Sci-fi in the old toon more accepted than other universes?
 

In the comic section everyone generally states how they're not too fond of the sci-fi adventures, and merely, "tolerate" them.

Yet in the original cartoon, about 90% of the plots are based on sci-fi and many of them episodes have to do with aliens or robots. And the old toon is generally popular with these same people.

So why is sci-fi better accepted for the OT, but not so much for the comics?

Probably has to do with the difference of tone between the two canons.

I watched both series and I personally don't mind the sci-fi episodes. But I never really cared for the fast forward episodes. Not because of the sci-fi they just whernt very good.

For me it's in part about the attitude of things. The OT sci-fi content was very b-movie, goofy crazy creepy characters created of odd circumstance, often so far-fetched even for sci-fi that you can't help but love them. Plus, they were quite varied in appearance and behavior. The comic sci-fi stuff for the most part always felt very cookie cutter to me, no more different than most material of the same genre. Very star wars/trek esque. And yes, like Sherlock said, tone has something to do with it as well. Putting the strangeness of the TMNT themselves aside, the comic usually dealt with real world scenarios (I'm counting paranormal/spiritual stories in that as many believe in the stuff). So when those fellas went into outer space and everything, it felt less grounded/realistic for me. Vol 4. Space travel and even parts of the first saga in Vol. 1 kinda bored me. The OT however, was anything goes. Everything was so wacky you could eat anything they fed you without question.

Well, I think you're generalizing. I'm a fan of Fugitoid and the Triceratons - I found that arc in Volume 1 extremely engaging, and Zog was a great character in RtNY. Some of the issues with Renee got a little out of hand, but I did like some of them.

Who says that? I love sci-fi adventures in the comics and love the revolving genres the Mirage material always allowed for.

I just like that the "core" stories that things always swing back to remain the urban, gritty fare. But if things were just always nonstop urban, gritty fare, that wouldn't have nearly the same appeal.

Well, the short answer is that the OT was mostly nonsense that never held up to any sound-minded level of scrutiny and, as such, compacting one more layer of nonsense to things couldn't ever really make much of a quantifiable difference in the grand scheme of things.

From what I've been reading in the comic sections for years, the sci-fi adventures of the Mirage run tend to be peoples least favorite. Of course its different for everyone, but it seems to be a general trend I notice. Perhaps someone should make a poll over there.

I agree that I don't want Turtles to be just urban street violence. I need some aliens, robots and mutants in the mix. I think people are mainly talking about when the Turtles go into outer space, not so much aliens being on Earth.

In other words the OT never took itself seriously, so people didn't mind the bizarre and wacky plots since they enjoyed them. I think the fact that one of the antagonists was an alien, (Krang), and most of the episodes had a theme surrounding 50's B-movie sci-fi plots is the craziness people expected of it.

I think what you may or may not be talking about is the general reception of Laird's volume 4.

You see, where previous volumes seemed to more or less remember to ground the sci-fi/fantasy stuff with the "core" urban, gritty fare, volume 4 was nonstop sci-fi with none of the urban, gritty fare.

So just like I think that the core urban, gritty fare wouldn't be nearly as appealing without the ventures into the sci-fi and fantasy genres, solid sci-fi fare without remembering the necessary urban, gritty core base... the bottom similarly falls out.

I think for me, the sci-fi plots that were random were the ones I cared for the least. In the beginning, a lot of the aliens and things were explains and/or had some sort of a connection to Krang or Dimension X, which I was okay with. But once aliens started showing up out of the blue like the Polarizoids in Season 3 and lot of Season 5 (I think), it was getting a bit old and just made the concept of aliens and odd creatures feel less genuine and special. It's no longer a big deal to have a visitor from another planet because it's a regular occurrence. It's like how mutants just started randomly coming out of the woodwork. Suddenly the "rare mutigen" from season 1 is no longer rare anymore.

1. There weren't that many mutants introduced later on. The only ones I can think of were Mutagen Man, Muckman/Joe eyeball who we saw got mutated by Shredder/Krang experimenting with new mutagen.

Groundchuck/Dirtbag who were very popular came in the same season, and then later on Rahzar/Tokka.

Aside from Titanus' batch of mutants, who he mutated WITHOUT the use of mutagen, there were never many mutants running around in the OT. Likewise I enjoyed them all so I don't see the problem.

2. Alien visitors are not too out there. The Polarisoid was basically a tourist who didn't think earthlings would be afraid of him. Other aliens usually all came from Dimension X, like the Galaxians from Season 8, Triceratons, Convicts from Dimension X, etc.

A lot of aliens come from other planets (like te turtles from the Palnet of the Turtles and the Palnet of the Turtleoids, the aliens in "Ninja Sword of Nowhere", "Artless" and "Invasion of the Turtle Snatchers").

I kinda view the difference between the OT series and the mirage comics to be the same as that of Disney fairytales and the original Grimm folklore. The OT and Disney movies were designed for kids, so wacky elements were more accepted, whereas the Mirage comics and Grimm folklore were darker,more serious and often tragic.

Since most of the cast/crew were fans of Star Trek and 1950s Sci-Fi movies, it shows throughout the series. Sci-fi can be more educational than simply having violence, which is why it was targeted at a G-rated audience. There was a thread awhile back that described what we learned as a kid by watching this series.

In other canons, sci-fi can still be effective where it is used. There are plenty of moments in the 4kids series, particularly in Fast Forward which gave us all-new sci-fi plots. However, this really drew criticism from having an abrupt shift of the tone of the first five seasons of that show, which I think is unfair as it is just an attempt to refresh that series; which unfortunately was killed by critics like us. There are also plenty of shades of it in the movies/comics (mutagen is the most famous example of sci-fi in the franchise and is universally understood in terms of how the turtles came to be). You also have Baxter Stockman in many versions, too. It's just that the most frequent sci-fi examples show up in the OT, the Technodrome being the primary driver to all things sci-fi.

Not having sci-fi in TMNT instantly cuts Donatello's role in half.

Science fiction
 

What is the concept of a mutagen creating four talking turtles and one if not...

science fiction.

Yeah this pretty much hits it on the head. Definitely the context. I kind of think of the comics as being in the same tone as Batman/Daredevil/Punisher where you have very real situations that could happen and real threats, so straying from that to a heavy Sci-Fi story kind of takes you out of that real, grounded setting.

Strength
 

TMNT's strength is how it can cover so many topics. In one episode, they will fight ordinary human street gangs in New York City, in another they fight inter-galactic villains from strange planets who threat to finnish of the Earth.

Exactly! They can face Shredder on Monday, Rat King on Tuesday, Slash on Wednesday, Big Louie on Thursday, Agent Bishop on Friday, and Prime LEader Zandramon on Saturday.

I thought that science fiction can not be out of place in the 2003 series or in the Volume 4 TMNT series either. Perhaps its the level of explainability that is different. One thing that did annoy me was in "Michelangelo's Birthday" a chemical only works when three people of the smae speices are together and moth balls cure their state. It actually made '87 Don's statement about all it takes is a little science mixed with a great deal of hope and imagination valid. There are some wacky sic-fi concept like Battle Nexus and merged beings and aliens battling with a political position(an actual Miarge comic) so its just different levels of it depending on the overall tone for a series or really a given season. I would say with my '87 series example it started a little into season 3 and lasted through 6 explainations like that could happen then and before then more thought out maybes. Just an opinion.

It would be pretty tough to be a fan of volume one if you don't like the sci-fi stories. That pretty much just leaves them the first three issues, then a huge gap until they get to Shredder's return (okay not quite, but it leaves a huge gap in the story).

The sci-fi element has pretty much been there since the beginning. I think maybe people didn't like all of the aliens in volume 4. I thought it was a neat idea to have the aliens reveal themselves in volume 4. It's a game changer and it shook things up. My problem with volume 4 is that the story arcs really seemed to drag on and on. That could also be because of the long delays, too.

2003
 

Didn't the 2003 cartoon had a time travel season?...

Yes, Fastfoward (season 6). It depicted the great grandson of Casey and April Jones viewing the past 2006(at the time) in the year 2015. He accidently instead of viewing it sucked the TMNT and Splinter through the time portal and did not know how to reverse it. Thus, the TMNT spend an entire 26 episode season in NYC of the year 2105. The thing that seems odd was Cody could not send them back right when they were taken instead of just shy of a year after they were plucked from the timestream. That didn't make much sense to me.

Science fiction
 

I know what. It was just an answer against saying science fiction was not important. Maybe the 1987 cartoon is more based on older science fiction plots (1950's and 60's), which is what most people think of as science fiction.

Writing TMNT fan fiction is so easy with varifying stories. Some people like down to earth stories about family relations and small town life. They can write it, while other like up to Dimension X science fiction stories.