TMNT: Back to the Sewer Talkback: Episode 7.01: "Tempus Fugit" (Spoilers)

I'm figuring that high ranking foot soldier, the one who knows and thinks he destroyed the Turtles is Master Khan who is to be officially introduced next week.

Not a bad episode, I don't know how I felt at first about them using the Fast forward opening but it made sense at the end, this was a much the last episode of Fast Forward as it was the first episode of Back to the Sewers so both openings were used to bridge the two shows.

As for that near future with the three Shredders well who knows if it will happen. Viral might have altered things a little for that future to happen and in reality it's not going to happen.

When the Fast Forward intro started I thought I accidentally flipped channels since 4kids TV airs Fast Forward at the same time. That being said airing new episodes and reruns of the same show at the same time? Not really smart 4kids.
 
I actually thought for a second there that 4Kids accidentally gave it the wrong intro, but no way they'd make a mistake that huge. I liked it, though. Made it feel like a transition episode, which I'm sure is what 4Kids was going for. Surprised that the BTTS intro still had that one scene featuring the old look.

I loved the Turtles ending up in the near future where the three Shredders were doing battle. Pretty clear it's something they're going to have to deal with later in the season, so it was a nice tease. Really helps the audience get excited to see exactly where Utrom and Tengu Shredder are going to come from.

Plus, who was that one dude? Obviously he's going to have a big role in the season.

I didn't expect Viral to actually transform into Cyber Shredder. I had a feeling that she had created the Shredder from data and pumped him up as a threat to the turtles, then controlled him to do her bidding. The questions keep piling up. How exactly did she become Cyber Shredder? How much control does she have over herself now? Will she ever be Viral again?

This has potential to be the best season yet.
 
TMNT: Back to the Sewer Talkback: Episode 7.01: "Tempus Fugit" (Spoilers)

For a ?New Series?, this episode sure had its share of continuity nods; TMNT season premieres are usually hit-the-ground-running affairs, and I was glad to see the trend continue here?overall, it was miles better than Future Shell-Shock.

Random preliminary thoughts:

It was interesting to see this episode include some footage from Day of Awakening, pupil-less eyes and all. Given that, having Fast Forward?s opening, and including footage from the first season in the BttS one, it?s clear the creators are a) trying to save money when they can, and b) make clear that this is a continuation and not a reinvention. Which is good.

Okay, the three Shredders bit seemed like a nice continuity nod when I thought that it was an alternate future created by Viral. But now that it?s revealed that it?s the actual future, it suddenly became a hell of a lot more interesting. How did the Shredders return? Where are the turtles, and what role did April?s landlord play? Where is Karai? I have to say, as fond as I am not of the idea of seeing either of the established Shredder?s returned, I am very intrigued to see where this is going. Kudos, creators.

A quick look-see at the credits yielded some interesting info. One, that Sean Schemmel voices both Master Khan (almost certainly the new guy we saw this episode) and some other new cat named ?Wendell?. The characters credited as ?starring? are the turtles, Splinter (!); Casey and April, Serling, Stockman, Hun, Cyber Shredder, and the aforementioned Master Khan and Wendell. Karai was once again left out. Greg Carey was once again credited as Hun, which I think must be some kind of mistake, since David Zen Mansley (Bishop) was supposed to be taking over the role. Interestingly enough, Mansley himself was not on the credits, which strikes me as weird, given that he plays a considerable amount of characters and that an appearance by Bishop was a given.

One has to wonder: is Serling mentioned at all in April and Casey?s journal? If he is, then Cody has nothing to worry about from the explosion, since he already knows that the turtles will be fine. If it doesn?t, then leaving the kid the way they did is a bit mean of the writers. It?s also a nice bit of parallelism, with both Cody and the turtles believing they?ve lost their respective fathers.

I have mixed thoughts about the new look. The pupils I still need to get useful. The backgrounds are a considerable improvement over Fast Forward?s. The character designs are for the most part awesome. April?s landlord looks great, as do the scenes in the intro with actual motion. It?s awesome to finally see the camera do something other than stand around and zoom, even if it was only in the intro. All in all, the jury is still out on whether the change is good or bad.

I really liked seeing Mikey be the one to come up with the plans in this episode. It?s a nice detail from previous seasons that was mostly forgotten in Fast Forward.

So yeah. I?m glad the turtles are back.
 
When Master Khan was first shown on the TMNT blog early on, the person uploading the stuff made a side-comment about how the character was possibly "April's Landlord".

No one is sure just yet if that was meant as a joke or if he's seriously April's landlord (judging by the description of next week's episode, it could go either way).
 
Yes, if they'd completely ignored Fast Forward continuity-wise, I know nobody would be complaining. But guess what, 4kids does not care about your opinion (especially because we older fans are NOT in their demographic), they care about the bottom line. Fast Forward was an improvement in ratings, right? So of course they're going to continue from it.

Be happy they didn't decide to keep the guys in the future.

And hey, at least Viral is dead now . . . the pissant has been stomped into oblivion.
 
I would have. Fast Forward's problem was execution, not premise. It had plenty of worthwhile characters that deserved further exploration. While I did not think of Viral as one of them--I, too, thought of her as the weakest villain in the season--I liked how she was used here, and look forward to learning more about her newest incarnation. Seeing the whole thing ignored after showing such promise and not exploiting it--therefore rendering the excercise a waste of time--would have seriously pissed me off. Now, with the power of hindsight, there's a chance to do the characters justice, should we ever see them again.
 
Yeah, I agree with you, Fast Forward had some great concepts, it's just they never expanded on them. Rather than wasting time on Jammerhead and Triple Threat, they could've focused more on Darius and his minions, or heck, even on the history of that future world. Would've been nice to know what happened to Cody's parents, or how Serling ended up as the kid's guardian.

The writing seems better this go round, so maybe some of those missed opportunities will be acted on.
 
Actually, if the hints in one of the later Darius episodes were correct, they couldn't really have said anything about that, since...

It was hinted that Darius most likely killed them when Cody was just a baby.
 
Yeah, that was from 'Turtle X-tinction' . . .
Serling was taking care of Cody since he was a baby, so the idea that Darius offed the kid's parent's then isn't much of a stretch. It would've had to look like an accident, though. Just a throwaway line from Darius bragging that he caused said accident would've been good enough for me.
 
I LOVED it.I don't see why everyone's hating Viral because she was only there for a few minutes...plus I liked that it continued from FF because TMNT doesn't need another revamp at this state..
 
It was not well done. It felt tacked on. It was "last minute". It didn't even feel suspenseful. Even Fast Forward had a moment or two of suspense. Now I'm not saying I hate this show or I'll stop watching it because there have been far worse things on Saturday morning television including other Turtles shows but I don't like how this is going so far. But if that's the last we hear of Viral at least for a while... that'll be nice. Oh and don't even get me started on how much I dislike them dragging Serling along.

And if it was this lame coming off of something other than Fast Forward, I wouldn't like it any more than I like it now. Oh but just incase you weren't sure of my opinion of Fast Forward... It was very lacking. Rarely funny though it tried so hard to be funnier than the previous seasons... and full of dull and uninteresting characters sans Zixx (cheesey as he was) and Bishop (though he's more interesting when he's evil).

Getting back to the other characters will be nice. I'm even interested in seeing Hun again and I'm curious how Ultrom and Demon Shredder play into this. But 4kids attempts to make the turtles more like the 80s cartoon really aren't working out. They don't have the one-liner prowess the 80s writers did. There's nothing "so bad its good" here. Just a lot of "meh" and "worse than meh".

This first episode feels cheaply written, cheeply animated and cheeply put together. A far cry from the 2K3 series and not even as well done as Fast Forward but slightly more interesting than that one already... though that's not hard to accomplish.

So I'll just put it this way. This show is airing right after The Spectacular Spider-Man which is animated well (though the character designs don't quite fit the edgier style it tries to portray at times) and written even better. This Turtles feels cheap and lifeless next to that show and it's really a shame. Well it's Spider-Man's time to shine I guess, I'm thankful for the 5 excellent seasons TMNT had before Fast Forward.
 
Sketch: I've read all your previous posts and I know your opinion on FF and TMNT in general.



May I ask, how would you have done this episode? Assuming the same premise was kept with the TMNT returning home and Viral zapping Splinter into cyberspace, what better way could they have done it?

This episode had tons of action, a glimpse into a crazy near future with three Shredders at the same time, and a grim/sad ending for the Turtles having lost their Master, with Don blaming himself. Mikey wasn't annoying like he was in FF, Raph's lines were pure sarcastic wit, and Don had a lead role for the first time in a good while.

We know the animation will never be the same as 2k3 style, but I don't see how the actual writing for this episode felt any weaker than your average past episode. And this is a transition episode no less where the writers had to tie up loose ends from the previous season.



You really sound bitter here. Spiderman is a fantastic show but you're comparing apples to oranges.
 
I’m quite bitter myself. Sure spiderman and turtles are like comparing apples and oranges but you can tell the people working on spectacular spiderman are putting their heart and soul into making it the best possible spiderman show it can be. You look at something like Fast Forward and you wonder why it wasn’t as good as previous seasons. I understand they had to work with a cheaper budget and pressure to make the show lighter and funnier in order to cater more to the target demographic but that’s no excuse to get lazy. What was stopping them from making more episodes like DNA is Thicker than Water and Head of State? Why wasn’t there better choreographed fights and awesome cinematography? I loved Fast Forward but we all know it wasn’t the best tmnt show it could be. Something should get better over the years not worse. It had potential but more often than not they decided not to use that potential to the fullest.

I know its too early to call but I feel BttS is already starting to look more like Fast Forward than seasons 1-5.
 
FF's flaws were a lack of good pacing, underdeveloped villains and wasting time on too many "fillers" rather than the story arc. The problem with FF is they acted like it would go on for 2 seasons, so a lot of the stuff we probably would have gotten in the second part never happened.

There's a reason why the last half of FF seemed so much better than the first half, its because by that point the writers finally figured out what they were doing but by that point it was too late.

With this BTTS season, they know from the getgo that they only have 13 episodes, and I'm sure the pacing of this season will be much better than the previous. Its also using lots of familiar characters and building up on old stories from Seasons 4 and 5, so there shouldn't be as much of a problem this time. Granted we'll have to wait and see, but I'm optimistic at least.
 
This episode for the most part really didn't feel any different from the Fast Forward episodes. So what happened to Darius Dunn now that the turtles and Serling aren't around to protect Cody. Well, I guess there's always the "peacekeepers." Splinter will be fine, he'll be fully recovered by the end of the season.
 
Running gag. When Steve Murphy first revealed designs for the new character seen in the episode, he made severals suggestions at to who exactly he was: one of the suggestions was "April's landlord", which became the fan nickname for him in the Technodrome.com forums.
 
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