So... what do you think the Turtles did between seasons 8 and 9 of the FW series?
 

You know, in Turtle Trek the Turtles apparently defeat Shredder and Krang for good by destroying The Technodrome in the process. Then season 9 comes out and Dregg replaces S&K as the main villain. But clearly some time passed between Turtle Trek and The Unknown Ninja. In season 10, Landor and Merrick told the Turtles from the past(season 8 ) that they'd meet Carter in about 2 years. So, therefore, it seems obvious to me that between Turtle Trek and The Unknown Ninja two years have passed.

As we can see at the beginning of the episode the Turtles are watching a video of them fighting a bunch of ninjas on a rooftop. Which is odd considering by that point ninjas were barely a thing in the show anymore. They looked rather similar to Megavolt's ninjas iirc?

I guess the Turtles were basically fighting random bad guys, none of them too major. Also, I assume that's the time period where they met Chronos? But I guess nothing really noteworthy happened in those 2 years. The fact Shredder and Krang don't get even a single mention during the entire run of season 9(except in the theme song...) makes me feel the Turtles genuinely believed both to be defeated for good. And the fact tehy just allow a teenager they just met into their group sorta says the Turtles had relaxed and felt safer than ever at the time.

But maybe some of you can think of interesting and cool thing the Turtles might have done between "defeating" Shredder and Krang and meeting Carter? Thoughts?

PS: Also, I know I always mention this when I talk about Carter, but him knowing about Hamato Yoshi and bringing that up so late in the series was odd and hard to swallow. Not to mention the show was becoming quite scifi heavy by then, so it definitely didn't feel like NINJA Turtles anymore.

Probably the same as usual. Watching old VHS tapes in the lair or April on the news, chilling in the lair with Don with his inventions, or Mike making pizza...and then as said occasionally stopping crime or a mad scientist or whatever.

As we know even with Shredder/Krang not around the Turtles always got into trouble with random criminals, mad scientists, or the occasional mutant so they were probably busy regardless.

Funny enough, they only seem to face Shredder and co. up until season 3 when they finally meet the Rat King, Leatherhead and a bunch of mobsters... though Shredder was in the Maltese Hamster episode. It was in season 4 when they really started to meet more mad scientist and the like.

Also, I wonder if they fought a lot of bad guys before meeting April? Were human Rocksteady/Bebop and their gang the first bad guys the Turtles beat up? Food for thought.

A lot of ninja training I'm sure, which contributed towards Splinters declaring them his equals in the final episode.

I'm not a fan of the turtles going topside for first time when a new series and their adventures with April begin. I like the idea of the turtles as young children fighting minor street criminals (like the Archie flashback).

But I'm not a fan of Casey Jones (or anyone else of the turtles' friends and allies) meeting the turtles as a child in the 4 Kids series. He should have been replaced with some unknown boy, later never seen.

I forgot this... the Turtle no longer enjoyed/ate pizza in the RS seasons, so Mike definitely wasn't making it anymore.

Probably just no longer seen eating pizza.

RS wanted to send a message that the Turtles were now more serious. Serious people don't eat pizza or go skateboarding/surfing, it seems. :lol:

Replacing pizza with popcorn in the series last moment was the biggest troll moment ever.

I never noticed they didn't eat Pizza in the red sky seasons. Do they acknowledge it? If not then it's easy to miss.

Pretty sure there's not a single mention or instance of the Turtles eating pizza during any of the Red Sky episodes.

There's one moment when one of the turtles says:

"You need to lay off the Pepperoni!"

But other than that, nadda.

I never really noticed that.... did they ever show them eating... well, anything? I know the Red Sky eps had the turtles rush out to stop Dregg more often than not and not really show a lot of down time. I mean, I know the normal seasons would still have time for regular sewer hijinx, or Channel 6 comedy, before the episode would begin proper, but I don't remember a lot of that in Red Sky (especially since Channel 6 was gone).

That's one of the problems with the RS seasons. They focused way too much on action, forgetting the show was also a comedy. They tried to create a new identity for the show but it didn't go so well. Also, the action wasn't really that much more exciting. The fights weren't exactly ninja-like. The show became full sci-fi.

Yeah, they should have upped the budget some. I mean the monsters were stil goofy multi-colored messes, but the Turtles could have done some sweet martial arts moves comparable to how the 2K3 TMNT fight to really drive the point home that the show was 'serious'.

It was like they thought serious meant 'remove the pizza and everything else is good'.

It's kinda bizarre how they went full sci-fi in those seasons, considering the season 9 premier was called THE UNKNOWN NINJA and introduced a character who somehow knew about Hamato Yoshi that late in the show and wanted to learn the Foot Clan technique.

Other than him kicking a few robotic bats he most relied on his stupid mutation. Doesn't sound very ninja-like to me...

I don't think that the two years that was mentioned was necessarily the amount of time in between the final episode of season 8 and the first episode of season 9. I would assume that the time between the two seasons was a matter of a few months. What did they do during that time? Patrol, train, relax and watch tv. Pretty much the same things we saw them do up to that point when they weren't fighting Shredder.

Huh? Landor told the Turtles form the past(from the Turtle Trek episode) that they were gonna meet Carter in about 2 years. Turtle Trek was the last episode of season 8. They met Carter in the first episode of season 9. So yeah, definitely 2 years passed between both episodes.

I don't think that's what he meant. I've always interpreted the line "2 years and 15 days" to mean that's how much time went by in between Turtle Trek and A Turtle in Time, not how much time went by in between Turtle Trek and The Unknown Ninja.

And Raph hanging out with Mona Lisa and all that stuff. Though we kind of saw what the 80s turtles been up to in the 2k12 series. They were still battling Shredder, Krang and Bebop and Rocksteady. So even if that show ended. Life still went on in that universe.

Is anyone else interested in trying to make a timeline based on this series?

Well, they obviously fought ninjas in that period; either Megavolt's as someone online suggested or just some generic thieves. At least they caught these guys easily. And enough time for Donatello to begin examining and experimenting on the mutagen they crawled through. Speaking of which, I thought he synthesised the last of that into a spray that temporarily turned Splinter back into Hamato Yoshi back in Season 2.

They still fight Shredder in Season 4 but he's not in every episode.

I like season 4-5 being split up, with circa 50 % being classic TMNT against Shredder and Krang, the others take different turtles at solo adventures, often outside New York City.

I think it happened for two reasons:

1) James Avery had less time to commit to the show due to Fresh Prince.

2) The writers were starting to run out of ideas creatively having had the standard villians in most Season 3 episodes.

TMNT always had a problem when it came to finding villains that could "replace" Shredder on a long term or even for single episodes.

Bonus points to the FW series for making some non-Shredder and Krang episodes, but a lot of those mad scientists weren't particularly interesting and it's obvious they've only managed to be a threat to the Turtles due to their technology. It's a hard pill for me to swallow seeing a ****ing toy manufactor, for example, getting the upper hand against the Turtles. On a one on one fight against any of the Turtles he'd get his ass kicked in 5 seconds.

It's like the WWE champion facing a lower midcarder or a jobber. The guy will put up a decent fight in order to make it look like the WWE champion will lose the title, but then he eventually fights back with the five moves of doom and pins the other guy and remains champion just like every single person expected.

It's made pretty clear they were referring to when they'd meet. The Turtles basically asked Carter "do we know you?" and Carter said "Not yet, but you will" and then Landor says "in exactly 2 years and 15 days".

I agree but then again they do use their weapons less as well. The TMNT are kind of dumbed down in Season 4-6.

The best were those with Leatherhead and the Rat King. I also liked how the series built up its own organized crime syndicate, with Big Louie and how he was in gangster war against Beaver Cleaver and Wally Cleaver.

Season 3 expanded a bit which was nice. We had Rat King and Don Turtelli standing on their own in one episode each, then they teamed up, then Rat King teamed up with Leatherhead. The syndicated episodes were more like She-ra, series since they rarely deviated from the Horde at all even if they had one-off Horde villains once in awhile. I definitely understand why it was done this way since you didn't want to see the Turtles using their weapons on gangsters or even scientists. The Saturday episodes allowed them to expand their villain roster even if it was of scientists, toy makers and Turtle memorabilia collectors and the occasional gangsters. Those guys couldn't fight back like Shredder and Co. could so it would teach kids bad lessons. At least they finally got the formula right as the seasons went on.

Apparently Leatherhead only appeared in 4 episodes.

And for some reason the original series mad him a bad guy. Even though he's always been a good guy in the comics.

Yeah. FW and 2k3 Leatherheads are both completely different from each other. They're barely the same character.

I liked FW Leatherhead, though. And his accent was pretty cool. "I GUARAN-TEE!":tgrin:

Really? I actually had no idea. No wonder in the 2003 cartoon series he's a good guy. Finally makes sense.

Florida
 

I like the concept of a Florida-based Leatherhead.

80s Leatherhead is my favourite too.

I like him as a villain more than an ally, and I don't like Leatherhead going into rage mode everytime and then saying sorry later on.

80s Leatherhead was great.

I also liked Archie Leatherhead (but not so much that origin). It was great to see him as part of the Mutanimals punching robots in Brazil in "United We Stand, Divided We Fall".