Northampton Arc vs Space Arc
 

Title says all. Which one do you prefer from this show?

Space Arc. Northampton Arc was like watching Paint Dry

I liked stuff about both. I liked the creepiness of the North Hampton arc (Dream Beavers ep I will forever love), but I enjoyed the exploration of the Space arc...

Man, we need a third option...neutral. I think I like both about the same.

Space arc was much better overall obviously. I did still like a number of the Northampton eps aside from the Bigfoot one.

Northampton had one decent episode.

Space arc had none.

So.

Yeah.

Northampton bored me, Space Arc was decent (also I am an nutter for space battles and astronomy/astrophysics) so I voted Space Arc

Outer space
 

Outer space

I honestly don't like either. Both are excessive in length and get mundane after a while personally. However, the concepts were there, just the execution wasn't up to snub.

In terms of "fun" as well as episodes, I much prefer Northampton. I'm more of a horror guy than I am a sci-fi fan. The guest voices were solid as well, especially getting Robert Englund for In Dreams. At the same time, I also didn't like Northampton due to its story placement. With the exception of Vision Quest, none fully impacted the overarching narrative, even if Within the Woods and A Foot Too Big contributed to future episodes such as Creepweed for the former and the Donatello and April "relationship." I think it could've been condensed or better set up though, just a bit excessive with all the horror tributes almost being back to back.

As for the space arc... man, it got boring. Amazing animation, introductions to old school favorites like Dregg, Armaggon, and even Wyrm, and has the occasional funny moment. Otherwise, I don't like most of the episodes; they weren't as noteworthy as some of the later entries in season 4. It could've been so much more, just feels like it was missing something entirely.

Although both story arcs dragged and overstayed their welcome, I say that the Northampton arc is "better" if only for the weird Horror themed episodes and the fact that it dragged less.

The Space arc brought us some unique looking worlds and started with some sense of uregency, but devoting almost half of Season 4 to the arc led to it loose steam quickly.

Moreover, Northampton only makes up 1/3rd of Season 3, whereas the first half of Season 4 is devoted to the Space Arc.

I liked several Northampton episodes, but they totally bungled it as an arc. I know it's not fair to compare this show to Mirage, but their exile isn't supposed to be about 80's horror homages. And the biggest whiff was the campfire scene. I get teared up during that scene in 1990 movie every time. The Nick take basically just has Splinter giving them a halfhearted pep talk.

The space arc went on too long, but I LOVED Tennant as Fugitoid. They also ditched the boring ass Federation and some of the alien planets were truly beautiful.

So I'd say Northampton had 3 good episodes out if 8, and the Space arc had 8 good episodes out of 14.

All the space eps were good except for the one they delved into Mikey's mind which was just meh.

Space arch. It gave them something other to do than hide. Sometimes in Northhampton, it just seemed like they had gone on vacation, after Leonardo recovered from his injuries. The Bigfoot story was cringey, and the horror elements didn't really do it for me - considering that I can't even stand to watch horror films as a whole.

Granted, its sense of time travel was half-baked, especially while they had THE DOCTOR with them. Someone who should have lifted a finger and said "Um...no."

Obviously, the biggest thing for me was that it finally established that Utroms were a thing and "the Kraang" were just a mind-controlled majority group. And gave us two females in one episode - some thing I don't think any TMNT story has done.

Hm, also forgot how Seth Green's Leo sounded a bit off in the Northampton episodes, which is understandable as it was the first time he was voicing the character.

Really shows how much Seth improved.

Beyond the Known Universe, Wyrm, Riddle of the Aeons, Revenge of the Triceratons and Evil of Dregg are all complete ass.

Wyrm was alright, just a fun silly episode.

Riddle of the Aeons dealing with those bat aliens, I don't remember that one being too bad. I don't even remember what Revenge of the Triceratons was.

Well technically speaking, didn't he voice Leo in Robot Chicken parodies?

In your opinion. I felt the ep revealed quite a bit about Mikey that was interesting to me. The biggest part of his personality was rage/anger, but unlike Raph, he has really good control over it because he hates how it makes him feel. Due to his concentrating on controlling that, he doesn't have as much control over the other parts.

Northampton was super boring with one, maybe two good episodes.

The Space Arc was consistently hilariously bad and almost makes me laugh how much it makes me cringe now that it's over.

The Space Arc has my vote simply for that entertainment value.

Northampton was boring, wasted, and only had one episode relevant to the plot. It reverted to the"monster of the week" episodes again. Trash. The Space Arc was better, I've always been a sucker for sci-fi adventures, but also had poorly used episodes and cheesy, predictable outcomes.

Neither though I guess you can count Transdimensional Turtles as part of the space arc... then space arc.

I get the horror parody thing with Northampton, but making EVERY. SINGLE. EPISODE like that was stupid and monotonous.
Both arcs dragged on larger than they should.

It wasn't every single episode. The Bigfoot ep, Punk Frogs, giant bird, the training ep with the visions of the villains, and the one with the car weren't horror oriented.

You both are right and also are wrong. The car one, Race with the Demon has a premise similar to that of the horror movie/book Christine with the name similar to Race with the Devil.

The giant bird, Eyes of the Chimera, resembles the monster called The Giant Claw and can appear as a total monster depending on what a chimera is made of in mythology.

The Bigfoot episode, Foot Too Big, wasn't horror but did have a reference with Finger talking to his dead mother like Norman Bates from Psycho.

Vision Quest and The Croaking weren't horror at all to my knowledge.

That's still a majority of episodes with horror elements with five in total, but four of the eight which were full on tributes (Within the Woods, Buried Secrets, In Dreams, and Race with the Demon) and the other four either had a reference depending on mileage (Eyes of the Chimera) or did not (the remaining three episodes).

It's not every episode Coola, but Cubed it's still a half to a majority.

Well the arc overall was definitely horror themed of course, but not every episode was horror.

The space arc was all sci-fi, for the obvious reason that they were in space.

Still, it's a large percentage and can turn some people off. Then again, I am more of a horror enthusiast than a sci-fi nut.

Northampton was an absolute waste of time. The series slowed down to an absolute crawl.

I don't count vision quest. For me that's the 'they finally stopped all the horror **** and are finally moving on with the story' episode. It does have too much of a horror theme in one way or another. The April mom episode was a reference to The Thing and even though the frogs wasn't exactly horror the title itself is still a Shining parody.

Horror is fine and all, but not back to back to back. The Northampton arc felt more like the horror in the woods arc which ruined the point. Imagine a season where half was back to back time travel or back to back 80s crossover or back to back 'Mikey does something stupid and must fix it' episodes.

All those kinds of episodes work and can add variety to the show but not if they're done 5 episodes or so in a row.

Northampton for the Dream Beavers.

This. Plus I loved all of the horror movie references as well the references to the Mirage comic and 1990 film.

Nevertheless, I really loved the space arc as well.

Let's see here...

Northampton, eight episodes.
Upsides: Homages to Elm Street, Friday 13 and Big Daddy Roth. Spirit World episode (even if done in a cheap way), flleshing out April's powers and origin.
Downsides: Punk Frogs episode kinda sucked and A Foot Too Big might be the worst episode in the entire show.

Space, 14 episodes (really? Over half the season?)
Upsides: David Tennant as the Fugitoid, Triceraton Gladiators, Full retcon of the Kraang.
Downsides: Wasting time on another damn asset recycle episode, David Wise levels of shameless writing on one episode, pointless inferior remake of Turtles Forever, nonsensical set-up, forcing drama based around Splinter we knew was going to be rendered pointless and a lot of it feels like filler (14 episodes on this? I mean really?).

So yeah, there are positives to both and both kind of overstay their welcome but one is signifigantly longer, leads in from nonsense, is full of nonsense and leads to nonsense. Northampton is better.

Even the "Weird World of Wyrm" sucked. The rest were either OK or great.

Northampton for me because I really enjoyed it and how some of the episodes focused on Leo too. Space arc wasn't too bad for me and I prefer it over 2K3's handling of it myself, but I voted for Northampton.

That space arc was too short. The turtles could've visited some more planets, but I guess the writers wanted it to stay closer to the Mirage Comics as the series in general was intended for.

The Northampton arc was terrible, for me at least. I was disappointed with the "Punk" Frogs, and the mutant car thing was utterly atrocious. That car episode alone killed the entire arc for me, and is by far the worst episode of TMNT 2012, and up there as being one of the worst of any series.

The one with a Kraang spacecraft found beneath the farmhouse was at least among the better. But I always waited for the turtles returning, and once they did, "Return to New York" became great.

I thought both were horrible.

Like straight up horrible? Not just overstaying their welcome or having a few bad episodes in them?

I voted the Space Arc but its largely due to specific episodes like TransDimensional Turtles and the Area of Carnage although I prefer the setting of the Northampton Arc and would choose Horror over Sci-Fi anyday.

Yeah, straight up horrible.

Riddle of the Ancient Aeons
 

If you like both mystic and science fiction, why not "Riddle of the Ancient Aeons"?