Carter, the forgotten sidekick
 

I think we can all agree that Carter is far from being one of the most recognizable characters not only in the whole TMNT franchise but also from the OT. For one thing, he only debuted in season 9 alongside Dregg, so by that point the ratings had dropped quite significantly and most of the people who had been watching the show since the first seasons had gotten tired of it.

Even among TMNT fans, I notice that no one really cares about Carter. I've seen Cody and Zach fans around, but never seen a single Carter fan. I mean, is there even anyone in here using a Carter avatar and/or signature? Whatever.

I personally have never been a Carter fan either but I certainly didn't hate him. He was a useful ally to fight off Dregg, especially since every other human on Earth except April was against the Turtles due to Dregg's propaganda. But then again, he was kinda uninteresting. His attitude was a bit of a turn off sometimes. We already had a hothead in the group(Raphael), there was no need for another

One thing I've always wondered was what ever happened to Carter? Last time we saw him was when Landor and Merrick took him to the future to try and fix his mutation problem. Do you think there's any chance of him ever coming back in the future? Would you be interested to see him return?

The OT had tons of loose ends and even though this was durnig the red sky era, it still was never explained. I can speak for a lot if not most of the members here in the fact that we do not care for Carter as a character he was annoying.

Well, to be fair, the show ended shortly after Carter's last appearance. Maybe if it had gotten one more season or two he would have returned. Who knows. Although, season 10 does feel like the last season and I doubt the writers didn't know it was the last one right from the beginning.

How was that a loose end? He went to the future to find his cure. The show ended 3 episodes later.

Even if the show got a Season 11, I never expected to see him again. He was written out.

personally never minded carter that much, he reminds me of Keno in Movie 2. He is just an extra character to me. and as far as him being a loose end, he is no more a loose end then any other Character. who knows what happened to any of the OT characters

I think what Prowler was saying is how come he never came back from the future.

I accepted Carter by repeatedly telling myself "at least it's not Zach, the fifth turtle".

Still its a missed opportunity not using Casey in the same role, just without the mutation power.

Casey wouldn't have worked in the Carter role...

He's not horrible, but he just never really seemed to fit to me. He's just there, akwardly.

The only thing that really made Carter special was his mutation. Take that away and I could have imagined Casey being handled almost the same way in those episodes. They would just have to be written a little differently since I doubt anyone wanted to see Casey mutate into a yellow beast with a mohawk.

Carter also was a scientist who was helping Donatello stabilize their mutations.

Casey couldn't do that....

I just really liked Casey in Season 8 and wish he was a major character in Seasons 9 and 10.

Unfortunately i think OT casey is too much of a crazy one minded brute. If he was more like movie Casey then I think he could have worked with a bit of rewriting.

This. As written in previous episodes, Casey in every episode would wear very thin....

Actually, I may be in the minority, but I liked Carter. He was interesting, and not just because of his mutation. He was smart, he had already been studying martial arts, and he was one of the few people who treated the turtles as friends. His mutation was pretty cool, too, especially once he learned to control it. The Channel Six crew had already been written out, so who was left besides April? Casey would never have worked for any of those episodes. Of all their "sidekicks" in that series, Carter was the most normal and fun. He was certainly an improvement over Zach, who I always thought was horribly annoying. And yeah, I agree that he reminds me of Keno from SOTO.

I think Carter suffers from the same issue Venus does: shoehorned in to the core group without any real reason for it.

I think with Carter his personality/character was... forgettable. His character didn't really contribute to anything into the dynamics or growth of the Turtles. With Zach, despite his sometimes annoying over-the-top fanboy behavior what made him memorable was that despite him being a helpless 14 year old boy, he still had a few ways of helping the Turtles with his gadgets ("The Fifth Turtle") and could reveal the Turtles' weaknesses (as Splinter pointed out when Zach discovered their lair in "The Fifth Turtle"). In "Zach and the Alien Invaders", the issue of Zach's overactive imagination was brought up between the interaction of Zach and Turtles, which helped the Turtles to be more patient and careful in dealing with Zach.

One aspect I found disappointing with the Red Sky Seasons, was that it pushed aside the relationships and casual conversations/circumstances of the "Blue Sky Seasons" (Seasons 1-7), which I think is crucial to understand the Turtles' personalities outside of ninja fighting. It seemed with the Red Sky Seasons, it became 24/7 action-dominated episodes, and we didn't get to explore more of the Turtles' characters as we did in Seasons 3-7.

With all that being said, when they added Carter, he was just there. Seasons 9 & 10 didn't really develop the relationship time to introduce the characters unlike with Irma, Burne, Zach, Lotus, and others. Carter was just "some strange stalking guy" that just happened to be benificial to the Turtles since he's a "good guy" and scientifically smart.

If they would have developed his character a bit more, as with others in the "Blue Sky Seasons", he could have been more memorable.

True. There were a lot of other OT characters that could have improved the series, if they were incorporated in the Red Sky themed tone of the series.

Since the OT is done, and also since Carter was so forgettable, I highly doubt he would even make a return to any OT TMNT reunion film/episode (i.e. Turtles Forever).

I disagree. He did have a reason for being there- seeking Splinter's teaching and finding a cure for his mutation. He may be forgettable to some, but I found his very "average" personality a refreshing change to some of the more over-the-top characters. And he was basically the replacement for some of the other characters who had already fallen by the wayside, like Irma. With April off trying to get away from the turtles and all the chaos, they needed someone to keep the group grounded and connected to the world- Carter was that link. And he worked well in that role. I've been watching those very episodes over the past few days (one of the posters mentioned having inspiration for a story from a bit of Dregg's dialog in Beginning of the End) and the more I see of the last dozen episodes or so, the more I like Carter. He could have been a much more memorable character if he'd been introduced sooner. That he wasn't is kind of a loss. Other than Dregg himself, he's my favorite "new" character from those seasons.

That's true. Seasons 8 and 9 were just abrupt changes to everything we knew about the OT: The Channel 6 crew written out, April going into freelance reporting, Carter himself, Shredder and Krang gone and replaced with Dregg, introduction of Dregg's minion Hi-Tech, secondary mutations, final appearance of the Turtle Blimp, many other allies/villains gone (Casey Jones, Baxter Stockman, Leatherhead, Rat King, Neutrinos, Zach, Bebop and Rocksteady, etc.).

...As if the visual changes (Turtles' more angular faces, the red sky itself, and the more serious tone) weren't sudden already. :roll:

If the show actually took it's time to gradually phase in and phase out characters, Seasons 9 and 10 wouldn't be so off-putting and unfamiliar to some. ...Then again, the series only had 8 episodes per season, so I don't know how they could have accomplished this gradual transition. :ohwell: By season 9, the OT and TMNT merchandising was a sinking ship in it's final moments, and it was just a matter of time when it was going to completely founder.

Well Carter came in by the time the show got more "serious" and less campy, so it made sense for the writers to give him that kind of personality.

It was interesting to see April trying to break away from the Turtles, from a professional POV, at least. I mean, April's top stories for most of her career usually involved the Turtles, but maybe she just wanted to try covering something different for once?

As for the cure to his mutation, he only became a mutant after joining the Turtles. The reason he joined them was to learn martial arts from Splinter. This raises another question: Why did Splinter and the Turtles warm up to the idea of a "stalker" joining them so fast? I know there was a 2 year time-skip since they beat Shredder and Krang, but the Turtles kept on fighting criminals and such, so they must have made some new enemies since then. Letting a stranger join them was quite risky.

I remember Carter, and I really didn't mind him that much, though I hated his mutation. Then again, I hated how the Turtles mutated in this particular season, too. But other than that, I thought Carter was okay. I guess I just didn't really think about him that much.

I meant "forgotten" in the sense that the general audience does not remember him. Naturally, big TMNT fans such as users from this forum remember him.

The mutations didn't make any sense and were pretty pointless, yeah. They only made the turtles bigger, more violent, uglier and dumber. They really annoyed me in the Doomquest episode and i really hated those 2 epsiodes focused on Leonardo. Their mutations did save them against Chronos, but that's the only time I remember them being useful.

Carter's mutation, however, was not as bad. It was actually useful and proved to be beneficial to the turtles several times.

Oh yeah, I remember him.

I still could never figure out if Carter was meant to be black or hispanic.

I remember him just fine. Caring about him is another story.

He was undoubtedly black. How could you not tell?

Also, why does that even matter?

He looked like grownup Static Shock. Static Shock was obviously black.

I like Carter but it was too little too late, the show was on it's last legs and it was time to wrap it up...

Not entirely sure, but I think he might have been a mix (black/Latino). I thought he already had the mutation when they met him? I'll have to go back and re-watch his intro. I think maybe they let him join them so easily because most of their main enemies had been defeated, and they were just bored. That, and possibly lonely, what with most of their friends gone. And Splinter seemed to be a pretty good judge of character through most of the series- he DID let Zach stick around, after all....

I always thought of the secondary mutations as being some sort of end-stage to their original mutation. Like the son of Jeff Goldblume's character from "The Fly" in the sequel. His transformation didn't kick in until he hit full physical maturity. Maybe theirs was similar? Which is actually a pretty scary thought. Imagine how they would have felt knowing that that could be their ultimate fate? Yikes!

Nope. He was vigilante-style helping the vigilante-Turtles, followed them to their lair, got invited by Splinter to stay, then got splashed with a tiny bit of the unstable mutagen in Donatello's lab while on his way out.
That's a good explanation for why Splinteer was unaffected.

I honestly had not seen the last few seasons of the TMNT until I was an adult because at the time I was about 16 when they aired and I had stopped caring about the turtles as much as when I was a kid... I still liked them just not enough to tune in.

I completely missed the 4Kids series save for bits while flipping through channels.

The Nicktoons series has rekindled my interest and only because I have a 10 year old son who loves the series and got me hooked as well... otherwise I probably wouldn't have taken notice.

As for Carter.... I may be a little jaded because my introduction to him came while I was already an adult.. but I am doing my best to forget him as a sidekick :P

Zach was just a kid, so it's not like he was much of a threat to them. But he never trained Zach at all.

Technically, Carter was not even the first human student Splinter took in. Wasn't the one from Black Belt, White Heart his student at some point too? And that was already after Splinter had mutated, I mean, he did recognize Splinter after all. Strangely enough, he didn't know the turtles.

I believe from that episode, Splinter said he came to America with Yoku, the grandchild of Master Mogo-San (Splinter's sensei), and that after the grandson's studies (college I assume), he mysteriously vanished. I'm guessing that whole incident was before Splinter was penniless, forced to move into the sewers, and mutated into a rat. Thus, I don't think that "student" was the first human Splinter took in... at least not when he was a humanoid rat.

Even if Splinter had trained other human students before, Carter felt like...I know he wasn't *really*, but with his "cool" bike and X-Men style mutation and showing up out of the blue to ask Splinter for training and getting it, he read like a fanfic self-insert character. That was an unshakeable impression when I rewatched the series as an adult. As a kid, I can't even remember Carter, so, uh, so there.

Yes, if you introduced Carter from the start, and wrote him differently, he could work, but the Carter we got isn't someone I'm interested in seeing again.

Yeah. how the hell would Carter know who Hamato Yoshi is anyways, and that now lives in the sewers of New York... and that he had some connection to the Turtles??? Especially that late in the series.

And then that one episode where some student Splinter trained came back for revenge... and we never seen him before... and yet the Turtles act as if he trained with them and ... since when did Splinter start taking new pupils???

Then again, Zach never asked, and none of them ever offered to. Different situation.


Gobo- was that an attempt at sarcasm, or were you serious about that comment about Splinter being unaffected? I can't tell. If it's serious- it would have made sense that he wasn't because he was a human first, and was basically de-evolved into a rat(lower life-form). With the turtles being animals first(going the opposite direction), it was a more haphazard situation to begin with, mixing reptile and mammal genes. That seems like a recipe for a much more unstable mutation.

I agree...I think that's why it never happened to Bebop or Rocksteady, either. (Well, that we know of, since we didnt see them in the last seasons, lol).

Yet, he didn't know he had mutated into a rat more or less at the same time as the turtles had mutated.

Another incoherence in FW's cartoon. :P

I chalk Yoku's appearance to happening between seasons 6 and 7 (or maybe before?) and who knows if he got is government agent license before and trained with Splinter after? If Master Mogu-san still communicated with Splinter after the alleged murder attempt I'm sure that's how Yoku and Carter knew where to find them. That, or he thought like Lotus or Zach. :)

Carter wasn't a bad character even though he did have a rough start with his lack of teamwork and uncontrollable mutant form at first. It was weird having a secondary character stick around for more than two episodes like Usagi or the HAVOC mutants for example. But once he grew as a character all was well.