2003 TMNT Utrom Shredder

I already responded to this topic back in the Turtles Forever thread but I'll restate it here. Shredder was meant to be an Utrom from the beginning, aside from just taking Laird's word for it, practically everyone of the Shredder's season one appearances hinted at a connection between him and the Utroms. Indeed his main goal was to find and hunt down his alien enemies, the turtles just kept getting caught in the crossfire.

Darkness on the Edge of Town: In this the sixth episode of the season one, we see the first hints of Saki's true nature. While sparring with his Foot ninja, Saki is virtually topless save for his abdomen which is conspicuously bandaged. It's also the debut episode for the Sword of Tengu, an artifact of Utrom origin which the Foot uses to recover an Utrom exosuit.

The Way of Invisibility: This episode first introduces us to the Utrom Council and their mysterious.protectors, the Guardians. Both the Guardians and the Council are established as being old foes of the Shredder. Saki also makes his first proactive attack on the turtles, working under the assumption that they are allies of the Utroms. When he discovers they are not, he decides to try and recruit them instead.

The Shredder Strikes: In this episode which features the first real appearance of Oroku Saki in his Shredder persona, he attempts to recruit Leonardo to his cause. Saki claims to be fighting an insidious alien enemy that has infiltrated human society. Although he doesn't explicitly say so, it's clear he's referring to the Utroms.

Notes from The Underground: The plot of this episode revolves around an underground Foot lab, tasked by Saki with excavating a technologically advanced subterranean city. Saki at first believes this to be an Utrom stronghold, when it becomes clear that the city has no connection to the Utroms, Saki terminates the project completely.

Return to New York: Aside from the famous decapitation scene and it's aftermath, this episode also contains the first clue that Saki is older then he looks. Shredder himself tells us that he once used the Sword of Tengu to conquer Japan and give power to the Tokugawa Clan. The Tokugawa Clan was a real dynasty of Shoguns that ruled Japan during the sixteenth century.

Now whether you think Utrom Shredder was a good idea is an entirely different question and much more subjective. I admit I was a little thrown by it at first, but in time I became quite fond of Ch'rell, psychopathic little Jellyfish that he is. But there can be no doubt that Ch'rell was part of the show runners master plan from the beginning.
 
Yes, it was planned from the beginning.

Exhibit A: The Sword of Tengu, introduced in episode 6, "Darkness at the Edge of Town" with the oh-so-distinctive lil' sculted Utrom at the base of the hilt. Given that everything that we eventually learn of the sword suggests that the Shredder created it (which eventually turns out to be the case), there's little reason for it to be there unless he were an utrom himself.

Exhibit B: The decapitation. Given the violence standards during the show's first season (humans couldn't be explicitly killed, swords couldn't be used), there's no way it would have been allowed...unless the Shredder wasn't human(oid) at all.

Ironically, the most damning bit of evidence suggesting that the Shredder was not meant to be an Utrom is that the possibility was raised too early in "Secret Origins", in a way more reminiscent of a red herring than the actual eventual reveal. However, that turned out to be simple bad writing.
 
ABrown, are you calling Laird and the people behind this series liars?

The fact is the clues were there. The fact is they have outright said they intended it from the beginning. That is the reality. And, facts aren't really a democracy. I'm sorry, but the following link is very appropriate.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/24039/october-17-2005/the-word---truthiness

You can poll an opinion, but you cannot poll a fact.

I could just as easily make a post and a poll asking if Daffy Duck was originally meant to be a hedgehog, and say why I think he was meant to be a hedgehog. Never mind that there is no real evidence there, and the creators never said anything of the kind.

You may hate the idea, and that is fine. However, that doesn't mean you can just disregard what were in your face clues, and imply that the creators are liars. If you don't like Ch'rell, just say so... that's your right. But you shouldn't be concocting conspiracy theories.
 
I dont have the picture anymore but in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles videogame you could unnlock all the scetches and character modal artwork and and a note pointing at Shredder stomach said "Utrom Opening". So even before the episodes were animated the utrom idea was inplace so no it was not just made up. Just as others have said theres tons of proof
 
I think a more interesting and productive topic would be what we all thought of the Utrom Shredder concept and how it was executed. It was after all a pretty big departure from previous turtle-lore. And I'm curious how people reacted to the reveal initially and whether their opinions on Ch'rell have changed over the years.
 
See, I view the decapitation as evidence in my favor. I could absolutely have seen someone at 4Kids having viewed the scene and saying that there was no way that Shredder getting decapitated was going to stand. So they changed it to a robot exosuit getting decapitated.



It's just that after watching the first couple of seaons, I just have a very hard time believing that it was planned from the beginning.

For those who do believe that the utrom shredder was planned from the begining, how do you answer a couple of questions that I'm having:

-Why did the head guardian not know that the shredder was an utrom in Return To New York:Part 3??? The entire reason for the guardians' existence was to protect the utroms from the shredder. And the head guardian doesn't even know that the shredder is utrom?? It just seems a little odd to me.

-Why was the shredder drinking tea or something in the first episode? It seemed like something that a human would do, but not an utrom exosuit.
 
How do you explain all that stuff I cited above. How do you explain Saki's obsession with the Utroms in virtually all his season one appearences. Practically everthing Saki did in season one, from stealing the Sword of Tengu to financing the underground genetics Lab to tempting Leo to the dark side was driven by one overriding goal: Find the Utroms and kill every last one of them.

Season one Shredder was all about the Utroms, they were the Moby Dick to his Ahab. Everthing he did revolved around Utroms. Heck, the only reason he cared about the Turtles at first was because he thought they were working for the Utroms.



What makes you think he didn't?



It could have have been pumped down to Ch'rell, straws ain't that hi-tech. Besides most of the Foot still believed Saki was human and he was posing as a respectable business man. It makes sense that he'd have a way to fake eating to better blend in with human society.
 
I think that a great explanation could've been great for Saki to have been a former guardian who was jealous of Yoshi's getting promoted to "guardian prime" a la "tale of master yoshi." That could've been accompanied by a lust for power which drove him to either join or create the foot.



In the episode titled "Search For Master Splinter:Part 1," I feel that it clearly shows that the head guardian thought that shredder was killed by Leo's decapitation. In the episode, the head guardian is surprised to see Shredder alive. He had reported to the utrom council that the shredder had perished. But he would've known that the shredder couldn't have died by cutting off the head of the exosuit.



That is a possible explanation. However, I personally saw it as an error. That's part of why I don't think that the shredder was originally intended to be an utrom.
 
And that might have been a good story in it's own right but it's not the one the writers had in mind. Look Peter Laird himself has said that Utrom Shredder was planned from the beginning, he even took partial credit for the idea. Why would he lie about that? If everyone hates Ch'rell so much, wouldn't it make more sense for him to shift the blame and say the 4Kids execs forced it on him against his will? Not only are you calling Laird a liar but you're calling him a stupid one as well.






except that the Guardians were still monitoring Foot HQ, which implies they weren't as confidant of their arch-nemesis' demise as you assume.



Look you obviously don't like the Utrom Shredder idea and that's perfectly fine, no one's criticizing you for that. But clearly Laird and co. were cool with it. Now you can disagree with that creative decision as much as you want. But it's another thing to assume these people secretly share your dislike of a character they created themselves.
 
But surely if they vetoed the decapitation wouldn't the writers just think of another way to 'kill' him (falling to darkness, explosion, etc) rather than rewriting their idea just to keep one shot? That just doesn't make sense.

Sure the decapitation was cool to see, but I doubt any half-decent writer would redo major plot points just for a cool scene.
 
I just want to make one final argument before I rest my case. How do people explain a couple of things in season two? I think much of season two had been written as well before when I feel that the creators decided to make the shredder an utrom. So in the second season, the ultimate ninja wanted to challenge oroku saki to a battle, since apparently Shredder was a battle nexus champion (as seen by the statue in the hall of former champions, or whatever it was called). However, Leonardo had killed the shredder in RTNY:Part 3. But Leo really didn't even kill him, Shredder was killed by his own utrom implosion device.

And futher more, it wouldn't have even made sense for the utrom shredder to have been competing in the battle nexus. It would've made much more sense for a human shredder to be competing there. Because if the utrom shredder had competed in the battle nexus he would've searched for alies like drako. Or even more likely he might've used the battle nexus to try to find a way to his "alies" that were waiting for him on another planet.

Later in season two, Leo blamed himself for the problems in the "City At War" episodes. Why would the problems with the Foot, Purple Dragons, and the mob be his fault? It's not his fault that the Shredder was killed. The Shredder was killed by his own utrom implosion device. And the Shredder was coming after the utroms in the "Secret Origins" episodes, not the turtles. And then Karai mentions the Foot would not come after the turtles for the Shredder's death. Why would the Foot blame the turtles for the Shredder's death, when really it was the utroms who would've been more to blame. All of this would make more sense if the Shredder would've died by being killed by Leo than what happened in "Secret Origins."

Again, I'm resting my case now. It's just my opinion that the shredder was originally intended to be a human. I didn't mean to cause any bad blood between any fellow rabroadrs. So I apologize if I did so.
 
With all due respect, it's not that everyone else is just blindly choosing to believe that Shredder was planned to be an Utrom from the start, but that it's nothing to be debated. The creator Peter Laird and the producers have stated unequivocally that Shredder was always an Utrom and that was their plan all along, so there's nothing to argue. The Captain's word is law. If the creators say that's the case, then that's the case.

An opinion can be debated but a fact cannot. You may not want that to be the case, but that is the case, because the people behind the show have said so. I'm not about to claim that I know more about the show than the people who worked on it.
 
Nowhere in the series do they ever state that Oroku Saki was a Battle Nexus champion, that is pure fanon. There is a statue that kinda looks like the Shredder if you just glance at it but closer inspection reveals it's just a dude in generic samurai armour. It doesn't even have the Shredder's trademark gauntlet blades. There's a screenshot of the statue in question near the bottom of this page if you want to see for yourself.

http://www.ninjaturtles.com/cartoon/2003/synopses/49.html

At any rate Splinter was the reigning Battle Nexus Champion at the time, so it wouldn't have made sense to challenge Saki for a title he no longer possessed. And Leonardo still defeated the Shredder in single combat which was the important thing not Ch'rell getting himself blown up afterwards.



And a human Shredder wouldn't have tried to seek out allies or manipulate the tournament to his own advantage because..? Anyway it's a moot point as there's no evidence any version of the Shredder ever competed in the Battle Nexus.



Spooky, I was thinking the exact same thing. ;)
 
I'm not using this to argue the utrom debate any further. But I was completely 100 % under the impression that they were implying that the Shredder had competed and won "a" Battle Nexus tournament. It might not have been the most recent one. And that was why the statue was there, and why the Ultimate Ninja was pursuing the Shredder.
 
Even if Shredder had completed a battle nexus tournament who is to say it was Utrom shredder that did it? it could have been Demon Shredder who was in a Battle Nexus. really there is no evidence that Shredder was ever planned to be a human.
 
Truthiness_comic.jpg
 
Back
Top