In-universe explanations for season 8-10
 

I know the real reason for the changes in season 8-10 was to keep kids interested in the OT.

Here are my in-universe explanations of why the characters are more serious...

The turtles were teenagers when the show started. Most teens like to have fun and goof around. They are older in the red sky era. When people get older, they are mature and serious. The reason why Shredder and Krang are less jokey is because they are fed up with the turtles foiling their plans. You would be bitter too if you lost your army and fortress.

What do you guys think?

I've heard another theory, that it takes place in an alternate universe. This would also explain how the Technodrome got upgraded in Turtles Forever despite the fact that we never saw the upgraded version in the show, we never did because the Red Sky seasons took place in a seperate universe.

Yeah I know I'm basically inviting pissing and moaning to this thread by mentioning Turtles Forever, but considering that the movie shows the OVA to be seperate from the FW cartoon, the 2007 movie from the 90's movies and Image from Mirage, it's a pretty decent theory.

Either theory could work. I liked the former until I read the latter, now I can't decide which I dig best. :trazz:

Did any kids ever actually see the Red Sky seasons? I only ever saw one episode, where there was a cool new theme song and the Turtles mutating into new forms... plus some weird kid.

I now know what it all was, but I never actually saw it on TV. <shrug>

I saw most of it as a kid. Not the Titanus stuff, but the episodes with their secondary mutations.

I saw the Red Sky season...Well, thanks to YouTube. The Turtles are serious and Raph is aggressive as you see in the opening theme, he lifts freaking Roocksteady easily and the guy that is with them is their new ally. His name is Carter.

I saw all 3 seasons when they aired, they all aired on CBS. It was the same channel that aired TMNT regularly since Season 5.

I like to think the entire red sky era was just a really bad acid trip Michaelangelo was having.

I saw all 3 seasons as well. In Ireland, they aired on the TV channel RTE Two and were repeated along with the other seasons from the late 90s to late 00s.

I first saw season 8 in 1995 and the first episode blew me away. The last episode of the season, Turtle Trek, wasn't aired at the time for some reason and was replaced with a repeat of "Enter: Krakus". The cartoon was then repeated from the beginning and it was only in 1998 that seasons 9 and 10 finally aired along with Turtle Trek.

I thought seasons 8 and 10 were good. 9 was bad, but it had a few decent episodes.

I pretty much watched the entire original cartoon faithfully from beginning to end. Funny thing is I was only 12 years old when Season 10 was airing, the end of the show.

I remember I was 13 when Next Mutation began. Its hard to believe the entire original cartoon was over before I hit my teens.

Is it that much of a mental stretch to believe that the show just happened? I mean, the red sky seasons have a tonal shift, but there aren't any signs that they occur in seperate universes.

Many shows also go through animation changes in the later years, heck the 4kids series went through two of them itself, so it isn't unusual.

Even B:TAS to the final Batman season had redesigns for all the villains.

Scarecrow's second design was strange. A little like the current rat king.

Agreed. I did like the noose, though.

That's the thing.... I never saw Red Sky on TV..... Was there some hiatus between the regular OT series and Red Sky? I remember by the time Sonic came along, they stopped showing TMNT on CBS and it was Sonic's turn to take over. Then shortly after they cancelled saturday morning cartoons for educational programs. So um... never got to see Red Sky....

Sonic was on ABC at the time. I don't remember what time slot the TMNT had, but I think Fox Kids Saturday morning was dominating the children's programming block with Power Rangers, Batman, and X-Men.

I only rarely caught any of the Red Sky episodes. I really liked the movie clips in the theme song, but the 2nd mutations and Carter just kinda bored me.

Maybe the Red Sky seasons are the equivalent of 2K3's Same As It Never Was and is just a possible bad future yet still has a place in the multiverse. This does not explain why the sky is always red though.

There was a final cancelled Turtle Tips short that showed kids what happened when pollution forever blocks out the sun... somehow it became the basis of three seasons' worth of episodes.

:tlol:

In New York it aired Saturday Mornings at 11am I believe. It was part of the action block along with Skeleton Warriors and Wild Cats.

I was more a comic book fan as a kid, and according to DC lore, specifically "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and related stories, the skies turning red was a sign of impending Multiversal collapse, or at the least, a sign that a universe within the Multiverse was about to be destroyed.

The Red Sky seasons were the last ones before the show was cancelled and that specific TMNT universe "died". Also explains the "darker" tone, as Crisis tie-in stories always were darker and more "serious" than normal stories.

So it all made perfect sense to me as a kid and even more now. :tgrin:

You were lucky. In my area, I want to say it stopped airing on CBS by at least season 7, most the programming being preempted for Martha Stewart and news.

I only saw one episode of the Red Sky arc during its original run. I visited my aunt in Norfolk, Virginia and CBS there still showed Saturday morn toons. It was either '95 or '96. I'd had no idea that the show had changed and was wondering why the sky was red, who the new guy was, and why April wasn't at Channel 6.

If, does Turtles Forever take place in the Red Sky Universe and the Technodrome got upgraded after "Divide & Conquer"?

Hmm... interesting. I never thought about the possibility of a multi-verse crisis reference being intentional during the Red Sky years.

But Red Sky episodes made a big hullabaloo of apocalyptic future scenarios with Krakus, Landor, and Merrick...

And the last season of the show did try to bring in duplicates of the Turtles from the past in order to save the turtles of the future...

And the very theme song was clearly trying to get kids thinking about the movie turtles and the toon turtles at the same time...

And then might consider the references to the old show appearing in Turtles Forever and Nick's Manhattan Project episode to be a retro-active confirmation of multiverse tamperings...

Interesting.

Characters showing up in inappropriate timelines, or displaced from their own time into the past or future, or even into alternate *possible* pasts or futures, is also a sign that the walls between realities are breaking down as a universe "dies". It happens in every single Crisis event; time displacement, in particular, was rampant during the "Zero Hour" event. :tgrin:

So it's really quite simple, and the last three seasons actually took place during a Crisis-level event. ALSO coincidentally, but still supporting the theory, is that the Fred Wolf TMNT universe was "wiped out" and never referenced again, UNTIL after DC's "Infinite Crisis" event and the fall-out established that there was once again a "Multiverse", and that all the universes that had once been "wiped out" still existed after all. Shortly thereafter, the FW TMNT appeared for the first time in ages in "Turtles Forever", in which the entire plot was dependent on Multiversal theory. :tgrin:

It's all connected, maaaaaaan. :lol:

And while we're at it, did the same thing happen when Batman: The Animated Series got rebooted as The New Batman Adventures TV show? Little continuity elements like characters' physical likenesses (Penguin, Croc, Joker) and backstories (Zatanna) changed overnight without explanation. And the Green Lantern crossover episode of Superman: The Animated Series was surely retconned to prepare the way for John Stewart GL in Justice League...

I read Zero Hour for the first time a couple of years ago. By itself, it didn't quite live up to my expectations, but the ZH tie-in issues that appeared in the individual title monthlies were pretty cool. I especially liked some of the craziness seen in the Batman and Superman comics.

Indeed. Indeed. Although I actually love Zero Hour. But then I was immersed in it as it was happening, so it was a little more "special" and had a little more urgency.

But yeah, all the ZH tie-ins were great but the Superman and Batman ones were among the very best. Back when DC put all its talent on the "big" characters' books, instead of using those talents to try and "elevate" obscure/lesser characters and letting any hack take a swing at Superman or Batman because "they're easy". :roll:

Slightly off topic, I know, but I do wonder how Landor and Merrick were supposed to know who the TMNT were since their version of the future was corrected by the actions of the turtles earlier in the series. Even if they knew who they were, their reappearance seemed to imply that they recalled their previous encounter with the turtles, which wouldn't have been possible had their future been altered, like was implied.

I'm guessing since the TMNT of present day have seen them as kids, they befriend them down the road. I can imagine Donatello being the one who invents the time travel orb.