Based on Characters by:
Kevin Easterman
Peter Laird
Starring:
Rob Paulsen … Raphael
Cam Clarke … Leonardo, Rocksteady
Barry Gordon … Donatello, Bebop
Townsend Coleman … Michelangelo
James Avery … Shredder
Peter Renaday … Splinter
Renae Jacobs … April O’Neil
Pat Fraley … Krang
Studio: Lionsgate.
Release Date: August 7, 2007.
Number of Discs: 3.
Number of Episodes: 18.
Running Time: 414 minutes.
MSRP: $24.98.
Available at Amazon.com
Starting out as a modest hit as an underground comic book created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, it didn’t take long for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to be discovered by a much larger audience. After being approached to license their property, we soon began to see Turtle toys, pajamas, lunch boxes and many other products with their green faces plastered all over. While not unimaginable, I don’t think anybody saw the characters doing a good job at interacting within the restraints of an animated show aimed towards a very young audience. So it’s strange to look back at what started out as a five episode mini-series that ballooned in to nearly 200 shows during its ten season run on television.
The difficulty of giving any type of seasonal synopsis at this point in the shows run is that there isn’t much of an over aching story to talk about. Instead, the show seems to have gladly settled in as a program aimed purely to entertain kids on Saturday morning for a half-hour. The series essentially follows the same basic premise, but manages to hide it with slight alterations in the structure. The plots usually consist on Shredder and Krang trying to destroy the Turtles in one way or another. Be it them searching for a Mutagen to turn them back to tiny reptiles or world domination. Unless they feel a bit tired that week and will accept simply taking over control of the city. There are a few episodes thrown in between that either introduce new characters or bring back familiar faces for a fun new adventure, but those ones tend to be the weaker parts of the season.
TMNT has been well known to have a lull during the middle of its ten season run, where the writers seemed to rest on their laurels and put out bizarrely self aware episodes. There are times in the show where the Turtles look directly at the screen and talk to the viewers as if they’re a fifth member of the team. Or they make snide remarks about problems being “resolved by the end of the episode.” It’s both a cute sense of humor for adult audiences and an almost biting remark about cartoon shows in general. All while still remaining a show acceptable for kids.
It’s the occasional self-referential humor that seeps in to some of the episodes that make the show really fun to watch. Seeing the Turtles tear down the fourth wall is one of those love it or leave it type of things, but I personally think it adds more humor to the show when the story falls flat. Because it shows that while they take themselves serious when telling a story, they also know how to have fun while doing so. Like pointing out how every villain hides out in a warehouse, or that Donatello manages to know the name of every cockamamie invention that Krang has come up with for the intent to destroy the world that week.
Sadly, following in the previous seasons footsteps, this season continues the trend of the show relying heavily on strange plots, forced humor and bland fight sequences, losing a lot of the edge and dark tones that can be found in the first three seasons. While the stories themselves are hardly the most entertaining things to be found here, being reintroduced so many long forgotten faces certainly makes the bad episodes worth sitting through. Characters like The Rat King, Napoleon Bonafrog, Mondo Gecko, and Muckman among others who seemed to vanish from my memory but instantly rush back the minute they appear on screen.
When reviewing an old animated show from your past that you still hold fond memories for, it can be like playing a game of Russian Roulette. Only with far greater risk. That, my friends, is the double-edged sword known as nostalgia. While it’s certainly not a show that one can wax philosophic about for days on end, there’s an undeniable charm that the Turtles poses. While most of the stories fall flat, there is enough here to make it worth watching at least once, simply to relive the past.
While the show is listed to be the complete season, which it is, according to IMDB’s list of original air dates, the shows themselves are not put in chronological order. The only reason I checked this was because watching the DVDs felt very inconsistent. It wasn’t until I double checked to make sure all of the episodes were in the set that I realized just how disheveled the play order actually was. Below is a list of the episodes as they appear on the discs with the intended order in parenthesis.
Donatello’s Bad Time (4)
Donatello’s Duplicate (10)
My Brother, the Bad Guy (1)
Enter Mutagen Man (3)
Napoleon Bonafrog: Colossus of the Swamps (7)
Disc Two
Michaelangelo Meets Mondo Gecko (2)
Michaelangelo Meets Bugman Again (5)
Leonardo Cuts Loose (12)
Muckman Messes Up (6)
The Ice Creature Cometh (11)
Disc Three
Zach and the Alien Invaders (16)
Raphael Versus the Volcano (8)
Raphael, Turtle of a Thousand Faces (14)
Pirate Radio (13)
Landlord of the Flies (9)
Leonardo, the Renaissance Turtle (15)
Welcome Back, Polarisoids (17)
Michelangelo, the Sacred Turtle (18)
Okay, we can’t go any further without discussing the really cool packaging that Lionsgate has put together for this new release. The series has been placed on a three disc digipack that can be found inside of a personal pan pizza box-type holder. It’s a very unique and interesting container that, thanks to smart thinking on their part, can still be placed alongside the rest of the DVDs in your collection without appearing out of place.
Video:
(Presented in 1.37:1 Full Frame)
For a beloved animated show that has managed to go twenty years remaining in the public eye, these DVDs sure don’t present them in the best quality. There are several problems found across the discs, from soft and unfocused scenes, poor color reproduction, and flecks are prominent in just about every single episode. Several mastering problems can also be found on a couple episodes where the video becomes choppy, or the image has heavy edge enhancements. If only they put in as much effort here as they did with the case…
Audio:
(English 2.0 Mono)
The show plays out very flat, with many of the effect sounds coming out flatter then they probably should be. With very little else in the way of demanding sound, the track presented here does an amicable job and does the show some justice.
Extras:
The Turtles: A Ninjatastic Look Back (17:55) – Talk about expecting one thing and getting another. Given how this series as a whole hasn’t been given much in the extras department, I wasn’t expecting much here. Instead, what is included may be the best retrospective featurettes that anyone could possibly ask for. All four of the voice actors from the show (Rob Paulsen/ Raphael, Cam Clarke/ Leonardo, Barry Gordon/ Donatello, Townsend Coleman/ Michelangelo) sit down–filmed in separate locations–and express what it was like to be a part of the series and their thoughts on the reaction that it received. Sharing both touching stories about their work with sick children and the humility they would receive from kids who scoffed at them for saying they were a part of the show, this is the type of bonus material that Lionsgate should start including on every release from here on out.
Also included are two Under the Shell installments. First is one for Usagi Yojimbo (2:54), and it gives us the back story behind the secondary character and also provides some commentary by voice actor Townsend Coleman about his work doing the role. The other one, for Baxter Stockman (3:26), is nowhere near as interesting. Seeing as it is basically a montage of his appearances on the show, very little is revealed outside of the profile information at the start of the clip. Very disappointing after seeing the work that went in the the other character profile.
Rounding out the collection are some Previews.
After displeasing fans with their previous tactics of releasing this series on DVD in the form of volumes (there are six single disc releases that make up the first three seasons), Lionsgate heard the outcry of their consumers and finally started releasing the show in complete season box sets, starting with the fourth season. And it’s a good thing they finally got their act together with the DVD’s, because otherwise the entire run of the show wouldn’t have been complete until around 2012. While it’s a nice step forward, there is still some work that needs to be done with these sets in the quality department.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Season 5 |
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