NM, thats right The Next Mutation
 

This series that came on Fox Kids is a series i remember watching and I actually liked it, and still do. It is a shame to me we dont get the whole season on DVD, hopefully we do. It is part of our tmnt history now, and its been about 10 years since it has aired. Sure the female turtle people dont really care for, but there was talk about bringing casey and april in season 2. Any thoughts on The Next Mutation?

Removing all the "wacky" sound effects would've gone a long way towards making it enjoyable.

The sound effects were the worst part of the show. When Leo jumped on a Rank Warrior, you heard a horse for some reason. It was some lame attempt to make the show funny, I was just a kid when I was watching it (I think I was only 13 at the time the show was airing back in 1997) and I found those sound effects lame.

Other than that, it did have some decent points to it. Dragon Lord wasn't a half bad villain, but there were too many silly episodes and it could have been more serious.

April O' Neil and Casey Jones
 

Why not bring in at least April O' Neil, even Casey Jones. Everybody, not only TMNT fans, know who April O' Neil is.

the sound effects never really got to me, and the silliness to the show, well i always thought where funny.

Human Dragon Lord
 

I would like to see a human Dragon Lord instead.

To elaborate, the show actually had some decent concepts. A gritter, movie based setting, for one. The Dragons were interesting villains. I liked the Turtle designs (they were very 90s), and I didn't even mind the presence of a girl Turtle.

Next Mutation is a classic example of good concepts with poor execution, because all the sound effects, corny dialogue, and terrible special effects overshadowed everything the show did right.

I was in fifth grade when this came out, and my friends and I anxiously awaited its premiere. All I can say is, my interest in Turtles diminished pretty quickly after this aired.

i remember the day they where with the power rangers, i was like WOAH!! It made me happy. I was in the third grade when it hit came out.

Let's not forget the crappy fighting choreography as well, but other than that, I enjoyed it as a kid.

Leaving out April and thus leaving out the first Turtle and human relationship was a dumb move to start with.

The series had potential if it had the bugs cleaned off the windshield it would have been half decent.

And yes, removing the pointless honks and squeeks during the fights would have helped.

===HERO

I agree, the sound effects were utterly pointless and stupid, the same applies to venus in my opinion.
The Turtle costumes weren't bad though.

It's good to see I'm not the only one who found the sound effects terrible. I really do like this series. I recently got 2 DVDs of it (I had East Meets West before) and watched the whole series although I'm missing 3 episodes.
Definitely cheesy, but its alright. It gets REALLY silly though. The sound effects I found extremely irritating I noticed that there seemed to be more in the later episodes. Every little action came with an annoying sound like a sheep or honk.
I like most of the characters apart from those 2 little vampire kids. Venus is okay but during the fight scene in the play park she recites all these stupid jokes non-stop in a way that isn't funny, you just want to facepalm. She makes it more interesting though sometimes its too focused on her. I despise Bonesteel as well but he certainly has his moments.

Shredder's costume is daft but I'm glad they had the Foot in the series. I know some people think it can't possibly follow on from the movies because of what happened to Shredder in Turtles 2. He could've easily survived the dock collapsing on him especially as he was in mutated form.

Overall I like the series but there are many problems. The sound effects are a BIG problem. The absence of April really takes away from it as well.

Weapons
 

And the turtles seldom use their weapons. They use them more in the 1987 cartoon, even if it's often just to disarm their enemies.

I got to...
http://blip.tv/file/1257413
and
http://blip.tv/file/1257457

The Next Mutation
 

And why is the show called "The Next Mutation"? Does it refer to Venus or what?

It could be true but I wouldn't put much stock in rumours of a second season with April and Casey. The reason she wasn't in it in the first place was because Kevin wanted to retire the character for awhile.

I'm also in the camp that hated the sound effects. I know the series gets compared to Power Rangers a lot but seriously even at the beginning Power Rangers had a lot more to it and by the time of the Next Mutation was telling much better stories.

Stylisticaly speaking when you hit a power ranger sparks flew off them, it didn't make weird noises. If anything the Next Mutation is what PR would be if they did an episode centered around the Bulk and Skull slapstick.

Pretty much, yes.

It was a name that was kicking around anyway. It was the name of one of the early concepts kevin and Peter were working on for the fourth movie were the turtles would have a secondary mutation which gave each one an individual power.

I guess it was just a cool sounding name that Kevin chose to keep for the live action series.

Next Mutation
 

But that never happened in "Next Mutation". Instead it was in the 1987 cartoon from season 9 (1995) the Ninja Turtles' mutations were unstable and they were like monster turtles sometimes.

yea and we will never know if the turtles would have had a new mutation in the next mutation.

The Serie was also shown in Germany & Austria in 1999. Recently I had a talk with the german Voice of the Dragonlord. He told that, when he and dub director first have seen the series they knew that it would be complettly trash, so they tried to give the series a darker tone by making the dub a bit more serious. Well I told him that they failed and he said 'Yes, I know:lol:!'

But it's still fun watch the series when it airs on german networks ^^