Baxter Stockman As Shredder's Assistant
 

Baxter Stockman is forced to mass produce his creation for The Shredder against his will. So Baxter is not actually evil at least as shown in episode three, A Thing About Rats". Shredder even moved to have him killed. Why pick Baxter Stockman out of the asylum story-wise then? Creative-wise I always wondered why have him be Shredder's help for a mere 6 episodes only to remove him and have what would become the traditional Bebop and Rocksteady accompany Shredder on every mission? It seems like it would have been either long-term or not done at all. I was curious if David Wise, Fred Wolf, or another mentioned why have Baxter on and then have him mutate into a fly of all things before leaving the show as a regular. Thank you for any incite.

I would've preferred that Baxter had stayed on as part of Shredder and Krang's crew. It would've made for a more ideal four against four.

Where are you getting 4x4? Shredder, Krang, Stockman, Bebop, and Rocksteady are five... or, if you're not including the hench mutants, then it's still 3x4, not 4x4. :tconfuse:

R&B counts as one person, hence why they always loose on what movies to watch during movie nights.

"sorry brah, you two only count as one. So, that's 1 count for Titanic versus 3 counts for Surfs Nazis Must Die."

I cannot see B&R wanting to watch Titanic. Well, except for maybe the PG13 boobies. :tlol:

"The Rundown" or "The Losers" seems more like their style...

behind that hard exterior B&R are big marshmallows.

Somebody's been reading too much Archie and not enough IDW! :tlol:

Krang rarely ever joined the battle. Krang was involved in the battle about as often as Splinter was. So if we're counting Krang, then Splinter would make it 5x5. In the episode where Baxter became a fly, Shredder even stated that now their battle would be four against four.

Good point; Krang was usually a background threat after the whole "Giant Krang Stomping Through NY" story...

I guess that coulda been cool, even if he was just the in-house lab guy & mutant maker, as he is in the Nick series. Whatever, one just remedies the other. :)

It was silly how when Baxter and Shredder met at the asylum, Baxter acted like a villain all of a sudden. After all the whackiness he had to endure in "A Thing About Rats", who wouldn't have gone insane? It's like what happened to Chronos.

See, that is what gets me. He was not evil in his first appearance. He just reluctantly went along with Shredder's plan for the sake of his own life. He was a victim. It would be assumed he attempted to explain things to authorities when evidence of his rejected creation torn down at least two buildings. Blaming it on a masked man and four humanoid turtles is likely what landed him in an asylum. Yet in Attack of The Killer Pizzas the announcer at the festival knew who he was and no one reacted negatively or authorities take action seeing him in public when drawing the names for the three free pizzas.

I am curious to what creators had intended for his character in the second season. If he was used as a transition to the Shredder carrying out Krang's plans with Bebop and Rocksteady bumbling aiding him and if he was always meant to take inspiration from The Fly remake two years prior.

That's right!! I forgot about Baxter drawing the winning pizzas in that episode. And I just recently watched it too. :/ Or maybe by then everyone knew how dangerous Shredder was so they didn't want to risk getting hurt. After all, the Turtles were still fugitives despite saving the city all those times prior.

Considering the love from writers towards the 1950s sci-fi movies I'm pretty sure turning Baxter into a fly was paying homage to the 1958 movie which is referenced a fair bit throughout the cartoon. Compare Andre's fate at the end of The Fly to Baxter's in Bye Bye Fly and they're exactly the same. The best people to ask about turning Baxter in a fly is either Michael Reaves or Brynne Chandler who wrote Enter The Fly.

The show never seemed to be consistent with how people reacted to the Turtles. Sometimes people on the street would treat them like they were super heroes. Then there was other times that people would run screaming like they were monsters.

I'd never fully thought about Baxter staying with the Technidrome squad until this thread. Probably because I was too busy feeling awful for him after he was mutated, and especially with his final episode.
And thus, we had two more generations of Baxter Stockman the Doormat.

Though, consider this:

Pat Fraley gets kicks James Avery around, so James Avery kicks Other Pat Fraley around. Three's a crowd in that chain of bickering. It would wear down its welcome a lot faster than Shredder and Krang's bickering, and even then, they managed to get along on at least a few small terms, more and more over time. I don't think Baxter would have lasted long in that dynamic, and would probably only increase the dysfunctional family jokes.

April did explain on the fifth episode in the first season that opinion on the turtles were sharply divided. Some loved them, some hated them.

The public sort of knew about them after The Big Blow Out so were less scared of them.