What would a "Kai" cut of the show look like?

[neatoman]

In case you don't know what that means, it's a reference to Dragon Ball Kai, an official cut of Dragon Ball Z that removed most of the filler scenes in order to better resemble the manga. Similar fan cuts exist of the Original Dragon Ball and Naruto as well, though I can't remember many similar official projects. Keep in mind, it's not as simple as removing episodes that are unrelated the manga, it's literally going in and removing as many scenes added as is possible, making for episodes consisting of scenes taken from multiple episodes.

Let's keep in mind here that doing something like that for this show would be much more difficult, considering new stories are intertwined with the adaptations. Not to mention that it contains changes that can't really be reversed with editing, Shredder would have to be an Utrom no matter what, there just isn't enough material to make it seem as if he is just a human.

Tentatively, I think it would go something like this:

1. Things Change (largely unchanged)
2. A Better Mousetrap (largely unchanged)
3. Meet Casey Jones (largely unchanged)
4. Darkness on the Edge of Town / The Way of Invisibility
5. The King (largely unchanged)
6. Tales of Leo / The Monster Hunter
7. Return to New York 1/2/3
8. The Search for Splinter 1/2
9. Turtles in Space 1/2/3
10. Turtles in Space 3/4/5
11. Secret Origins 1/2/3
12. Fallen Angel / The Ultimate Ninja
13. What a Croc / Hunted
14. City at War 1/2
15. City at War part 3 (largely unchanged)
16. Rogue in the House 1/2
17. Return of the Justice Force (largely unchanged)
18. The Big Brawl 1/2
19. The Big Brawl 3/4
20. Space Invaders 1/2
21. Space Invaders 3 / Worlds collide 1
22. Worlds Collide 2/3
23. H.A.T.E / New Blood
24. Nobody's fool (largely unchanged)
25. The Christmas Aliens (largely unchanged)
26. Time Travails (largely unchanged)
27. Mission of Gravity / Hun on the Run
28. Reality Check / Across the Universe
29. The Real World part 1 (largely unchanged)
30. Same As It Never Was / The Real World Part 2
31. Exodus 1/2
32. Cousin Sid (largely unchanged)
33. The People's Choice (largely unchanged)
34. Sons of the Silent Age (largely unchanged)
35. I Monster (largely unchanged)
36. All Hallow's Thieves (largely unchanged)
37. Samurai Tourist / The Ancient One
38. Scion of the Shredder / Prodigal Son
39. Insane in the Membrane (largely unchanged)
40. The Return of Savanti part 1 (largely unchanged)
41. The Return of Savanti part 2 (largely unchanged)
42. Tale of Master Yoshi (largely unchanged)

Just to be clear, this is just tentative intuition, not careful observation, in practice it could turn out to be too unevenly paced or still be longer than it needs to. It could even turn out it's about the right amount of episodes, just not structured in the right way.

[CyberCubed]

There's hardly any true fillers in 2k3. You could cut both Garbageman episodes, arguably most of the Turtle Titan/Justice Force eps even though they still appear in important episodes (like the Triceraton invasion), and the Golden Puck episode. The Notes of the Underground mutant arc kinda ties into the origins of the layer and the Shredder/Utrom stuff, and has sequel eps, so I can't consider it filler. The Battle Nexus eps and its sequels are definitely not filler.

[neatoman]

That's the problem I was trying to get at. The show doesn't really have "filler" in the sense of "We need to add useless bullshit that seems unlikely to contradict future stories", but it does have fully original stories that don't really change the adaptation episodes that much and extra scenes in the adaptation episodes that seem to mostly just be there to extend the material. They're not impossible to remove but they can be reduced.

So to take four examples in the proposed list:

1. Tales of Leo and Monster Hunter are original stories but they're necessary to follow the rest of the plot. However, not every scene is necessary for that purpose, it should thus be possible to combine the necessary parts into one episode.
2. What a Croc and Hunted are both based on the same story, just split into two. With clever editing, it should be possible to recombine them into something more similar to the original story.
3. Turtles in Space is one long story based on the comic book plotline, but contains extra scenes like a failed prison break that could easily be cut.
4. H.A.T.E. is based on a comic story but has many clear filler scenes of April trying to placate Casey's mom. Thus, it may be combined with the original, but more important, episode New Blood.

[CyberCubed]

I mean at that point why bother, it's not like the eps themselves have padding like anime filler does. Combining two separate eps into one will feel awkward, as the plots will be rushed and won't flow organically into one another.

I think as a whole you could probably cut maybe 4-5 eps at most out of the first 4 seasons, but even that is pushing it. Some eps like "Lone Raph and Cub" is technically filler but introduces the mob and works as a nice breather ep between arcs.

[Jephael]

Editing out stuff is never a good idea, because eventually it'll upset some fan who liked a certain episode. I for one could care less about The Garbageman. He was a lame idea for a villain and I'm rather glad they decided not to do that episode where they would reveal that he was Hun's conjoined twin. But if I were to somehow find myself in charge of the full series release on DVD and/or Blu-Ray, I would keep those episodes in as I know somewhere out there is a fan or two who liked that character.

[Drose18]

The greatest justice we can do to this series by making cuts is dropping all the "1,2,3,4,TEENAGEMUTANTNINJATURTLES" bumpers that show before and after commercial breaks 3 times an episode.