Talkback: Laird's 2k3 development notes!

[Jester]

Re: The following:

Originally Posted by Peter Laird's TMNT Blog

3.) Re: the following:

"MICHELANGELO
But then, none of you is Michelangelo…
(“Kung Fu” overtones)
“He who moves like the shadow.”"

As I think it is a great recurring gag to have Mikey tout his BattleNexus championship whenever possible, perhaps it would be fun to add it here, as follows:
MICHELANGELO
But then, none of you is Michelangelo… BattleNexus Champion! And...
(“Kung Fu” overtones)
“He who moves like the shadow.”"

IT WAS HIM!!! It was Laird who made Mikey a complete joke after winning the Battle Nexus. Thanks a lot, Pete.

[oldmanwinters]

Originally Posted by Jester

Re: The following:


IT WAS HIM!!! It was Laird who made Mikey a complete joke after winning the Battle Nexus. Thanks a lot, Pete.

Imma gonna defend Peter on this point.

The Battle Nexus taunting was something that was always intended to be portrayed as annoying and it was something that got on the rest of the turtles nerves. Mikey had a nice moment of maturity in Grudge Match, so if his ego had been corrected right there, we might have been out of the woods for the next 3 seasons. Unfortunately, they took Mikey's immaturity over being an champion and then expanded it to every aspect of his personality to the point where Mikey became a self-absorbed, insensitive twerp by the Fast Forward and BttS seasons. However, I think the Battle Nexus taunting was entirely consistent with his personality as it had been established up to that point.

[Jester]

Just playin' Winters. If he had matured after the whole Grunge Match episode, he'd have been fine. Sadly the idiot 4Kids writers beat the joke to death worse than me and gobo....wait, wha?

[oldmanwinters]

Originally Posted by Jester

Spoiler:

That's one of my all-time favorite sound bites!

So if anything, we can blame Peter Laird for giving the writers the horse with which they beat to death. It will be interesting to see how much involvement Laird had beyond the fifth season. Perhaps once he was out of the way, he wasn't there to stop them for destroying Mikey's personality.

[CyberCubed]

I really wish PL would skip ahead to the Fast Forward episodes. I am REALLY interested to see how they came up with the concepts for some of the new characters and story ideas.

Some of the stuff was really stupid, and I'm surprised PL didn't make them change it like we see in this Seasons 3 and 4 scripts.

[BubblyShell22]

Yeah, I'd like to see that, too, but we'll have to wait and see if he made any comments regarding those eps.

[oldmanwinters]

Looks like Lloyd Goldfine made a successive pitch to get us a second "Nobody" episode!
http://peterlairdstmntblog.blogspot....004-re-fw.html

Also, some commentary on how to circumvent the BS&P standards!

[TheSkeletonMan939]

Originally Posted by oldmanwinters

Looks like Lloyd Goldfine made a successive pitch to get us a second "Nobody" episode!
http://peterlairdstmntblog.blogspot....004-re-fw.html

Also, some commentary on how to circumvent the BS&P standards!

What does BS&P stand for?

[BubblyShell22]

BS&P stands for Broadcast Standards and Practices.

[The Big Bad]

While BS&P restrictions on guns annoy me as much as they apparently annoy Laird, I'm not sure I understand his point here. Part of the point of this and the previous Nobody episode is that laser weapons are slowly becoming mainstream among criminals (which makes a certain amount of sense, given things like power-settings and the lack of incriminating rifling marks). Once that happens, I'm not sure how using laser weapons is any harder to use or more technical than using good ol' projectile weaponry.

On a related note, I'm a bit surprised at Goldfine's assertion that the weapons used by H.A.T.E. in that episode were meant to be laser weapons; it sure didn't seem that way in the episode itself. Similarly, these back-and-forths give the impression that B&SP rules regarding firearms were more stringent than they appeared to be, and that the show wasn't allowed to use "real" guns at all. It doesn't quite jive with what was presented on the show, since by this point we'd had at least one wild-west shootout with real revolvers (albeit one that was fictional within the universe, and was storyboarded to leave the actual moment where the weapons fired off-screen) and guns that, while not particularly realistic-looking, were ambiguous enough to allow the audience to believe what they wanted regarding them. Likewise, there's the "Mission of Gravity" script draft which explicitly references machine bullets being ineffective against Chaplin's Mousers; while the episode itself has the guns' muzzle flash be light purple (instead of the traditional yellow/orange), suggesting some BS&P interference, the fact that it was included at all suggests that the rules weren't as simple as "no real guns" ever. It's interesting.

[TheSkeletonMan939]

If I recall correctly, guns were used in "The Golden Puck", and Bishop's arm-turret thingy in "Aliens Among Us" shot what seemed like bullets.

[oldmanwinters]

Early concept art for The Ancient One:
http://peterlairdstmntblog.blogspot....st-3-2004.html

I kinda like that design best, it makes him look less like a midget sumo wrestler.

[The Big Bad]

Originally Posted by oldmanwinters

Early concept art for The Ancient One:
http://peterlairdstmntblog.blogspot....st-3-2004.html

I kinda like that design best, it makes him look less like a midget sumo wrestler.

Not quite: that's the design used for the flashback segment of "Tale of Master Yoshi".

I reeeeeally hope that updates for "Samurai Tourist" include the character model for Gen. We've already got Usagi and Tomoe Ame, so I'd just need him to complete the Usagi Yojimbo power trio.

[oldmanwinters]

Originally Posted by The Big Bad

Not quite: that's the design used for the flashback segment of "Tale of Master Yoshi".

I reeeeeally hope that updates for "Samurai Tourist" include the character model for Gen. We've already got Usagi and Tomoe Ame, so I'd just need him to complete the Usagi Yojimbo power trio.

Doh! My bad! Funny thing is that Laird's title for the file is "AncientOne."

[BubblyShell22]

Yay! I liked reading about two of my favorite eps from season four. That was really cool. Even though they didn't use Pete's idea for how the AO would be revealed, I liked the way they did it in the episode itself. The flashbacks were just so cool and very powerful.

[oldmanwinters]

Email problem concerning AOL:
http://peterlairdstmntblog.blogspot....re-nothin.html

Big collection of posts covering the last half of Season 4:
http://peterlairdstmntblog.blogspot....st-5-2004.html

The funniest part of this exchange was how Laird was trying hard to convince 4Kids that Raph should be the infected/mutated turtle as opposed to Donatello. He makes the totally believable case that it would be a good tie-in with the Mirage comics storyline and even tries to root the argument in characterization. But I just think it's obvious that Don's his favorite turtle.

[Jester]

I think the best part of the "Donnie becomes the Gamera rip-off" idea is the story concept about how lost the rest of the family is...if it were anyone else, as Leo himself says, Donnie would have whipped up a cure no problem. This is one I'm glad Laird lost.

EDIT:
Episode 97 sounds like a sad attempt by the 4kids writers to rip off Almost Got 'im an episode where Batman's rogues gallery sits around playing poker, also betting on the best "I almost got Batman" story. When did Malignus and Touch and Go ever face off against all 4 Turtles?

[oldmanwinters]

Originally Posted by Jester

I think the best part of the "Donnie becomes the Gamera rip-off" idea is the story concept about how lost the rest of the family is...if it were anyone else, as Leo himself says, Donnie would have whipped up a cure no problem. This is one I'm glad Laird lost.

I agree with you. It really shows how essential Donny is to the group when he is out of commission (I think we also see evidence of that fact when Shredder took over the world after he "disappeared" for years in SaiNW). When Raph goes Gamera, business proceeds more or less as usual.

Originally Posted by Jester

EDIT:
Episode 97 sounds like a sad attempt by the 4kids writers to rip off Almost Got 'im an episode where Batman's rogues gallery sits around playing poker, also betting on the best "I almost got Batman" story. When did Malignus and Touch and Go ever face off against all 4 Turtles?

Oh, yeah, the final script ended up drastically different than the initial pitch, didn't it?

[Xav]

I don't think that episode got a final script. It sounded a bit like Night of the Rogues. Also I think you can still hate the Turtles even if you didn't fight them all at once.

[BubblyShell22]

I'm glad it was Don who got mutated as it showed a different side to the dynamics of what Don contributes to the team and how vital it was to help him.