- by Owen Morton
The easy and simple answer to the above question is, of course, the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as they were known in any country besides the UK, but it was felt that the use of the word ‘ninja’ here was wholly inappropriate for a children’s cartoon – and someone evidently felt this very strongly, because they must have even gone to the trouble of redoing the entire theme tune to accommodate this). Whenever one of Krang’s clever little schemes went into operation, the Turtles were on hand to sort things out. I call to your attention the occasion on which Krang cunningly introduced dinosaurs to New York: the Turtles bravely fought the dinosaur back to where it came from. I’d call your attention to other occasions as well, but sadly I don’t have a very good memory for Turtles plotlines, and I can’t remember any other cunning plans.
But let’s just think about this. Yes, okay, Krang didn’t have very clever people working for him. Bebop and Rocksteady were, of course, total nitwits, and Shredder wasn’t all that smart either, though he did win in the intelligence stakes against Bebop and Rocksteady. (By the way, Microsoft Word’s spellchecker, which I seem to be to making reference to ever more, recognises Bebop as a word, but not Rocksteady. So … what does Bebop mean? Perhaps that’s a subject for a future article. Or perhaps not.) But I think we could argue that Krang himself was actually quite an intelligent fellow. It must take intelligence for a small pink brain to assert control over three big strong hulking things like Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady, and moreover I’d bet that Krang was responsible for designing that interesting yellow robot that he lives in.
So I think we can conclude that Krang’s not too stupid. Well, we might not be able to conclude this, but for the sake of keeping this article going, I think we’re going to have to. He’s probably as intelligent as an evil mastermind in a children’s cartoon can be, and that’s high praise indeed. He’s definitely cleverer than Skeletor, in that he manages to avoid ever actually being beaten up by his enemies, as far as I recall. Skeletor, on the other hand, achieved the proud distinction of getting the living daylights out of him at least twice in every episode he appeared in.
So Krang’s an intelligent individual. I think that, given time, he’d be able to think up some kind of plan that would allow him to achieve world domination. This is, of course, what he’s purporting to be doing already. Quite why he wants to take over the world is another matter, since he’s clearly already got everything he needs in the Technodrome. But all his plans, as far as we’ve seen, seem to have been with the express aim of taking over the planet.
The question is really why he doesn’t come up with some better plans. I mean, introducing dinosaurs into New York is going to cause confusion and perhaps a little dismay for a while, but it doesn’t offer him the quite same opportunity to achieve world domination as, perhaps, blowing up every government building in the world would. And he’s definitely got the resources to do that. I mean, come on, he’s got those digging things which burrow up through the earth to surface wherever they like. What’s to stop him from sending Shredder up through the floor of the White House and planting a bomb there? Repeat the procedure for any institution which wields any kind of authority, and before long you would have anarchy in the world. This is the point at which he could send in his foot soldiers (of which I seem to recall he has a vast array) to establish control and set up a dictatorship of Krang.
That would be the logical way to take control of the planet. He’s got enough foot soldiers to keep control and subjugate anyone who resisted – and as far as I remember, he also had the ability to create more of these foot soldiers whenever he wanted, so if he found he didn’t have enough, he wouldn’t have a problem with making more.
Therefore, Krang could easily take over the world. It doesn’t take the Brain of Britain to deduce that this is the best way to do it, with the resources he’s got at his disposal (digging things, three nitwits and a lot of explosives). The Turtles couldn’t stop him, because even if they anticipated where he was going to strike next, they’d have a hell of a job getting in there to stop it happening. The obvious question is therefore why in hell he doesn’t do it.
And here we come to it. The only plausible reason Krang doesn’t take over the world from Day 1 is that he doesn’t actually want to. And why doesn’t he want to? Well, there are a number of potential explanations for this.
Firstly, and probably most likely, Krang himself recognises that the cartoon series can only go on as long as he keeps on coming up with half-baked plans that will enable him to be defeated. He says it himself in a phrase which goes something very much like, “We’ll crush the Turtles once and for all! And then … we’ll go into reruns, I guess.” Therefore, he wants to keep on being in the limelight, so he continues to come up with stupid things for Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady to do which the Turtles will have absolutely no problem dealing with. Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady don’t question why they aren’t doing more effective things because they’re far too stupid.
Secondly, and probably less likely, Krang is in fact a double-agent working for the forces of good. This is unlikely for a number of reasons. Primary among them is that it’s very unusual for the boss of an operation like this to actually be working for the other side. If Krang wanted to help the Turtles, he’d probably just say so, and Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady would obey him, because they’re stupid. Another reason that this is unlikely is that, though he doesn’t make any serious attempt at world domination, Krang does quite frequently do things that could be classified as Not Very Nice. To repeat the example which just keeps on serving my point, introducing dinosaurs into New York is not conducive to the maintenance of public order.
Thirdly, and this is the least likely, Krang is just plain inept. It could be that it honestly hasn’t occurred to him that the best way to achieve world domination would be to kill all the world’s leaders, rather than continually going after four mutated turtles and an oversized rat who are the self-styled saviours of the world. But to be perfectly frank with you (or frankly perfect, whichever you prefer), this is totally and completely unlikely. As I mentioned above, burrowing into world government buildings and planting bombs is the best thing I could come up with now, at 12.50am. I’m sure in the morning, I’ll be able to think up something even better. However, I suspect that my current plan would work admirably, unrefined as it may be. Therefore, it really wouldn’t take Krang too long to come up with something similar, if he was actually trying.
And so, at the end of this little discussion, we are left with only one important question: why does Microsoft Word recognise ‘Bebop’ as a word, yet not ‘Rocksteady’?