The inclusion of Utroms, planned or a retcon?

[neatoman]

Right, so do you think the inclusion of the Utroms was planned or a retcon?

To me the answer is obvious, it's a retcon and a rather clunky one at that, the implementation of the Utroms is simply too sudden and inconsistent to be anything but a retcon. Up until Bishop shows up and explains the concept of what the Utroms are, we only ever see the species represented by and referred to as the Kraang. Anytime we got any clarification regarding their biology, homeworld or history it never mentioned anything about how they used to be different or how there are ones of their kind outside of their collective. The closest thing to foreshadowing is that when Raph ends up in the body of Kraang, the other Kraang are worried about his appearent lack of conformity. Of course, Sub-Prime is clearly an individual and that isn't presented as a problem, even if it seemed odd. Not even the episodes right before Bishop shows up bothers to us any hints. What's probably the most damning piece of evidence that it's just a retcon is the fact that we're given two contradictory explainations for what the Utroms are, with season 3 claiming they're Kraang who have detached themselves from the hivemind, but season 4 instead claiming the Kraang are Utroms forced into an unnatural hivemind. The Utroms and the Kraang can't both be the natural state of the species, that alone is evidence that something wasn't given the proper rewrite in time.

If this had been intended from the start, or even as late as halfway through the production of season 3, then there would have been some foreshadowing. Some Kraang failing to take orders for mysterious reasons, some Kraang unexpectedly helping the Turtles out, depiction of some Kraang forced to go through some procedure against their will, etc. There are so many better ways to introduce this concept than to have a character show up and explain the concept as it's being introduced.

[CyberCubed]

I'm pretty sure it was planned. It was made obvious early on the Kraang were a hive mind seemingly mind controlled by Kraang Prime. And since Ciro is also a big fan of the Mirage comics it always seemed obvious the Utroms would get introduced eventually.

[Coola Yagami]

Right, so do think the inclusion of the Utroms were planned or a retcon?

To me the answer is obvious, it's a retcon and a rather clunky one at that, the implementation of the Utroms is simply too sudden and inconsistent to be anything but a retcon. Up until Bishop shows up and explains the concept of what the Utroms are, we only ever see the species represented by and referred to as the Kraang. Anytime we got any clarification regarding their biology, homeworld or history it never mentioned anything about how they used to be different or how there are ones of their kind outside of their collective. The closest thing to foreshadowing is that when Raph ends up in the body of Kraang, the other Kraang are worried about his appearent lack of conformity. Of course, Sub-Prime is clearly an individual and that isn't presented as a problem, even if it seemed odd. Not even the episodes right before Bishop shows up bothers to us any hints. What's probably the most damning piece of evidence that it's just a retcon is the fact that we're given two contradictory explainations for what the Utroms are, with season 3 claiming they're Kraang who have detached themselves from the hivemind, but season 4 instead claiming the Kraang are Utroms forced into an unnatural hivemind. The Utroms and the Kraang can't both be the natural state of the species, that alone is evidence that something wasn't given the proper rewrite in time.

If this had been intended from the start, or even as late as halfway through the production of season 3, then there would have been some foreshadowing. Some Kraang failing to take orders for mysterious reasons, some Kraang unexpectedly helping the Turtles out, depiction of some Kraang forced to go through some procedure against their will, etc. There are so many better ways to introduce this concept than to have a character show up and explain the concept as it's being introduced.

Pretty much yeah, it was introduced way too late into the series for that to be a thing. Like the show could have ended after season 3 or whatever and we never would have known.

[sdp]

2012 basically retcons into Krang being an Utrom in all incarnations of TMNT, since Krang is jut one of the Kraang of 2012. IDW, Out of the Shadows, any media to ever have Krang will now just be an evil Utrom from the 2012 universe.

[neatoman]

I'm pretty sure it was planned. It was made obvious early on the Kraang were a hive mind seemingly mind controlled by Kraang Prime. And since Ciro is also a big fan of the Mirage comics it always seemed obvious the Utroms would get introduced eventually.

Well you, there is a difference between having a plan to do something and wanting/intending to do something, not that I'm convinced the latter is the case either.

Ignore for a second that you read Mirage/IDW or watched 4Kids and thus already knew what the Utroms are, what indication was there that something was wrong with the Kraang as they were for the first two and a half seasons? In what way and how often was it implied that the hivemind wasn't the natural state of the species? Given how prominent the Kraang were, it would have been very easy to show something was wrong with them several times over, that just wasn't the case.

If there was an actual plan in place, then the Utroms' existance would have been made clear earlier. Hell, what's even the point of naming the brainwashed faction the Kraang and act as if that's all they are, when you could just have called them the Utroms with the hivemind leader being named Kraang with the brainwashing being obvious from the start?

What we got can't really be called a plan. If I say "I want to be comic book artist" and then one day I draw a comic without practice, I haven't exactly planned for it. If I had a plan, I would have studied and practiced to get there, you see the difference?

2012 basically retcons into Krang being an Utrom in all incarnations of TMNT, since Krang is jut one of the Kraang of 2012. IDW, Out of the Shadows, any media to ever have Krang will now just be an evil Utrom from the 2012 universe.

The retcon really makes no sense. The only way you can justify what the 2012 cartoon shows and explains about it's multiverse, is if you assume it exists in some kind of mirror bubble. Like that the Fred Wolf Turtles we see in the 2012 show aren't really the Fred Wolf Turtles, but rather some kind of reflection/copy of them.

[sdp]

It was really poorly done because doesn't the 2012 show imply that in the multiverse of turtles there is only 1 Dimension X? It's clear that we have more than one Dimension X since it's portrayed so different in the different Universes. In Archie it's an actual Galaxy in that universe if i remember correctly.

What's probably the most damning piece of evidence that it's just a retcon is the fact that we're given two contradictory explainations for what the Utroms are, with season 3 claiming they're Kraang who have detached themselves from the hivemind, but season 4 instead claiming the Kraang are Utroms forced into an unnatural hivemind.

Perhaps a way to fix this error would be to say that Utroms in the hive mind are Kraang but if they detach themselves from the hivemind they're utroms again?

[CyberCubed]

Pretty much yeah, it was introduced way too late into the series for that to be a thing. Like the show could have ended after season 3 or whatever and we never would have known.

They knew they were getting 5 seasons. Many shows do things that are not apparent in early seasons that become so later on in a show.

If you told people when the 4kids Season 1 was airing that Shredder was an Utrom they would have laughed. And yet according to PL and the writers they knew Shredder would be an Utrom from day 1.

[neatoman]

If you told people when the 4kids Season 1 was airing that Shredder was an Utrom they would have laughed. And yet according to PL and the writers they knew Shredder would be an Utrom from day 1.

Except it is pretty obvious that he was an Utrom in season 1, unlike the "Kraang are brainwashed Utroms" twist there is a ton of foreshadowing.


His entire arc throughout season 1 is to find some enemies hiding somewhere in the city, to the point where he even comissions underground excavations to find them, implying there is something odd about them.
The proof that these enemies is in the city is a humaoid robot looking thing, made of technology unfamiliar to Baxter.
He is the only one who is able to use the Sword of Tengu without the use of a special guantlet or getting burned, implying his hand isn't made of flesh.
He is able to survive death scenarios completely unharmed twice, even though his head was chopped off the second time.
He explicitly makes the claim that he is hundreds of years old.
When it is finally revealed in full what the enemies of the Shredder are at the end of season 1, little alien creatures who fake being human by piloting androids, it matches several hints towards the Shredder's own true nature.


This is plenty of foreshadowing and the viewer would be very likely to figure it out when the Utroms were finally shown. Which makes me wonder, were the people you talked with about the show back in the day just really stupid or had they for some reason never come across foreshadowed plot twists before?

[CyberCubed]

This is plenty of foreshadowing and the viewer would be very likely to figure it out when the Utroms were finally shown. Which makes me wonder, were the people you talked with about the show back in the day just really stupid or had they for some reason never come across foreshadowed plot twists before?

From what I remember most people didn't think Shredder was an Utrom himself but that he had some connection with them. You can see for yourself in the 4kids section, all the old review threads and speculation threads from 2003-2004 are still there from when Season 1 and early Season 2 originally aired. You can see what people were thinking/saying back then through the archives.

[sdp]

I remember people saying 2k3 Shredder was a dragon because in one of the video games he became a dragon after you defeated him.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

While I do think it's a bit of a stretch to say that the Utroms weren't planned in the 2012 series initially, I do agree that their introduction is rather abrupt and we never get to see them really fleshed out (for example, seeing the history between Bishop and Kraang Subprime which was briefly mentioned in one episode). I think the reason as to why they got shafted the way they did is because the writers decided to give the Foot Clan story more prominence, when I personally think it should've been the other way around because the Kraang were a universal threat while the Foot Clan was only a threat to New York.

[Andrew NDB]

I think the reason as to why they got shafted the way they did is because the writers decided to give the Foot Clan story more prominence, when I personally think it should've been the other way around because the Kraang were a universal threat while the Foot Clan was only a threat to New York.

It sounds like the latter half of the show was largely dictated by sticky notes from Nick and/or Playmates, to my understanding.

[neatoman]

It sounds like the latter half of the show was largely dictated by sticky notes from Nick and/or Playmates, to my understanding.

Latter half as in after season two or as in half of the stuff? Because I could believe either.

The early concept art I've seen didn't seem to imply the show would be quite as heavy on certain elements that were put into the forefront in the actual show, but it's kind of hard to tell if that's the case. And just to be clear here, I'm not exactly thinking about the Fred Wolf elements here, but rather certain concepts that were all over the show from the start but didn't quite seem to mix that well with everything else.

But after season 2 is also when we get a perfect replica of the Fred Wolf Turtle Van, original characters really start to take a backseat to the Fred Wolf characters, season 5 airs completely out of order and the ended on a second pointless crossover with the Fred Wolf show. But it's not like this sort of thing wasn't all over the show from the start, it just seemed more agressive after season 2.

[Andrew NDB]

Latter half as in after season two or as in half of the stuff? Because I could believe either.

I just remember him saying that as the show went on, he had to write a lot of "extra" episodes that he figured wouldn't get used, hoping that Nick/Viacom would choose at least SOME of the episodes he cared about for the later seasons to be made. That doesn't really denote "an overall plan," or at least one that was fostered by TPTB.

[sdp]

Don't forget to blame the fans with their obnoxious questions "When will _________ appear on the show?" Replacing _____ with any character or event from the 1987 show at every SDCC, interviews from websites (big and small), twitter etc every single day. I'm sure eventually "you want Rocksteady and Beebop, fine, you want "Cowabunga" fine. Without someone as stubborn as Laird to say no they all went in. Also it's perhaps good for everyone if Playmates and Viacom interfered or else Ciro would've just made even more god damn horror "tribute" episodes in the show .

But these things are off topic, we should get back to Utroms. I'm glad they retconned it personally since I like knowing that the Kraang and basically every future version of Krang in any media is now an Utrom as well. So OOTS had utroms, the 87 show had an Utrom, the video games always had Utroms etc.

[CyberCubed]

Getting back to the original question, I'm pretty sure the Utroms were always going to be introduced even if they weren't foreshadowed as well. If someone were to ask Ciro he probably would have said they were planned from the start. I mean it's no different than the Triceratons who didn't appear till Season 4 but it's likely they were always going to be brought in.

[neatoman]

Well, obviously there was no actual plan in place for this show. The list of hints towards the Utrom Shredder's true nature in the 4Kids show I posted covers about 35 episodes, which is quite extensive. Compare that to how the backstory of the Utroms is given contradictory explainations within 10 episodes, it almost comes across like there wasn't ever even a plan for the next 5 episodes, let alone across a single season.

Which wouldn't surprise me in the least, I tried to watch all of the show in a single marathon and it never once felt like a cohesive whole, just a bunch of stuff thrown at the wall to see what stuck from start to finish.

[The Great Saiyaman]

No it was planned, the way The Kraang were presented as being a covert alien invasion is straight out of the Mirage comics. Heck the Kraang bots themselves look similar.
https://i2.wp.com/toy-wizards.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/screen-shot-2019-10-04-at-6.38.17-pm.png?resize=723%2C414&ssl=1
As for 1987 Krang being an Utrom, even back when the 1987 series aired, people were saying "That's an Utrom if ever I saw one!"

It's too bad that we never got an episode where Kraang Prime, 1987 Krang and Knight are seen taking over the Utrom race and turning them into hive minds.

They could have turned it into a special with a lot of Easter eggs to Star wars "Revenge of the Sith."

[neatoman]

No it was planned, the way The Kraang were presented as being a covert alien invasion is straight out of the Mirage comics. Heck the Kraang bots themselves look similar.
https://i2.wp.com/toy-wizards.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/screen-shot-2019-10-04-at-6.38.17-pm.png?resize=723%2C414&ssl=1
As for 1987 Krang being an Utrom, even back when the 1987 series aired, people were saying "That's an Utrom if ever I saw one!"

It's too bad that we never got an episode where Kraang Prime, 1987 Krang and Knight are seen taking over the Utrom race and turning them into hive minds.

They could have turned it into a special with a lot of Easter eggs to Star wars "Revenge of the Sith."

The difference here is that the audience has no reason to suspect the Kraang are anything other than evil invading aliens, as everything they are shown doing for the first 70+ episodes before the introduction of the Utroms is unambgiously presented as evil. In the comic however, nothing they were doing is actually declared to be evil. Here's a little list of what they actually did before they ever got the chance to explain themselves:

Treat Splinter's wounds.
Have lunch.
Put Splinter in a healing tube.
Try to reason with the intruders (The Turtles), only bringing low powered weapons a precaution.
Warn the Turtles not to go into some teleportation chamber.


Nothing about this is this is explicitly evil, most of it seems reasonable if not outright good. The only reason we are meant to think they're evil is that it's not clear what they want to do and because what they are doing seems a bit creepy without context. This is quite different from how the Kraang literally transform all of New York into mutant slave labour.