The Showdown: Best Villian of TMNT 2003

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MissBlonde

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While the 80s cartoon had many many many one note villians along with a few reoccuring ones it generally stuck to having Shredder and Krang as the driving force of villany.

The 2003 series had a great deal more fleshed out adversaries though not all were "villians" per-say but they were definently antagonists to the turtles. And while someone might barge in here with comments along the lines of "dur... it was Shredder!" well first of all there were many Shredder's and second of all many of the other antagonistis were in various ways more interesting and even more threatening characters (well at least until Ch'rell tried to destroy the multiverse in Turtles Forever).

So give a shout out to your favorite TMNT 2003 antagonist. Who is the best of the worst?

Give your top 5 in order. #1 will get 5 points, #2 will get 4 points, #3 will get 3 points, #4 will get 2 points and #5 will get 1 point.

And since things are always more interesting with discussion go ahead and say why you picked those antagonists.

The Dark Turtles can count as 1 unit cause besides Dark Leo none of them really had any development anyway.

This includes the entire 2003 run, including Turtles Forever so Ninja Tribunal, Fast Forward and Back to the Sewer's antagonists are also game. Though Viral and Cyber Shredder should count as seperate characters given how dramatically different they are.
 
#1: Agent Bishop, the main reason why I'm ranking Bishop above Shredder is because he's the one Villain I would have loved to replace Shredder as the new big bad. Yes in a sense he was the big bad of season four, but even then he shared the spotlight with Karai.

#2: Utrom Shredder, If he was human he might rank higher then Bishop but I don't hold his Alien origin against him. He was a great character and a total monster. Also I don't think any cartoon villain has taken as many lives as Shredder has, the man caused planetary wars because he could (I think.)

#3: Hun, even if he did suffer from villain decay later on early in the series he was a big threat to the turtles. And I like the strong hired muscel that are actually smart and compatent, back in the day characters like Hun use to be idiots.

#4: Karai, it's sad at first he should have ranked higher but her character suffered even more decay then Hun's. While hun became less compatant with time she became more obsessed with the Shredder even after she learned the truth about him. Yeah it's family loyalty but it's taken too far.

#5: Baxter Stockman: This was a hard choice and at first I did not want to give it to Baxter ether since he was over used IMO. The reason i am giving the fifth spot to Stockman is because his focus episode, "Insane in the Membrane" was one of the best episodes of the whole show. That alone earns him a spot here.

Yeah my list is pretty standard.
 
1. Ch'rell/Shredder: Honestly, I wouldn't rank anyone above this guy. He started the series playing a facade as the wealthy businessman Oroku Saki, and by the end of the series had completely lost his mind in an attempt to defeat the Turtles. His transformation from mysterious villain to absolute monster was great to watch, and seeing how his legacy lived on even in his exile, he left a lasting impact on the characters in-universe as well as the viewers.

2. Baxter Stockman: Honestly, this man is probably the most sympathetic villain in the series. He starts out as a minor general to the Shredder, and continually gets crippled as he manages to fail. Poor guy has enough and breaks off from him, in an attempt to defeat him at his own game, yet fails at that as well. By the time Season 5 comes around, he's become tired of his existence and has clearly become a self-loathing worker. It's a shame "Insane in the Membrane" didn't air on TV, because that episode is a perfect frame of Stockman's loss of humanity. I'm very glad he received some positive closure in Fast Forward.

3. Karai: She wasn't really as villainous as the previous two, but she had her reasons for rising above and succeeding Ch'rell as the leader of the Foot. Its clear she didn't want to get involved, but the mayhem caused by Shredder's absence practically forced her to take arms against the opposition. Lets also not forget how her actions caused Leonardo to have a temporary sense of self-conflict, and gave Hun the chance to finally break off on his own as well.

4. Bishop: This guy was just the craziest out of the Turtles entire rogue's gallery. He was very similar to Ch'rell's facade as Oroku Saki, except he wasn't afraid of barking orders or taking charge. He seemed to suffer from a case of paranoia and delusions, but when your city has been visited by underground creatures, intergalactic dinosaurs, and mutant turtles, it's understandable. He was still an absolute creep, especially that moment when he wanted to dissect the Turtles and Splinter.

5. Hun. He was the local big guy, except he wasn't as dumb as you'd expect. He lead the Purple Dragons and was the man responsible for the death of Casey and Splinter's fathers. He shows no regret for his actions, and even shows pleasure when facing off with their associates. His fate in Turtles Forever was poetic justice, as he's now forced to wander as the thing he utterly loathes, as a reminder of his own actions.
 
Looks like everyone is going to choose pretty much the same characters. But anyway:

1) Ch'rell Shredder
2) Baxter Stockman
3) Karai
4) Hun
5) Bishop

Honestly, can it be anything other than these 5? Most has already been said, but they were definitely the five most fully developed characters of the series. I am honestly surprised how much they kept using them too, I did not expect Hun to stick around in the show for so long, or Bishop even.

But I'd like to give honorable mentions to some of the lesser villains:

- Touch and Go. Its like the wondertwins, except they actually work!

- Rat King. For a one episode villain in this show, he was handled very well

- Foot Clan as a whole. They did an amazing job with it in this show. The Foot, Elite Guards, Mystic Foot, Foot Tech Ninja's, all awesome.
 
I'll say this: the show took one of the weakest aspect of the original comics--it's non-existent rogues' gallery--and turned it into one of its greatest strenghts. This show deserves props for not only having a crapload of villains (a good 65 percent of them brand new), but also for having an uncommonly large amount of them be good ones. Sure, Abigail Finn and the Texas Yahoos may not have been as interesting or as layered as Bishop or Hun, but they were well conceived, and fit the episode they were written for. There's very few of them (the Garbageman beeing the most obvious one) which I feel actually bring an episode down.
 
My only knock against the show was the lack of the Rat King. I seriously wanted to see him more.

Otherwise, the obvious #1 is the Shredder. Nothing's gonna top him. (Bishop came close, though)
 
1. Ch'rell, The Utrom Shredder

I never had the opportunity to read the original comics before 2003 came about but I'd heard rumblings of the vast differences between them and the 80s cartoon. And I didn't mind at all that the show was apparently going to be more serious, though I was extremely skeptical of Shredder being an Utrom, because once aliens were introduced into the 80s cartoon the show got even dumber than it already was.

Was I ever blown away at how different this Shredder was! I think there was a line in Turtles Forever that I can't remember exactly, as the 8 turtles are preparing to enter the modified Technodrome right before they learn about the Turtle multiverse that spelled things out for the 80s TMNT from the 2K3 TMNT's point of view, which credited their Shredder with being vicious and competent. There was also, "If we go in, no telling if we come back out." Just bad enough to give the 80s TMNT pause before a rousing chorus of Turtle Power brought them back to their usual happy-go-lucky selves.

Of course, the same can said of either of the other Shredders, so why does Ch'rell get the nod as the series' number one villain? Well, part of it is because he was the Turtles' main antagonist for so long, stretching over multiple seasons. Another part of it was his motivations and intent. The best villains are the ones who want something somewhat reasonable and go way outside the scope of normal behavior to get it. Ch'rell's main goal, originally, was to escape his imprisonment on Earth and get revenge on those who put him there, which sounds almost noble until one comes to understand how he came to be there and the extent of the revenge he plans to extract. Once a villain has slipped past the brink of madness and simply wants to destroy everything in an attempt to control everything, it's too late for the later to be compelling any longer; fortunately for Ch'rell that didn't happen until the very end (Turtles Forever) and thus it doesn't hurt his ranking.

2. Oroku Saki / The Original Shredder / The One, True Shredder

With Ch'rell out of the picture, how do you keep the Turtles busy without subjugating them to lesser villains for the rest of the series? Find a way to re-introduce the main villain with a new twist. Fortunately while this could have turned out to be a disaster with a poorly-executed clone story, instead it became a story of the world's most legendary, fearsome villain who was so fearsome that Ch'rell used his technology to mimic him. Since his intentions for evil were so pure, the TMNT were forced to pursue him directly and took him down within the scope of one season, but he gave them trouble like no other Shredder before him?or after. The downside was that this partially gave the network cause to pull the entire season from air, leaping right into Fast Forward and sending the show into a lapsed-continuity downward spiral from which it would never recover, even after they came to their senses and finally allowed the episodes to air.

3. Karai

Karai was one of the best villains because each time she showed up, you couldn't quite guess what her intentions were. Usually an antagonist, she was the one with a level head who would switch sides, albeit only briefly, to keep any one other villain (even her "father," to whom she continuously pledged loyalty) from gaining total power. Bound by strict codes of honor instilled in her as a youth, you could see her struggling to break free at some times, yet could never overcome her own limitations.

For the brief period of time she assumed the mantle of The Shredder, it seemed so wrong and yet so right. I never would have believed prior to TMNT 2K3 that I'd have accepted a female character as The Shredder, yet Karai's transition was believable. At the same time, I would have liked to see her eventually develop more as a character and finally reject the legacy of The Shredder and disavow any loyalty to Ch'rell, and I think this would have made for a great starting point for a direction for an eighth season if we would have been lucky enough to get one.

4. Bishop

At their core, most villains are pretty much the same, wanting money and/or control, and even The Shredder in all his forms was no different. But Bishop was different. He was determined to preserve the common good, even if that meant carrying out acts of evil himself in order to make it so. He was the one villain in the entire show whose motivations were really, truly different, and that's why his transition from evildoer to good guy in Fast Forward was actually believable. I forget who said it, but in another thread the point was raised that it would have been nice to see how the TMNT dealt with Bishop after coming back from the future and knowing his. Too bad we never got that.

5. Baxter Stockman

Baxter's fate in 2K3 was twisted, and was enough to make one think that perhaps being transformed into a mutant fly would have been a better fate. Still, for all he suffered he wound up being basically immortal, which maybe isn't a bad trade off. Still, he was an especially interesting character to watch out for, since after each failure you never knew what form he would come back in, or if he would at all (of course, he always did.)
 
I was thinking of doing a poll but ended up going with the points method like the various best series and best character threads have been doing.
 
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