The UK TMNT Treatment
 

Thought I'd basicly give you guys a thread where I and others can throw in all the details on how exactly "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles" was handled on television and other mediums over here. Feel free to chime in with your stories and fil in a few gaps I may be missing on.

From my own personal experiance, here's how I viewed TMHT growing up

BBC

The home of Turtles on terrestrial television for much of the 90s. It aired on Saturday mornings as part of weekend magazine show "Going Live" before becoming a weekly attraction on your average schoolday on BBC ONE. Only seasons two and three aired on the channel.

SKY

Aired as part of "The DJ Kat Show" on SKY ONE. Sky's now defunct "The Movie Channel" once aired the notorious "movie version" of the first season "The Epic Begins". To date, this is the only time that film was availible in the UK. Here's a trailer for it



BRAVO

Aired all of seasons two and three, and some choice episodes of season four as well as a couple of eps from season ten, all out of chronological order.

FOX KIDS UK

Aired the first five episodes of season ten as a cobbled together feature length movie called "The Return of Dregg", which aired multiple times througout the remainder of 1999 and for a few months in 2000.

VHS

Tempo Video was in charge of the TMHT video releases. Many of the episodes were often out of chronological order (as was the case with a LOT of video releases for cartoons back then across the US and UK). I only owned about three video releases ("How It All Began" "Invasion of the Punk Frogs/New Yorks Shiniest",. and "Green With Jealousy/Sky Turtles/The Maltease Hamster") and rented the rest. Most of the later seasons (which the BBC werent showing) were availible here

"How It All Began" is actually notorious as being the worst put-together TMNT "movie" complination of all time. It basicly takes "Blast From The Past"' and inappropriatly lumbers it with "Return of the Shredder" and three chapters of The Eye of Zarnoth Saga (it cuts off after "The Mean Machines" for god's sake). The episodes on each tape were the heavily edited versions seen on television.

DVD

Most of you are aware of this release, it came out in 2009 as part of the anniversary celebrations. Pretty much the same as the Region One TMNT releases with the same extras

Were they ever referred to as ninjas on the show?

I'd really like to see the season 10 "movie." I was astonished at what was missing from The Epic Begins, and I'm sure this would be a trip.

EDIT: Looks like I need to see How It All Began, too.

Wow, that is nuts!

Good find though. And thanks for the info!

"How It All Began" is such a mess. It doesnt even start at the beggining of "Blast From The Past", it begins right in the middle of it, with Leonardo beggining the flashbacks while Splinter lies dazed and confused...the viewer is NOT informed as to why he's suffering from memory loss, and Raphael's abscense isnt explained either, not even when Mikey says "he's getting seriously thrashed right now". When Splinter does recover his memory, jumps up and says "OF COURSE", we then cut immeditly into "Return of the Shredder" and a shot of The Technodrome in Dimension X. Now, "Blast From The Past"'s flashbacks never included the sequence where the Turtles banished The Technodrome to Dimension X, so it doesnt appear here either, leaving any new viewer confused as to where The Technodrome is supposed to be.

The Eye of Zarnoth bits? OH. BOY. The "Return of the Shredder" sequence cuts off just as April and the cops arrive at the warehouse, and begins in the middle of "The Incredible Shrinking Turtles"...omiting the entire introduction of the alien and the basic set-up of the plot. "It Came From Beneath The Sewers" omits the entire third act of the episode and ends with the battle with Shredder at his hideout, but the plant's initial attack on the lair is preserved. There's little taken out of "The Mean Machines"...except, again, the beggining of the ep.

Normally the word "Ninja" was omited in dialouge, so characters would end up saying "Teenage Mutant...Turtles"

I've been comparing the movie (or "omnibus" to be more precise), with the transmitted versions. It's roughly all intact

Great Oogly Moogly! That's a real mess, indeed! Edits like that are even worse than the early U.S.A. hack-jobs on the Dragonball Z series! It's amazing that the Turtles actually managed to hit it big in the UK in spite of terrible marketing decisions like that!

It was somehow OK to call them ninjas in the above advert.

Yeah, that's what I thought. As living in the UK I only knew them as Hero Turtles. When the movies and 2003 came out, then it was known as Ninja Turtles and I can't believe how much was cut out over here.

I always kind of dug the "Hero Turtles" version of the title sequence, not just because I grew up with it, but because it showed a nice range of action scenes in it, and it managed to include Krang , who is absent in the U.S version (despite Shredder and The Technodrome being present)

Not in dialogue, but when the word was seen (like "Ninja Pizza") it was unobscured.

I was never a huge fan of the British version of the OT. I'd been reading the Mirage & Archie (well, published by Fleetway over here) comics and was disappointed by the lighter tone, not to mention often confused by the BBC's seemingly random cuts.

When I finally saw the unedited series (only about 7-8 years ago) I was surprised at how visible Mike's nunchucks were, especially in the early seasons. Very rarely, the censor'd let a brief glimpse of the 'chucks through, but they were few and far between. Then again, considering they were even banned from being shown in 18-rated films, that's not too surprising...

I was never a fan of the cartoon anyhow, regardless of Hero or Ninja censorship here, and removal of the nunchuks. I'd already read the original early comics, so there was no comparison by the time I got to see the cartoon :P

So what? I read the comics when I was a kid and there honestly nothing special. The cartoon was way better by comparison. All the comics had were mindless killing and naff stories.

When i was a kid and Penguin books published the first graphic novels over here it made the cartoon seem so lame and the fleetway comics where full of naff storys and the artwork was so crap compared to eastman & laird`s early work.

The Epic Begins which was shown on the Movie Channel did keep the name and references to ninja but still cuts out Mike's nunchuks. It uses a bizarre cut of the original theme song which omitts the decriptions of each turtle "Leonardo leads" etc...

The theatrical movies all kept the ninja name and it wouldn't be uncommon for the odd bit of merchendise to slip through with the name intact. For example I played the arcade game which had the original logo.

A few things that Zarius missed is that when satellite tv was first launched in the UK there were two companies SKY and BSB. The show aired on the childrens block on BSB's Galaxy Channel. It seemed out of place as the only then "current" cartoon they aired. I'm guessing getting the rights must have been a big coup for them as it was always featured on commercials enticing
people to go for BSB.

Both companies had financial difficulty but BSB was by far the less popular of the two so when the two companies merged it was SKY who kept their channels and the popular shows ended up on SKY with the turtles airing on SKY1's DJ Kat show as Zarius said.

Another thing about Bravo's downright bizarre treatment of the turtles is that it originaly aired Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation East Meets West around the same time the show debuted on Fox Kids. Then after that aired Beginning of the End from Season 10 of the Fred Wolf show but with the US "ninja" version of the theme song intact before airing episodes of seasons 2 and 3.

All the cabinet artwork for the arcade games was changed to "Hero", but the games themselves were the same as the US/World versions.

I liked the Fleetway comics, although I agree that the original stories were pretty poor.

@Zarius - the original comics have way more than "mindless killing and naff stories" - sure, the first issue was a bit OTT with the violence, but the stories were on a par with the best of Marvel & DC's output at the time, and often a lot darker and more complex...

This. Except I experienced it the other way around as whoever it was who had the graphic novels had gotten them from the US (the First Publishing versions) and it was before I ever watched the cartoon.

Tempo Video's How It All Began video was terrible! What's odd is that some cuts either keep a freeze frame on Splinter's introduction to Michaelangelo or keep the whole thing intact depending on which copy you rented.

I'd also like to add The Movie Channel showed the Planet of the Turtleoids TV movie which then aired some time after that on Sky One. I think it was shown late 1992 on a Saturday afternoon, there was a TV spot for it actually, shown about 3.00pm with new Inspector Gadget immediately after it. I have the special taped.

Despite the differences, there were still some advantages to being a Hero Turtles fan as opposed to a Ninja Turtles fan. According to the NinjaTurtles25Years site, the European Vacation episodes first aired around Christmas of 1992, nearly a year before the originally aired on USA in its namesake country. Some episodes also made it onto VHS only in the UK, such as Catwoman From Channel Six, 20,000 Leaks Under the City, The Fifth Turtle, Green With Jealousy, and Return of the Technodrome. Sure they were edited, but still the only way to enjoy an "official" release without having to record manually. Not to mention all of the other miscellaneous toys that were never around, and can be a great way to make it a true global fandom.

On the downside of being a Turtles fan in the UK, the American audience got the full run of TMNT Adventures while the UK fans got a hodgepodge of Archie mixed in with random one-shots...

Which I have come to appreciate, by the way.:tcool:

Yes, I remember. Sky One showed the European episodes over Christmas 1992/New Year 1993. I remember because shortly after this I moved house and wasn't able to get Sky so these are the last new episodes I was able to watch. I recall being quite disappointed that it was a replacement voice for Raphael instead of the usual Rob Paulsen.

By the way does any one have a complete list of all Turtles episodes released on home video (maybe with images?) in the UK. I didn't know some later season episodes were released here and I'm interested in seeing what the UK got.