from it emerges Shredder, at the controls of a new retro-mutagen cannon. The Turtles assume Shredder must be bluffing and won’t shoot, but if this season has taught us anything, it’s that the new Shreds never bluffs. He turns the cannon on Gargon, rewarding him for his duplicity by undoing his mutation and turning him back into... a lumpy yellow guy in a powder blue tunic? Honestly, it’s not much of an upgrade.

Gargon explains to the Turtles that this treachery was the only way he could become his old self, but has a sudden change of heart upon seeing that Shredder is seconds away from turning them back into ordinary pets. (It’s not entirely clear why, given that he’d been okay with putting them in grave danger this entire time.) He restrains Shreds long enough for the Turtles to break free of the tentacles and return to their hover vehicle; moments later the retro-mutagen cannon is destroyed, and the green teens hurl their old enemy into a vat of... some undefined substance. Whatever it is, it looks gross, I’ll say that much.

The Turtles are fed a story by Gargon about how when he saw them beat the Rock Warriors, he knew he couldn’t go through with Shredder’s plan. (If he’d had a change of heart that far back, why did he still refuse to help when the tentacle monster attacked?) After saying goodbye, he takes the hover tank back to his own world. Our heroes bypass Bebop and Rocksteady to escape back through the dimensional portal; moments later the Technodrome itself, already burdened by failing engines, is wrapped up in the tentacles of the unseen monster and pulled into the pit, landing upside-down.

Returning to the Lair, the Turtles reflect upon how Master Splinter’s teachings turned out to be correct, and doing good deeds ultimately allowed them to banish Shredder and Krang to Dimension X. They agree to not fight between themselves again, but it doesn’t take long before they start squabbling once more, this time over who gets control of the TV remote.

Season seven’s "Shredder Triumphant!” set a high bar as far as grand finales go, and given how much of the show as it was has been discarded since then it would be hard to outdo. “Turtle Trek” is restrained by comparison, but efforts are made here to give the team a sprawling, involved adventure to round things out. As alluded to earlier, we’ve seen the team visit Dimension X numerous times over the course of the series, but the hostility between them – I don’t think we’ve ever seen the Turtles this aggrieved among themselves, certainly not for this long – brings something new to the mix to prevent the story from feeling like a complete retread. We also get the big status quo altering shake-up we’ve come to expect at the end of each season, with Shredder and Krang arguably in an even worse position than they were before, now trapped in Dimension X within the powerless husk of the Technodrome. I don’t know if I’d say this is a great episode, but for long-time viewers of the show it’s certainly an interesting one.

Going into season eight I feared the worst, having never watched this year’s episodes from beginning to end and only having vague memories of the unpleasantness of seeing some of the Red Sky shows almost three decades ago to work off, all of which coloured my perceptions. To my astonishment, TMNT season eight is a solid body of work. You get the sense, watching these adventures, that the pressure placed upon everyone involved in the production has forced them to step up their game, and yet conversely with the casual viewers having long since left the building there’s also an air of freedom. The [animated] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of 1990 could never be what their 1994 counterparts are: they could never live in this world that is so unrelentingly wary of them, or brood to this degree, or get genuinely mad at each other because they have disagreements about how to fight evil – they have a reputation to uphold, and tins of pasta to sell! In season seven, we saw all of that begin to slip away. Now, as 1994 approaches its end, the Turtles are liberated from the trappings of being squeaky clean heroes whose adventures are primarily targeted at young boys; if anything, as we saw with the X-Men inspired HAVOC arc, the demographic the series is looking to win over demands of them this newfound maturity, something the new TMNT is ready and willing to offer. It’s a good thing.

And yet... part of me laments that the show has changed so much that it’s almost unrecognisable at this point; that what we’re watching isn’t the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of 1987-1993 but a distinct entity, one that hovers in its own creative orbit somewhere between the goofy cartoon that preceded it and the 4Kids Turtles still to come early in the next decade. Even now it continues to shed its remaining ties to the cartoon that many of us grew up on, with today’s adventure seeing further departures.

BIDDING THE BOYS GOODBYE

General Traag’s exit is notable, but it’s nothing compared to this: “Turtle Trek” marks the last appearance in the series of Rocksteady and Bebop. For eight years The Boys – Krang originally addressed them as such on one occasion a few seasons in, and at least around here it stuck – have been the comedic backbone of TMNT, their mishaps and failings genuinely funny even early on, when the Turtles themselves had a tendency to come across as one-dimensional. These two goofballs, paired with Shredder and Krang, comprised a sort of makeshift dysfunctional family unit that I suspect allowed the cartoon to maintain a degree of credibility with cynical older kids, teens and adults that it would otherwise have lacked.

Regrettably, the writing has been on the wall for Rocksteady and Bebop throughout season eight. No-one is allowed to be funny in TMNT anymore beyond the occasional quip, and our favourite mutant henchmen have largely been relegated to carrying out routine tasks for Shredder, afforded only the most mundane lines of dialogue along the way.

Shredder and Krang will be back – eventually – but the family dissolves here, neither of the two underlings seen again. It’s too bad that the retro-mutagen cannon was destroyed, as it would have provided a fitting explanation for their absence from this point on: Shredder’s willingness to turn Gargon back into his original form suggests that he would perhaps offer Rocksteady and Bebop the same way out and a chance to return to their old lives if that was something that they wanted (and given that by now he’s lost almost everything – and won’t be the show’s main villain moving forward – there's little point in them hanging around in the remnants of the Technodrome). I’d like to think that wherever they wind up after this, as mutants or as humans, things eventually turn out well for them. As we’ve discussed previously, free from Shredder’s influence The Boys were never truly evil, but simply misguided, and they remained that way to the end.

So that’s it. No more Wardrobe Updates, no more driving Shredder up the wall, no more run-ins with the Turtles. Don’t feel sad, we’ll always have the fission plant. Or was that the fishing plant?

The Summer of Red Sky will continue, but before we get to Carter, Dregg and everything else still to come, it’s time for us to briefly shift focus. Between seasons seven and eight we explored the first live-action TMNT movie; next time we’ll look at the metaphorical “difficult second album”, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.

#Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #TMNT #TMNT 1987 #1994 #Ninja Turtles #Turtle Trek #Turtlethon #Bebop And Rocksteady #Rocksteady TMNT #Bebop TMNT #Rocksteady and Bebop #Gargon D'Amouuuuur Rat-ta-ta-ta-tah #No but seriously though what was up with the rollerblade guy

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