Could the Fred Wolf cartoon have broken continuity too seriously?

[neatoman]

I know the title may seem weird and maybe a little hard to understand, so allow me to explain.

Fairly recently, I debated the value of continuity in the Fred Wolf cartoon and argued that even though the show wasn't very big on continuity, to some extent it must matter because the show isn't a total anthology. Since it follows what are ostensibly the same versions of the same characters, and does indeed make episodes that are direct sequels, then the show can't really afford to have rather heavy contradictions like showing Krang is from a race of Brain-like creatures in one episode and claim he was originally a Reptilian creature in another. The other guy disagreed and went so far as to claim continuity didn't even matter within season 1, even though season 1 is a five-parter and thus isn't episodic enough to defend in such a matter.

While I can understand continuity being kept somewhat loose, like keeping a floating timeline or not following up on certain characters introduced, I find it difficult to believe anyone is so disinterested in continuity to the point where the core plot or the main characters' backstories can be contradicted.

The Simpsons is a show that has never been big on continuity either but what's arguably first episode that was reviled, was so precisely because the episode broke continuity.

Spoiler:

So, Is there really no way the show could have broken continuity and you wouldn't have been OK with it?

Here's an extreme example that could have happened:
Let's say the show decided it wanted synergy with the movie because it did so well and didn't bother to explain any of the changes made. Suddenly Splinter started out as a pet rat, the Foot Clan consists of runaway teens, Bebop and Rocksteady are replaced with Tokka and Rahzar, the Ooze suddenly came from TGRI rather than the Technodrome, April now works for Channel 3/Charles rather than Channel 6/Thompson, Casey Jones is now a main character and acts more like his movie counterpart, etc.

Essentially, if the show had become "The Movies: The Animated Series" without explaining any of the changes while still clearly being the same show rather than a reboot or sequel to the movies, would you have accepted that? Because if you say yes to that question, I am really curious as to how you could think such a drastic change would be acceptable, especially if it has no in-universe explaination.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by neatoman

I know the title may seem weird and maybe a little weird, so allow me to explain.

Fairly recently, I debated the value of continuity in the Fred Wolf cartoon and argued that even though the show wasn't very big on continuity, to some extent it must matter because the show isn't a total anthology. Since it follows what are ostensibly the same versions of the same characters, and does indeed make episodes that are direct sequels, then the can't really afford to have rather heavy contradictions like showing Krang is from a race of Brain-like creatures in one episode and claim he was originally a Reptilian creature in another. The other guy disagreed and went so far as to claim continuity didn't even matter within season 1, even though season 1 is a five-parter and thus isn't episodic enough to defend in such a matter.

While I can understand continuity being kept somewhat loose, like keeping a floating timeline or not following up on certain characters introduced, I find it difficult to believe anyone is so disinterested in continuity to the point where the core plot or the main characters' backstories can be contradicted.

The Simpsons is a show that has never been big on continuity either but what's arguably first episode that was reviled, was so precisely because the episode broke continuity.

Spoiler:

So, Is there really no way the show could have broken continuity and you wouldn't have been OK with it?

Here's an extreme example that could have happened:
Let's say the show decided it wanted synergy with the movie because it did so well and didn't bother to explain any of the changes made. Suddenly Splinter started out as a pet rat, the Foot Clan consists of runaway teens, Bebop and Rocksteady are replaced with Tokka and Rahzar, the Ooze suddenly came from TGRI rather than the Technodrome, April now works for Channel 3/Charles rather than Channel 6/Thompson, Casey Jones is now a main character and acts more like his movie counterpart, etc.

Essentially, if the show had become "The Movies: The Animated Series" without explaining any of the changes while still clearly being the same show rather than a reboot or sequel to the movies, would you have accepted that? Because if you say yes to that question, I am really curious as to how you could think such a drastic change would be acceptable, especially if it has no in-universe explaination.

It would have been incredibly jarring of course, even as kids.


Oddly enough, even though the live action movies were so different from the cartoon, I always imagined it was done that way cause it woulda been way too expensive to do the Techndrome, Krang, Bebop and Rocksteady and robot Foot Soldiers, and woulda been easier to just use human Foot Soldiers and I guess Casey was used cause it's easier to use another human than another mutant, and all the focus could go on making the Turtles themselves look good.

I never knew, at the time, that it was adapting a slightly more grounded indie comic book. I thought the changes were because it woulda cost too much to stick closer to the cartoon.

[Leo656]

Haha, I kinda thought that as a kid, too.

Once I realized I didn't even miss Krang, the Technodrome, Bebop and Rocksteady, etc., that was probably the moment I realized I was "outgrowing" the cartoon show. I'd always loved the cartoon just fine, but once I saw the first movie it was like, "Yeah, it'd be a lot better if everything was more like this." I slowly started drifting away from the cartoon after that; I kept watching it but not as religiously anymore. By the end I wasn't even aware that they'd cancelled it. It just wasn't what I wanted from the brand anymore.

Anyways, I don't have anything to offer to the main point of the thread itself.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

I would've not been okay with the show breaking continuity by making Splinter a rat. And the show never broke continuity to that extent.

It always had some continuity throughout its run, even if it was basic as the location of the technodrome. There was a clear beginning, middle and end to the shows timeline, guest characters frequently made re-appearances and the events of past episodes were mentioned frequently.

[Leo656]

Right, correct, but all of that kind of runs contrary to the claims of some people that "The FW cartoon had no serious interest in continuity, and furthermore that's part of what I liked about it." And I think that's kind of the point neatoman was trying to make. Such claims are rather contradicted by the show itself. The show DID have continuity, albeit very loosely-structured most of the time.

Unless I'm mistaken, that was part of the point of neatoman's post. Someone claimed the show never concerned itself with continuity and were praising that as a virtue, and neatoman is pointing out how that simply isn't factually correct, that while the show wasn't entirely strict with the continuity, it WAS there and without it the show would have been even "worse" than it was, because the continuity WAS there and people DID in fact care about it, at least a little bit.

If I'm wrong though, neato, feel free to correct me.

[Sumac]

Originally Posted by neatoman

So, Is there really no way the show could have broken continuity and you wouldn't have been OK with it?

Unlikely for me.
Even though the show maintained some sort of basic continuity, they also were constantly breaking some details here and there.
So, writers were clearly willing to break timelines and details, when they saw fit.

Originally Posted by neatoman

Essentially, if the show had become "The Movies: The Animated Series" without explaining any of the changes while still clearly being the same show rather than a reboot or sequel to the movies, would you have accepted that? Because if you say yes to that question, I am really curious as to how you could think such a drastic change would be acceptable, especially if it has no in-universe explaination.

I mean, FW series basically did this with its tone, in the last seasons and some people were / are OK with it.

So, if they moved into being "The Movies: The Animated Series" I am sure, a lot of people would be OK with it. Not sure about myself, it largely depends on a tone of the show.

Also, I want to remind about The New Adventures of Batman in relation to the Batman TAS, which had redesigned multiple characters without any explanation. And it was accepted and didn't cause massive problems, AFAIK.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Right, correct, but all of that kind of runs contrary to the claims of some people that "The FW cartoon had no serious interest in continuity, and furthermore that's part of what I liked about it." And I think that's kind of the point neatoman was trying to make. Such claims are rather contradicted by the show itself. The show DID have continuity, albeit very loosely-structured most of the time.

Unless I'm mistaken, that was part of the point of neatoman's post. Someone claimed the show never concerned itself with continuity and were praising that as a virtue, and neatoman is pointing out how that simply isn't factually correct, that while the show wasn't entirely strict with the continuity, it WAS there and without it the show would have been even "worse" than it was, because the continuity WAS there and people DID in fact care about it, at least a little bit.

If I'm wrong though, neato, feel free to correct me.

Thats true, and I'm not among those people who say "zero care and continuity" whenever the cartoon is brought up. It would be more accurate to say that you can jump into almost any episode aside from the Red Sky ones and not be too lost, as the basic premises of the show is pretty simple and doesn't require too much prior explanation.

[sdp]

Continuity didn't really become more of a thing until the 00's at least an important part. 90s shows usually had better continuity than previous decades, 80s besides a few exceptions was pretty bad and anything before the 80s had basically very little.

So for the time the 1987 had way more continuity and even season arcs than shows of the time. I read a little bit of the other thread and yeah it was ridiculous what that user was trying to argue.

Even heavily serialized shows have big continuity problems, sagas like Star Wars and whatnot. It's silly to dismiss the 1987 as if it had no continuity.

Originally Posted by neatoman

then the show can't really afford to have rather heavy contradictions like showing Krang is from a race of Brain-like creatures in one episode and claim he was originally a Reptilian creature in another.

No contradiction there, the episode where Krang is from a race of brain like creatures is still correct, hell the 2012 crossover basically makes it canon that they're all Utroms. Krang states that he wanted his "body" in the first season and that body turned out to be a robot body.

Yeah the reptilian episode implies that it is meant to be his "real" body, but it's only ever implied and never explicitly said. Knowing what we know now and how it contradicts the previous episode we can assume easily that the reptilian is not his real body and it doesn't contradict anything the show says.

The other popular continuity mistake is the show has 2 Atlantis, that's a bigger whoopsie but the fanon theory is that Atlantis is really big and they're just from different areas of Atlantis.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by sdp

The other popular continuity mistake is the show has 2 Atlantis, that's a bigger whoopsie but the fanon theory is that Atlantis is really big and they're just from different areas of Atlantis.

The Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean from Atlantis Awakes was probably the real. What we saw in The Lost Queen in Atlantis was probably just a colony island of Atlantis in the Mediterranean Sea wehre Atlantean explorer once settled. That colony island then sank, thousands of years ago.