Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Season Six
BY Ryan LaMarca / 2008-05-26
For nine years from 1987 to 1996, Turtlemania was gripping the children in the United States and the entire world, perhaps. If you were a kid, you couldn't go anywhere or see anything without being reminded of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They were everywhere and had everything. Besides their massively popular animated series, the Turtles had action figures, video games, clothing, toys, comic books, and eventually three feature films. And why not? They were certainly cool enough and the show was and still is amazing. This particular DVD set contains all sixteen episodes from the sixth season which ran in 1992.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They're the world's most fearsome fighting team. They're heroes in the half-shell and they're green. When the evil Shredder attacks, these turtle boys don't cut him no slack. Splinter taught them to be ninja teens. Leonardo leads, Donatello does machines. Raphael is cool, but crude. Michelangelo is a party dude. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, turtles in a half-shell. Turtle power! No, in all seriousness, four mutated teenage turtles, led by their ninja sensei Master Splinter, himself a mutated rat, protect New York City and the world from the menace of the evil Shredder, another ninja. The Turtles are assisted by their human friend, ace reporter April O'Neil. Shredder and his two mutant goons, Rocksteady and Bebop, often try to take over the world, but are always challenged by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" holds up remarkably well for a kids show from the late '80s and early '90s. It's storylines and plots are consistently well-thought out and are by no means dumbed down. Compared to other children's' shows of the same era, "TMNT" is more along the lines of "Transformers," innovative for its time and leading more and more to advancement in the field, as opposed to "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe," which reverted back to the styles and design work from the '70s. You can't expect the animation to be flawless, but it looks pretty darn good and the characters are drawn with depth and shadow, as opposed to "He-Man." But the main positive fact about the show is that it's always fun, no matter what. It never feels tired and old and the writers were always finding new gimmicks and characters to put into the show, or bringing back old characters from the previous seasons. Best of all, it's funny. I'm actually laughing at the jokes while I'm watching the show, and that's something that's very hard to accomplish in children's programming.
I really enjoyed the characterizations of the Turtles in this series and I think a big part of that is due to the terrific voice work. Raphael (Rob Paulsen) is my favorite in this show because of his sarcastic attitude and his witty remarks, something that was lost along the way in 2007's "TMNT." Donatello (Barry Gordon) and Leonardo (Cam Clarke) also get their chance to shine, but Leonardo's personality tends to be a bit bland at times. Donatello's niche is that he's the genius of the group and often invents machines and devices that either explode in the Turtles' faces or solve the problem at the end of the story, sometimes both. My only slight problem with the series is Michelangelo (Townsend Coleman) with his surfer-skater attitude and voice. His antics are the most child-like and probably the least well-written, leading his punch lines to come out sounding flat. I noticed, however, he does improve over the course of the season.
Besides the dynamic personalities of the Turtles themselves, the supporting cast and the villains are a big plus on the show. April O'Neil's perky and supprtive attitude is always welcome along with her snazzy reporting, which by the way always leads to trouble (as noted by the Turtles in one particular episode). Also this season, Irma Langinstein, April's friend at Channel 6, gets some well-deserved spotlight in "Super Irma" where she gains superpowers of her own and decides to clean up the city. And perhaps my favorite character in the series is the imbecile man-child Vernon Fenwick. Even by thinking about him right now is enough to make me laugh. The dialogue written for this guy is just so funny that he virtually steals every scene, whether he's trying to scoop April out of a story or suck up to Mr. Thompson, the boss. However, I was a bit surprised that the Turtles' ally, the hockey stick wielding Casey Jones was absent for all sixteen episodes.
This season in particular has a number of episodes influenced by major movie franchises from the '80s and '90s. "Nightmare in the Lair" for example takes aim directly at emulating "A Nightmare on Elm Street." In it, Donatello invents a fantasy dream machine for them to stimulate their imaginations, but their dreams are invaded by a disfigured spirit creature named Creepy Eddy (striped shirt, hat, and all) who wants to escape into reality. There's also "Return of the Turtleoids" which features a Terminator-inspired robot, Destructor X, who is after the Turtles' alien friend Kerma. And finally, there's the aptly titled "Phantom of the Sewer" which directly imitates the classic "Phantom of the Opera" story. On a different note, there's also the perennial episode where the heroes are transformed into little kid versions of themselves, as is the case in "Adventures in Turtle-Sitting."
The Shredder, the Turtles' main nemesis, is such a fantastic villain. He really gets trashed in the series, but it's always so much fun to see him planning his mad schemes along with Krang. The chemistry between these two always leads to hilarious insults. Rocksteady and Bebop provide the comic relief through their bumbling, and surprisingly they don't grate on my nerves. The way they're written is better than I remembered and their general goofiness is actually laughable. Their best appearance is in "Shreeka's Revenge" where they are captured by Krang's old partner Shreeka who continually puts them in their place and utters such demeaning comments towards them. Shredder and Krang take up about half of the episodes in the season, which is a good thing, as their episodes are better than others. That's not saying that the other episodes are bad, as it's good to have a break every once and a while. Other villains step in from time to time, such as Big Louis, a mafia like crime boss; Professor Philo Sofo, a mad scientist; and Lafayette Le Drone, a French collector of rare weapons.
Kudos to Lionsgate for releasing a steady supply of "Ninja Turtles" season sets over the last few years. We're over half-way done, but there's still a load more to go to get all one-hundred and ninety-four episodes onto DVD. I was a bit peeved that there aren't any special features on this set whatsoever. But I got over it just by reminding myself that we're finally getting this fantastic series onto DVD with pristine picture quality. And at the end of the day, that's all that really matters. If you want some special features, then some of the previous sets contain them.
The 1992 season of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" was certainly one of the series' finest over the nine years it was on. With a more epic scope and scale, some sci-fi oriented stories, and the return of everyone's favorite heroes and villains, it's really hard to pass up something as great as this. I was unsure what my reaction would be watching this show after so many years, but once I played the first episode and heard that glorious theme song, my worries were over. The show still has that same magic and charm that it did so many years ago and the appeal is still there and I think it's because of its light-hearted nature and the way it doesn't take itself too seriously. "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" will forever have its place in animation history and I'm sorry to say, that we'll never see anything quite like it again, even in all the new versions of the show that have come about recently, you simply cannot beat the original.
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