Why are the seasons 3 and 4 of the FW series so huge?

[cammy85]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Wow I had never realised season 6 had the fewest episodes with Shredder and Krang. Only 6 out of 17, really?

Season 7 is great. I don't include Europe in it. Those episodes were made during season 4. But for some odd reason, they only aired 3 years later.

Season 4 and 5 are the most sanitized seasons of the series. Michelangelo's nunchuks get faded out and replaced by the grappling hook and the show becomes a little too self-aware and society starts to become way too accepting of the Turtles.

Season 6 is from 1992... perhaps the action slowly returned due to falling ratings? That was the year when Turtlemania was starting to cool off, wasn't it? 1991 was still pretty hot due to SOTO. There was no movie in 1992. In 1993, the 3rd film came out, and it wasn't very liked.

Then in 1994, the Red Sky seasons begin. Clearly, the show was trying to regain some of its popularity again.

7 out of 16, actually. Despite what episode guides say, "Leonardo Is Missing" and "Rock Around the Block" aired together in the same hour block, since the Technodrome was still in the Arctic in both episodes.

Makes sense about the Europe episodes. Having them in Season 4 would've JUST had the episode count under 65.

Seasons 4 and 6 make sense there. I was still a fan despite the shortcomings in storytelling and lesser villains.

After slow amping up the action, it took a huge jump during Red Sky and the episode count dropped even more, and it became serialized. It made sense, but it sucked if your only chance to see those episodes was during the "repeat lull".

[Prowler]

Funny thing about the Red Sky seasons is, despite the darker and more serious tone, the action became full Sci-fi. The Turtles did not really use their ninja weapons much during those final seasons, from what I remember.

The show lost its identity. At that point it didn't feel like NINJA Turtles anymore exactly.

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Funny thing about the Red Sky seasons is, despite the darker and more serious tone, the action became full Sci-fi. The Turtles did not really use their ninja weapons much during those final seasons, from what I remember.

The show lost its identity. At that point it didn't feel like NINJA Turtles anymore exactly.

Didn't they stop "really" using their weapons pretty early on though? Season 4 literally got rid of the nunchucks and they never came back, meaning Mike is without a real weapon for 128 episodes, exactly two thirds of the entire show.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by neatoman

Didn't they stop "really" using their weapons pretty early on though? Season 4 literally got rid of the nunchucks and they never came back, meaning Mike is without a real weapon for 128 episodes, exactly two thirds of the entire show.

Yes but in season 7 they went back to using their weapons. Not as much as they did in season 1, but they weren't defeating enemies by throwing pizzas at them and kicking barrels into them anymore.

It wasn't blatant at the time, but the show was starting to get a bit more serious again by then. You can even hear a but of Red Sky BGM at times during season 7.