For how long did Shredder have the Technodrome?

[neatoman]

There's a lot of things wrong with David Wise's writing, one of them keeping a logical timeline.

As an example of this, how long did Shredder have the Technodrome? The show clearly states that he used mutagen from the Technodrome to transform the turtles, who by the time the series actually start are skilled enough win fights in which they are outnumbered and outgunned.

The problem here is that Shredder explicitly wants to take over the world using the giant wheeled golfball but for whatever reason hasn't done so yet. Either him getting the Technodrome, mutating the Turtles and their training happened in very rapid succession (about a few days or so). Or he has had the Technodrome for years and simply never made a real move until the start of the series.

And there really isn't much of a logical balance here either, it still falls apart if we try to say it happen in about six months or so, because that's still ample time to take over the world and not enough to learn advanced martial arts.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

Why Shredder didn't take over the world using the technodrome immediately, I would say is because Krang was the real one in control and making all the decisions.

His intention was to have his rock soldiers over from Dimension X first, so that they could help him conquer/destroy the planet.

As for the question of the thread, there is no definitive answer but I did get the impression that Shredder had only recently gotten access to the technodrome and mutated the turtles/Splinter.

For one, the turtles mutate directly into teenagers in the cartoon so there couldn't have been too much of a passage of time.

Secondly, the turtles managing to beat the robotic foot soldiers and punks is not that impressive since we know that both are pretty incompetent in the show, so the turtles could've been only been trained for a short amount of time.

Lastly, episode 1 starts with the news of Ninja robberies having just been spotted within the city and startling everyone, even though crime was a day to day fact of life.
Shredder couldn't have had the technodrome for that long if the foot soldiers only just began to pop in the news.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by FredWolfLeonardo

For one, the turtles mutate directly into teenagers in the cartoon so there couldn't have been too much of a passage of time.

That was just flashback scenes, demonstrating the mutagen. Also, Back to the Egg and Adventures in Turtle Sitting show how they were when being around 4.

[Utrommaniac]

Turtles: It's Shredder's Technodrome!

Krang; made the Technodrome, controls the Technodrome, commands the Technodrome, commands Shredder in the Technodrome, knows everything about the Technodrome:



Shredder never "had" the Technodrome, he just lives there and occasionally takes the wheel. As for the topic at hand, we might have to go back even further to when Saki dishonored Yoshi. Which from the way Splinter describes it, sounds like had been a good several years.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by Utrommaniac

Turtles: It's Shredder's Technodrome

The turtles didn't even know Krang when first visiting the Technodrome. Not even Michelangelo.

[Utrommaniac]

They were calling it that after they became aware of that, though.

[sdp]

A lot of missed opportunities of what they could've done with the Technodrome, explaining how krang/shredder met etc. Maybe an IDW comic based off the OT can build on these ideas.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by sdp

A lot of missed opportunities of what they could've done with the Technodrome, explaining how krang/shredder met etc. Maybe an IDW comic based off the OT can build on these ideas.

Meanwhile, we have two fanfiction stories on this website, The Shredder is Born and The Exile of Krang. And the 2010's Fred Wolf–Nickelodeon crossovers...

[pferreira]

Originally Posted by Utrommaniac

Shredder never "had" the Technodrome, he just lives there and occasionally takes the wheel.

THIS! It's Krang's technology and the only reason Krang allowed Shredder access was because he supplied an army of soldiers to slowly take over the city. Throughout the whole of the first season it's clear that Shredder doesn't trust Krang, which is why Krang spends so much time begging for his robot body to be built. In fact Krang even helps Mikey escape at one point to get Shredder to fail and provide Krang another excuse as to why he should build Krang the suit. Sorry neatoman, this can be explained.

Originally Posted by neatoman

Another thing you could add to the list is:
Why did Krang get a ninja/warlord to build a an android body, rather than an engineer?

Why not? Shredder proved himself over the course of the show to have technical understanding of Krang's inventions so it would make sense to employee your closest ally. Baxter sure wasn't any help.

Originally Posted by Original TMNT Cartoon Fan

Another issue: how did the Technodrome, with Krang inside, end up on Earth, and where did it end up? Did it just pop up in the same underground caverns beneath Manhattan where it was during season 1?

Why not the caverns? It obviously came through the interdimensional portal.

[Leo656]

So I am to believe that Shredder had a surveyor down there, with a compass and graph paper and a yardstick and whatnot, mapping things out to make sure that everything was just right before Krang zapped himself and the Technodrome over from Dimension X? Is that right?

Nah, I don't buy it. I mean, there's other explanations, such as it was built slowly over a period of years, but frankly, they're all kinda crap. I really don't understand why people insist on trying to apply logic to a show that clearly wasn't concerned with that, and didn't want anyone watching it to be, either.

You're NOT supposed to think too hard when watching the FW cartoon. I get that it's fun to toss ideas around and whatnot, but seriously. Some of these conversations are silly. Each and every one of you has already applied 1000% more thought and energy into this stuff than they did when they were writing it. Why bother? They got paid to write the stuff, are y'all getting paid to fill in the plotholes? C'mon.

Not trying to be mean, just... jeez. "How'd the Technodrome get there?" "A f*cking wizard did it, same as everything." End of story.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

Originally Posted by Leo656

So I am to believe that Shredder had a surveyor down there, with a compass and graph paper and a yardstick and whatnot, mapping things out to make sure that everything was just right before Krang zapped himself and the Technodrome over from Dimension X? Is that right?

Krang didn't "zap himself and his technodrome" to earth, he was banished there.

And it is likely that he and Shredder met after he was already on earth, since there is no indication that Shredder had access to dimensional travel prior to meeting Krang.

[Leo656]

I like to imagine that they met at a particularly colorful Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They probably had the same sponsor.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by FredWolfLeonardo

Krang didn't "zap himself and his technodrome" to earth, he was banished there.

And it is likely that he and Shredder met after he was already on earth, since there is no indication that Shredder had access to dimensional travel prior to meeting Krang.

What if Krang left Dimension X in the Technodrome on his own, right after the decision to banish him had been taken?

Shredder didn't have access to portals until Hot Rodding Teenagers from Dimension X.

[pferreira]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Nah, I don't buy it. I mean, there's other explanations, such as it was built slowly over a period of years, but frankly, they're all kinda crap. I really don't understand why people insist on trying to apply logic to a show that clearly wasn't concerned with that, and didn't want anyone watching it to be, either.

It would be dishonest to say the writers didn't think of some of these plot points. No writer goes to write a script with the intention of delivering one plot hole after another. If there's some logic intended for the series I'm not going to sit back and say "who cares" like a neatoman.

Originally Posted by Xav

What army of soldiers did he supply Krang with? All the Foot Soldiers were made in the Technodrome and outside of Bebop and Rocksteady the gang working for him all disappeared.

From what I understood the original foot soldiers were humans trained by Shredder. After a short while and some trust from Krang he got robot ones, which was a good call considering the speed the TMNT went through them. Hope that clears things up.

Originally Posted by neatoman

Also, if Krang was banished, why let him keep the Technodrome in the first place?

Are you talking about why Krang has the Technodrome? He stole it.

Originally Posted by Utrommaniac

Now that you mention it, it is pretty funny how he was exiled and immediately said "lol fvck that, easy to get back when I have the stuff."

Krang is a warlord so he'd want to show power through conquer before returning back.

Originally Posted by Original TMNT Cartoon Fan

If the Technodrome was full-powered all the time, every episode (at least with Krang and Shredder) would have been like a series finale (large-scale invasion).

Now THAT is a true plot contrivance.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by pferreira

It would be dishonest to say the writers didn't think of some of these plot points. No writer goes to write a script with the intention of delivering one plot hole after another. If there's some logic intended for the series I'm not going to sit back and say "who cares" like a neatoman.
.

But they DIDN'T think of it. Just like the people writing the He-Man cartoon didn't bother to think of any explanation for where Snake Mountain came from, or why Skeletor hung out there in the first place. Where'd Filmation Skeletor even come from, originally? Never explained. Or like how the people writing Filmation's Ghostbusters cartoon never bothered explaining WHY the car could talk, or travel through time, or why the entire Hauntquarters was full of ghosts and spooky sh*t and the guys don't bat an eye. Or why the other Thundercats bother listening to Lion-O when he's clearly incompetent. Where'd they find the resources to build the Cat's Lair and that tank, anyways? What, all five of them are f*cking engineers, now? It's implied that Panthro did most or all of it himself, but how much goddamn sense does that make? None! And so on and so on and so on. Pick any popular cartoon of the 80s, there's TONS of unexplained backstory and tons of lapses in logic as well.

The answers to ALL of this - and the question about the Technodrome's origins in the Fred Wolf cartoon - are the same exact answer: "Dude, we wrote it for 5-year olds; we knew nobody watching it was going to ask those questions, so we didn't bother coming up with answers to a question nobody was realistically going to ask." If you do the research, some of the writers of various popular cartoons of that era are on record saying more or less exactly that.

It's not an indictment of any of those shows, it's simply a statement of fact: They weren't creating "high art", they NEVER expected people to still be talking about and over-analyzing these children's cartoons three or four decades later, they were creating a children's product and under an obligation to churn out dozens of scripts in as little time as humanly possible. "Don't think: WRITE" was the order of the day. That's why the shows themselves, while thoroughly entertaining, are also thoroughly inconsistent with regards to their own internal lore and logic. No, they weren't "trying to create plot holes"; but "plot holes" weren't even a THING in TV back then. The idea of ANY television show remaining internally consistent for its entire run is a relatively new, mid-1990s phenomenon; before that, most shows - even live-action ones aimed at adults, like most of the popular sitcoms of the era - were completely made up on the fly, resulting in characters' entire backstories being different, completely different personalities for the same character depending on what episode you were watching, a character having an entirely different job or even last name than the one they had two episodes previously... it was a mess. But nobody cared! You HAVE to remember that people didn't take TV so seriously a couple of decades ago, and that literally everything was being made up with no regard at all to what happened last week, or what kind of questions these inconsistencies might raise.

People simply didn't watch TV back then to think, especially not kids' cartoons. The writers never came up with any explanation for the Technodrome because they quite reasonably and realistically assumed that their target audience wasn't going to care one bit. Frankly, I don't think it hurt anyone's enjoyment of the show, so they were correct. It would have been NICE to get some kind of explanation, but they were right in assuming that no explanation was ultimately necessary. What first-grade kid was gonna care?

That's not reductive in any way, it's a simple matter of priority and knowing who the audience is.

[Xav]

Originally Posted by pferreira

THIS! It's Krang's technology and the only reason Krang allowed Shredder access was because he supplied an army of soldiers to slowly take over the city.

What army of soldiers did he supply Krang with? All the Foot Soldiers were made in the Technodrome and outside of Bebop and Rocksteady the gang working for him all disappeared.

[neatoman]

Also, if Krang was banished, why let him keep the Technodrome in the first place?