Ninja Turtles 2K3- Five years later

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Day Man

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It's been five years since the new Ninja Turtles hit the airwaves. It's had over one hundred episodes, six seasons, and is constantly a big ratings grabber for 4Kids TV. We've had battles against aliens, monsters, demons, and government agents. We've traveled with the heroes through New York, other dimensions, Japan, other planets, and even into the far future. And it looks like the series shows absolutely no signs of slowing down anytime soon as they go back to the very beginning next week and we wait with eager anticipation for the new season to start in a few months.

So until then, let's discuss the series thus far. What has it done right? What hasn't it done right? What were the best battles, villains, lines? The worst? Sound off.
 
I think the show, at least when it first started, did a really nice job of adapting the comic book storylines into episodes. The show is a much closer representation of what the TMNT are like in the comics as opposed to the original cartoon.

I also really like the new characters the show has introduced. Hun and Bishop are really great characters, and its nice to see how they changed over the show. The different origins for the two Shredder's were unique and I doubt anyone could have predicted what they were going to do with him.

The core cast of the Turtles themselves, Splinter, April and Casey were handled nicely.

Sure, there were some crappy episodes along the way, (Junklantis and Across the Universe come to mind...which were the second Garbageman episode and that awful Planet Racers ep), but every show has some real stinkers in every season. Fast Forward was also a mixed bag, but I quite liked the later episodes in the season.

I'm looking forward to what Season 7 will bring to the table.
 
My opinion is probably not going to matter since I only saw a handful of season one episodes back in 2003. But, anyway, I liked the show. It was darker and more faithful to the comics. As for the overall five years I know nothing to contribute since I haven't seen it. HOWEVER, I am a little confused. Does Fast Forward have anything to do with the 2003 series or is it something seperate? If its the same then...wow...this show must have had a bump in the road along the way. I haven't seen Fast Forward but it looks bad.
 
4Kids wanted to drum up ratings, so they halted production on season 5 of the series (the "Lost Episodes") and told them to take the series in a completely different direction. Thus, Fast Forward was made to take season 5's place and hopefully be a big hit. Unfortunately, it wasn't particularly outstanding in ratings, so they decided to try another revamp of the series, which will be coming this fall. They decided to finish up season 5 and air it as "The Lost Episodes." Chronologically, the series goes in this order: Seasons 1-4, The Lost Episodes, Fast Forward, Back to the Sewers (new season coming this fall).
 
As said above, Fast Forward is "Season 6" of the show. Its in direct continuity with Seasons 1-5, and Season 7 will pick up from the end of the FF season.

4kids will probably give each new season a new subtitle now to fit whatever theme the current season will be.
 
Actually, Fast Forward was scheduled to be made anyways after season 5, but 4Kids decided to bump it up to airing right after season 4 in order to get the ratings they desired faster. This is why the first three or so episodes of Fast Forward have poorer quality animation-wise than the rest of the season (and why the first few airings didn't even have the OPENING finished).
 
Were the ratings declining that they needed a Fast Forward?

I wish I would have been there to help the ratings, but man, when the show debut in 2003 I was in high school. On Friday nights I'd be out till 3am with my friends. It was hard for me to wake up on Saturday morning to watch the show. Its not like now that I'm in college where Friday night is a work night cause we got tuitions to pay so its not like I'm out till crazy hours.

Although I do recall that Cartoon Network was airing repeats at one point but it didn't last long for some reason. :confused:
 
Season 4 was doing poorly in the ratings if I recall, hence the decision to skip Season 5 and air Fast Forward before it.

When the new movie came out it revived Turtles popularity wise, so FF actually did better in reruns and Season 5 is usually tied with Chaotic for the highest rated show on 4kids.
 
Doesn't surprise me ratings started slipping in season 4. After the awesome multi-part invasion epic that launched season 3 we get filler episode after filler episode. Then near the end we get the great 5-part Return of Ultimate Ninja epic, then a lackluster end to the Utrom Shredder, then a mind-numbingly dull first half of season 4. I mean really, season 4 didn't even show signs of a real plotline until halfway through the season.

Thankfully, making season 5 only thirteen episodes cut down on almost all of the filler. I'm all for thirteen episode seasons if it means avoiding the (IMHO) borefests that seasons 3 and 4 turned out to be. The "Lost Season" was the best thing to happen to the series since season 2.
 
Yeah, from the research I've done, it hovered around 0.8 to 1.1. It was in the bottom half ratings-wise, beating out One Piece and G.I. Joe but losing out to Winx Club, Sonic X, Bratz, etc.
 
If you're going to make a series with ongoing plots, 13 episodes are usually the way to do them. More often than not - while 26 episode arcs provide a lot more fleshing out of things - they are also often plagued with filler (this isn't always the case but more often than not it is) and/or terribly slow pace. Having said that I do agree that Season 5 was WAAAAY stronger than Seasons 3 and 4 as a result - not quite touching Season 2 but certainly almost there.

This was the part of the many problems with Fast Forward. They planned things out for 26 episodes and wasted valuable plot time with filler when they should have been making the story interesting. Instead, we wound up with wasted opportunity and many people not really liking Fast Forward as a result (among other things). A tighter lid on the episode count provided a much better flowing story for Season 5. As a result I think a lot of it shows in the ratings and the reactions.

All things considered, it's probably a good thing that FF came along when it did. The movie reinvigorated a lot of people who were turned off or drifted away. As a result of the hate for FF, Season 5 got hyped a lot more in the eyes of people who found out about it. Now that its premiered its ratings are finally back to something decent again, if FF had come along AFTER Season 5 as it was supposed to, I think TMNT's future would have seemed a lot bleaker as a result.
 
Season 3 is my favorite season after the first, so I don't really see how it was a dull. We had quite a lot of memorable build-up episodes with the Foot and lots of good stuff all around.

Season 4 got a hell of a lot better after its initial 4 episodes. We got Rat King, Karai taking over lead of the Foot, Hun turning the Purple Dragons to a serious threat, the new team-ups of Baxter/Bishop and some other interesting stand alone episodes.

My problem with 13 episode seasons is the writers don't have time to do anything but the main plot. The Ninja Tribunal arc only had one or two fillers, and even then both of them tied in with the main plot instead of being standalone anyway.

I would have liked Season 7 to be 26 episodes but 4kids must want to save money and doing another 26 ep season is probably too expensive for them at this point.
 
See, that's why I loved the Ninja Tribunal arc, seeing as how I'm not a fan of filler episodes. I'd much prefer a season be one long continuous story, but I understand that a lot of people don't. I don't mind a filler here and there, but season 3 was more filler than plot, and season 4 was pretty fillerific in the first half.

I have a feeling we'll be seeing 13-episode seasons from here on out, which I'm fine with. Give us maybe 10 episodes of continuous plot and 3 of filler, I could deal with that.
 
Yeah, I won't deny that, had Fast Forward not shaken things up when it did, Ninja Turtles would probably be on the verge of cancellation right now.

Though, what I am a bit disappointed about is the fact that 4Kids cancelled their plans to make a 10 episode second season in order to bridge the gap between season 6 and what will now be season 7. From a story standpoint, leaving all those loose ends unresolved, such as what Torbin Zixx's employers were planning on doing, makes Fast Forward feel like completely wasted potential. Plus, some of the plotlines that the writers were coming up with for FF season 2 looked really interesting (Ch'rell is still alive in the future and returns with a trained Triceraton Shredder? Awesome.).

But, oh well. We can hope they at least touch upon the Darius Dun/Dark Turtles storyline in a later season. That REALLY deserves to be resolved.
 
The shows ratings were definitely boosted by the movie. Had the movie not come out, I'm not sure what might have happened. Considering Laird and Imagi are still trying to finalize a movie sequel plot, it probably won't be out till late 2010 or early 2011, which means the show might go on for a few more years.

4kids bought out the CW for 5 years, so Season 7 takes up one of those years...which means TMNT could theoretically go on for 4 more seasons after that, although that's probably wishful thinking.

I think the show still has a few more years of life in it at least before they call it quits. Either that or 4kids goes bankrupt before then. :sweat:
 
Nope. The movie had very little impact on the show's ratings, if any at all. Months before the movie came out, Fast Forward was still getting ratings around the 1.4 mark. The move did increase the sale of TMNT merchandise, however.
 
My own problem with Season 3 is that after "World's Collide" - nothing really happens. The bulk of the story that was built up in S2 was over. It started off INCREDIBLY strong and then...nothing. Had they kept up or tried to maintain the breakneck pace established before that, then I really do think that season would have topped #2 in every concievable way. There are a few loose ends that are wrapped up here and there over the course of #3 - repercussions from "Space Invaders" and "World's Collide" for example - but outside of the Time sidestory that establishes the split it's mostly just random adventures here and there until we get to "Hun on the Run" which finally advances the true plot. Doing all that extraneous stuff to separate the Turtles wasn't even worth watching until Donatello and Leonardo's stories came along. No one will contest that "Same As It Never Was" is one of the best stories in the entire show - period - and everyone loved the second Usagi Yojimbo crossover in the franchise; while "Across the Universe" (the Planet Racers ep from that side storyline) is often mentioned as one of the worst.

I don't mind filler eps at all. Unlike the first four eps of season 4, its filler was fairly decent. But I think that a few of those episodes could have been cut up to maybe "Time Travails" to really make "Exodus" have had the same impact as the first couple storyarcs in the season (which it really needed).

The only problem Season 4 had in my eyes was that it had a HORRIBLE start compared to Season 3. The thing about Season 4 is that it was all world building. As a result - it expanded the TMNT 2K3 universe to what it is now. Problem is, while world building is good: it took forever to accomplish that. Everything past the first 4 episodes was good...but the arc as a whole took forever to actually get interesting and never quite stood up to previous arcs. Unlike S3, plot points tended to be scattered in tiny bits. As a result - if you are a casual watcher of the show, it doesn't really seem like much is going on at all. That probably accounted for the massive ratings drop. To many people - myself included at the time - it seemed like a bunch of standalone unconnected episodes where nothing is really going on. And in a way, nothing really is unless you watch it all the way through.

They probably did that due to the breakneck pace of Season 2/start of 3 and their constant stream of multiparters and/or clumsiness of S3 fillers which is understandable, because after a while there were so many that if you missed an episode you may have screwed yourself in knowing what was going on. They probably felt that by slowing things down it'd make for better viewing, but instead they kind of hurt it, and as a result of people either didn't know what was going on and/or got bored with it. So they turned away.

This is true, but that is why proper pacing is paramount and partly why Season 5 seems to have been a success. You can do quite a lot and get a lot accomplished in 13 episodes. "Nightmare's Recycled" - while it was never produced - was a waste. As you can see - it's exclusion didn't do anything to harm or help the season in the least bit. Even "Membership Drive" as tame as it was - resolved the Nano subplot for good, tied into the ending in its own way, and still had the world building/filler quotient going for it. "NR's" slot could could have easily been used to expand "Enter the Dragons", but in an attempt to push the boundaries (on a character many people hate no less) it wound up biting them in the tushie. ;)

I really think that if Season 5 had been 26 eps it would have hurt it more than helped it, not because of the episode count, but because of its pacing - as shown with Season 4.

Probably, but even so I'm hoping that after this and the mess that was FF they'll learn to use the episode count that they have wisely so we don't see these mistakes happening again. It's not like they don't have plenty of dangling plotlines to resolve from both series thanks to it. ;)


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As a side note - besides the fate of The Rat King, Darius Dunn and the Dark Turtles, and the incredibly lackluster Torbin Zixx - what plots are leftover from the 2K3 series VS Fast Forward that have not been concluded or revisited?
 
Funny, I feel the opposite, that season 5 is the weakest since Season 2 (which is the weakest overall season), and is redeemed mostly by some really good action sequences and character designs. Seasons 3 and 4, on the other hand, are the best in large part because they were able to dovetail significant and less significant (I'm with Laird: I hate the term seeing the term "filler" applied here) events enough so that the difference between the two wasn't jarring (unlike seasons 1, 2, and 6) which itself lent itself to subtler and more seamless plotting.

My thoughts on the show, season by season.

Season 1: Exploratory, gutsy. Although its not the best season, thankfully, it's a damn good freshman effort. Standards and Practices concerns weakened the series somewhat--its somewhat ridiculous to see the turtles merely stunning Foot Ninja while simultaneously trying to kill the Shredder--but in the end, it all worked out.

Season 2: Started strong and ended stronger. The middle? Not so much: the big mid-season arc, City at War, wasn't as big or as violent as it needed to be, and it's just not very good at all, and most one-shot episodes suffered from being either oddly paced (What a Croc) or straight-out bad (Junklantis)

Season 3: Excellent all around; the writers have learned the lessons of previous seasons, and have learned to integrate stand-alones more seamlessly; they've also learned that not every arc needs an epic fight scene. The opening alien invasion is still one of my favorite arcs in animation history: not only does it bring back a metric ton of old characters, it irrevocably changes the status quo of the world (if not the turtles'), sets up the season, and introduces bad-ass Bishop into the fold. The rest of the season is also damn good, introducing, Renet, Nobody, the Rat King, Savanti Romero, and a couple of original stories as well. The only bad thing? The Lesson, which to me is the worst episode of the entire series. Also, the cool split-screen effect used in the first few seasons was retired in this one, which makes me sad.

Season 4: Best season yet. While it starts out slow (I really like Cousin Sid--it's the other two episodes I'm not crazy about), the overall plot is really well laid out in a way that subtly interweaves the series' regulars without making it seem contrived. It's not the most action-filled or eventful of seasons--a lot of the development is seen in talking-head scenes--and there's really no cool action scenes in it--but it all works out for the best. Pity it ends up setting up...

Season 5: If season 4 was the talky season, this one is the action season. It works. It should have worked better. As it is, the season featured thirteen new characters, none of which were developed very well, it at all, marginalized the existing supporting cast (poor April and Casey), and seemed somewhat repetitive. But dammit, it sure looked good (except when it didn't).

Season 6: Maligned with good reason, but dammit, I can't help liking it. I liked most of the new characters, and the season's dual arcs are rather well done--like Season 4's, they managed to incorporate most of the series characters in a natural way (the only one not involved was joke villain Triple Threat, and Starlee, who was always at the periphery of things), and once things get on track (which I say occurred in episode 5) the season is quite enjoyable.

But still...

I could have done without The Gaminator or Enter the Jammerhead. Race For Glory should not have involved Triple Threat. The series spent too much time on Earth, specifically, New York, and even more specifically Cody's appartment. The comedy sometimes got in the way of the action (see Enter the Jammerhead. The tone was simpler than it had to be--see Head of State. Viral was a mostly useless character.

In the end, I'd consider the season a worthwhile experiment; despite several failures, it yielded some rather good things, and I'm glad it won't be completely ignored when Back to the Sewers begins.

Season 7: We'll see, won't we? Personally, I'm optimistic, if not exactly frothing.
 
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