Shifting power levels
 

Does anyone notice this like in the 1987 cartoon? I noticed that sometimes the villains will be very competent in some episodes and at other times, they end being push overs. I remember Shredder usually running away and fighting sometimes. Sometimes he would hold his own or get pushed aside or he would actually defeat them in combat, like in the episode The Incredible Shrinking Turtles. He actually defeated all 4 of them and rather easily. I remember Krang fighting both Don and Mike and doing quite well, tossing them aside, until both Turtles pushed themselves harder and eventually defeated him and in other episodes like Super Irma, he gets taken down by Leo with little effort.

Even with Bebop and Rocksteady, there were episodes were they were actually a threat and other times, they are just push overs, even being physically defeated in direct hand to hand combat. Although I heard Shredder is supposed to be more talented than the turtles and that only Splinter is on par with Shredder in most series.

I just find it weird on how these battles can be so inconsistent where one minute they are a serious threat and they are push overs in the next episode. xD

Yup thats why I enjoyed sesaon 2 when shredder was pretty much left for his own the entire season.

There's a trope for that...

I think he's talking more along the lines of this one.

Hey, remember that episode where Mikey became human? When he became human he lost his ability to fight, seemingly ignoring that his ability to fight comes from training and not being a mutant turtle. Not sure how well this relates to the topic but I might as well point it out.

Mikey also seemed to have lost a lot of strength as he didn't look physically fit either so he couldn't pull of the moves without being in good shape.

Tmnt will never have consistant power levels lol. Maybe IDW but certainly none of the tv shows.

Shredder, Krang, and General Tragg were the biggest violators of this. There eas also the seven villains who could have teamed with Shredder and Krang and could have defeated the Turtles and Splinter for good. How effective would Zach, April, and Irma be? No more than two hits will take each out. The reason for the inconsistency? The need to cater to a plot in a long running series.

In Night of the Rogues, all 7 were more than a match for the Turtles. Imagine if Bebop, Rocksteady, Shredder and Krang joined in. That would be tough for Turtles and they wouldn't stand a chance.

Unless they got help from Lotus, Mondo Gecko, The Punk Frogs, Casey Jones, Splinter and Usagi. I'm sure all of them could defeat Krang and company for sure if they all teamed up.

Touche! :tcool:

But, ironically, two TMNT cartoons lead off the board for the Western Animation section of Villain Decay!
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...sternAnimation

The original cartoon had like 10+ different writers. That along with the fact that a lot of episodes were more slapstick than real fighting...it makes it obvious why the Turtles struggle to beat Shredder in one episode and then in the next beat him by throwing a slice of pizza in his face.

Try 50+, 52 to be exact.

1. David Wise
2. Patti Howeth
3. Christy Marx
4. Larry Parr
5. Michael Reaves
6. Martin Pasko
7. Douglas Booth
8. Brynne Stephens
9. Richard Merwin
10. Reed Shelly
11. Bruce Shelly
12. Duane Capizzi
13. Steve Roberts
14. Francis Moss
15. Rowby Goren
16. Michael Edens
17. Mark Edens
18. Buzz Dixon
19. Bill Wolf
20. Gordon Bressack
21. Bob Schooley
22. Mark McCorkle
23. Doug Molitor
24. David Carren
25. Larry Carroll
26. Eliot Daro
27. Doug Molitor
28. James A. Davis
29. Misty Taggart
30. Ted Pedersen
31. Antonio Ortiz
32. Carmela Ortiz
33. George Shea
34. Martin Pasko
35. Dennis Marks
36. Jack Mendelsohn
37. Charles M. Howell IV
38. Dan DiStefano
39. Sean Roche
40. Dennis O'Flaherty
41. Michael Maurer
42. Gary Greenfield
43. Carole Mendelsohn
44. Marc Handler
45. Steve Granat
46. Cydne Clark
47. Matt Uitz
48. Lee Schneider
49. Matthew Malach
50. John Fox
51. Bob Forward
52. Jeffrey Scott

You actually bothered to look that up, my god. A lot of those writers only wrote 1 or 2 episodes though.

But it goes to prove why the original cartoon was so inconsistent. You had all these writers doing their own thing and having no clue what the other writers were doing. So some writers were more silly or created plotholes.

David Wise tried to keep the show on track the best he could. The OT probably would have turned out better if he was given complete control over it like showrunners of cartoons do today.

Yep, I first noticed this when watching the show as a kid.

She didn't write anything. This was confirmed by Wise.

I have to admit from Season 4 - 6 Shredder and Krang felt like they were phoning it in but they got a lot better in Season 7 onwards.

Well too bad that I don't trust Wise's word, nor should you or anyone else for that matter.

There was also the episode Krangenstein Lives, where Krang's robot body fights the Turtles. And the robot body actually defeated all 4 Turtles rather easily, yet all the times when Krang controlled the robot, he always had a harder time. That's what I find weird.

Night Of The Rogues was easily the biggest violation by far, and also one of the biggest blown opportunities for an epic episode ever.

A close second is Chrome Dome.

Why would you not trust what Wise says about his own scripts? :roll:

Probably because he lies, embellishes, & misremembers things.

About what exactly? He stated he forgot to take his ex-girlfriend's name off the scripts.

Because he's a liar, he claims multiple things that were already present in the comics or proven to have been decided by Playmates were his ideas when they clearly weren't. Even things in which he isn't contradicted, his explainations for how he decided on it still sounds farfetched and absurd. Not to mention the fact that the bastard is one of the most uncreative hacks I have ever seen work in television, the man is unable to write anything other than cliché stories which he then recycles for other scripts.

Given all these facts, I seriously doubt he's responisble for even half of what he claims!

Like I explained, he's a damn glory hog.

I take it some resentment? Not sure what he's lied about exactly. Yeah he's overexaggerated stuff before, for instance he tends to get carried away with saying he created the Turtles when obviously he didn't. What he did do is develop the Turtles personalities where in the comics the Turtles didn't really have personalities. And you're right Playmates along with the creators did come up with the characters that featured in the first season but only really on a visual level. Wise was responsible for taking the toys he had to sell in the cartoon and giving the characters depth beyond how they looked.

I know you don't like to hear all this because you hate the Fred Wolf cartoon but it's the truth. And no he isn't a hack, his writing was always great since Buck Rogers. The Ninja Turtles episodes he wrote don't come across like they're from a hack writer at all. Wise knew (most of the time) what he was doing and I'm extremely thankful for the childhood memories of the Ninja Turtles he provided in the writing.

The turtles did have personalites in the comics, they just weren't in your face about all the time. The elements of their personalities were already in place, all Wise did was flatten and stretch them out, but credit still needs to go to Laird and Eastman. The thing about the toy characters, let's say Bebop and Rocksteady, is that they probably came with documents explaining how to write their personalities so Wise's involvemnt there might also be less than he claims, especially if the stories about adlibbing are true.

And David Wise is a hack, don't pretend otherwise. His scripts are cluttered and cliché, most of them just plagiarised from silver age comic books. Not to mention the fact that he is infamous for recycling these scripts over and over again.

The show in general is pretty poorly written and Wise certainly didn't help, episodes often feature characters sitting around doing nothing that progresses the plot and it's just boring. To be perfectly honest I don't think anyone who worked on the cared the least bit about what they were doing, David Wise included.

Anyway, the bottomline of this rant is that David Wise was lacked any real creative spark and certainly didn't take his job seriously enough to care.

Don't confuse your fuzzy nostalgic feelings for clever or charming writing. It's fine if you like it for nostalgic reasons but it's not a good show, it's objectively terrible! It's boring to follow, unfunny in it's comedy and ugly to look at.

I love the FW show but most of what neatoman said is true (beyond saying it's terrible, which is a subjective opinion).

All cartoon writers rehash similar or old scripts from other shows. Ciro Nieli blatantly re-uses some old Teen Titans and Super Robot Monkey stories ideas in the Nick show, (the Wyrm episode especially is a perfect example of this).

So goes Greg Weisman for that matter. This is nothing strange for David Wise.

And this all false. The show is very funny, most episodes are pretty entertaining, and the animation from an old 80's and early 90's show still looks pretty good this today if we're talking about the best animated episodes.

The show is nearly 30 years old, what do you expect the animation to look like?

I still like parts of the 1987 cartoon, but I agree that most of what neatoman said is true. I haven't watched most of the series in years, but the show is boringly repetitive at times and David Wise did recycle a lot of plots. I thought he wrote some good episodes, though.

It would probably be best if we save this for another topic. Some think the 87 toon is garbage, others think it's great. I think it's a good cartoon. It has faults like any other toon but it was great for the time. Some of it's dated but still has funny jokes, especially 4th wall ones and the banter from Shredder and Krang alone could make a great spin off. xD

But in this topic, I just wonder how villains can be tough and then turn out to be wimps. Sometimes when they turn into wimps, they become threatening again. Bebop and Rocksteady for example shift back and forth. Becoming threats and then later push overs.

Some of it's good in spite of or even because of it's flaws, but to deny their existence is silly. :trazz: Sure, he's done a fair bit of good material, & absolutely deserves a certain amount of credit, but not anywhere near what he seems to feel he's owed.

I expect any cartoon from any era to at the very least not be full of animation errors even a toddler would recognise at initial viewings, like these for example:

Errors such as these are plastered all over the show and it's something I don't believe should be considered acceptable within any standards, regardless of how old or low budgeted any given show is. Sure, some episodes like the Tempestra episde still look good but those aren't the majority or even a good chunk of the episodes. I don't expect modern or big budget quality animation, I just think consistency and quality control shouldn't be ignored like they obviously were.

As for the writing and comedy, most of the episode center around shrinking rays, freeze rays, body switching and other plots that were already considered cliché cartoon plots by 1987. It wouldn't have been so bad except for two factors that really drags it down:

1. The same plot devices (especially the shrinking ray) are used for several episode, making them cliché within the show itself.
2. The scripts are very rarely ever decently balanced, making most episodes either cluttered with side-plots or despererate to fill out time.

A perfect example of the show trying to fill time is "Turtles, Turtles, Everywhere", an episode with an already boring plot that has the Turtles spending the first half or so of the episode just cleaning their home, which has no impact on the rest of the episode. Another is "Snakes Alive!" in which all the Turtles except Leo are trapped and several scenes of the episode are dedicated to Don trying to unscrew the cage which didn't matter since Leo just came in to save them anyway.

The comedy might be the easiest to defend since it's a very subjective issue but I never liked the comedy, i always found it to be rather toothless and poorly timed. Not to mention that stupid running gag about pizza toppings, did anyone ever find that funny?

Yeah, Wise is a fool. Raphael had his personality down in #1, with all the other turtles getting individual characterization in #2, if not very shortly after. Everyone was "themselves" by mid 1985 at the latest.

He's butthurt too. He talked trash on the Nick cartoon when interviewed on Andrew's podcast. He was all "you don't hear kids running around yelling 'booyuh casha' do ya?". Sounded like a ****ing clown.

Did you seriously just compare Weisman to David Wise? I know you're the village idiot and all, but come on bro.

I'm guessing there's not too many that listened to me.:trolleye:

Am I seriously the only one noticing this? Let's please stay on topic.

Yeah, his whole shtick is sour grapes now. I should've gotten this that & the next thing, nobody's turtles are better than mine, blah blah blah. He can say whatever he wants about the Nick series but that creative teams' favorite iteration is Mirage, & despite all the Playmates influence & FW pandering they're sorta forced into doing, it shows.

No they didn't have personalities. Leonardo was a leader, Raphael was just angry, Donatello was gadget man and Michaelangelo was the young Turtle. Wise added to their personalities, fleshing them out and developed their identities, the comics adopted these new traits. Check that nostalgia you have, it's clouding your judgement.

Wise again is not a hack and if you did a bit of research you'd discover a lot of the scripts by most writers generally were paying homage to 1950s sci-fi movies. Silver age comic books? Yeah right. :lol: I'm assuming Wise also did care about the show, he was heavily involved throughout and is still bitter about how the network treated him. Does that sound like someone who doesn't care?


That's your opinion. I think it's a fine show and unlike you I'm happy to talk about in this part of the forum.

Well you don't do you?

You're a joke.

Wise is probably more annoyed the network treated him like crap and he had a huge hand to bringing it to the TV. I think he's entitled to be annoyed. And everyone disses other people's work, Wise wasn't the first and he won't be the last.

The first season was animated by TOEI, why don't you ask them since they're an anime company who produces shows like Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon or One Piece?

The bandana errors still don't affect the animation quality of an episode. You're looking for coloring errors, not the actual animation. The show is nearly 30 years old and holds up better than any other animation show from that time period.

And there's nothing wrong with these plots. They were all done a different way almost each time, and the actual plot of the episode to solve the problem was done differently each time. The episode where Shredder/Krang are trying to freeze the earth by draining the sun isn't anywhere similar to episodes where they shrink the Turtles or bring movie characters to life.

The plots are silly, sure, but that's the nature of the show. What's wrong with using ideas such as those in a show that's not intended to be a serious series?

That was the joke. :roll: And that scene was less than 2 minutes, not "half the episode" or whatever you're trying to claim.

Pizza topping jokes are what you're complaining about? A harmless gag that went on no more than a minute or less for an episode?