- by Owen Morton
We’re really going to scrape the bottom of the barrel here, in that I know I’ve already reviewed two episodes of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles on this website, and that on neither of those two occasions was I fully aware of the plot of the episode involved, thus putting me at a slight disadvantage, when it came to discussing how the story developed (though, to be fair, considering the quality of the programme we’re talking about, I don’t expect not knowing what on earth was going on really made an awful lot of difference). Be that as it may, however, the episode I have chosen for discussion tonight is one entitled ‘Sky Turtles’.
The most memorable thing about ‘Sky Turtles’ is something that no one outside of a select group of about ten people will remember, and I doubt many of those ten remember it either. In fact, I’d be fairly willing to bet that the only one of those ten who remembers is me. The ten in question were the attendees at one of my birthday parties many years ago, and for some reason I have a very clear memory of us all watching ‘Sky Turtles’ after the birthday tea. It’s not the kind of thing one tends to remember, and I’m totally unsure as to why I remember it myself (but then, I’ve established on this website on numerous occasions that I have a distinctly strange memory), but the fact remains: we all watched ‘Sky Turtles’. I don’t know exactly who was at this party, but I know we watched ‘Sky Turtles’.
Anyway, if you’re not one of those ten people – and probably even if you are – the above paragraph must be of only marginal interest, and you’re all dying to get on with the advertised action of this article, namely, a review of ‘Sky Turtles’. If I were capable of it, I’d do this in my usual way: detailing the plot and poking fun at it as I go along, but in this case – while my memory is exceptional as to where and when I watched the episode, it’s slightly patchier when it comes to actually explaining what happened in the episode.
However, I can make it up, based on what I know of this particular episode and of Turtles episodes in general. It is of course a fairly safe assumption to make that the episode begins in the Technodrome, where we are subjected to another bout of ‘amusing’ wordplay between the highly intellectual Shredder, Krang, Bebop and Rocksteady, before the latest plan for world domination is detailed by Krang. On this occasion, it’s particularly inane. The baddies are planning – I don’t know exactly how – to cut out all the gravity on Planet Earth, and presumably take over in the chaos.
The first half of the plan – namely, the cutting out of gravity – is achieved, but they fail in the second part, thanks to the intervention of – you guessed it – a certain group of mutated reptiles with a predilection for wearing handkerchiefs tied round their wrists, ankles and eyes and eating anchovy pizzas. Obviously, gravity is somehow restored to Planet Earth, and the baddies end up back in the Technodrome bemoaning their latest failure, and the Turtles celebrate their victory by sitting around in the sewers and scoffing their little hearts out on takeaways.
Okay, there may be a little more to it than I have just described, but you get the general idea, don’t you? I don’t know exactly what happens, or indeed how the Turtles achieve their victory (I can’t even remember for certain that they did, but it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion), but I don’t think we need to know these things. The only question I really want to consider with regard to this televisual feast is a much more important one.
What exactly do Krang and Shredder think they’re going to achieve by cutting out all the gravity on Earth (leaving aside for now the fairly obvious problem of how in hell they actually manage to do this)? All that’s going to happen is things are going to start floating away, and then eventually I assume – though I’m no physicist, so if someone who is could correct me I’d be grateful – the Earth itself would start to disintegrate because all the pieces it’s made up of would no longer have an attraction to each other. I don’t honestly think this would bring Shredder and Krang any kind of advantage in the long term.
Let’s just assume, however, that they’re only planning on using their gravity disabler in the short term, and once they’ve got themselves organised into world takeover mode, they’re going to bring the gravity back. Problem is, there’s nothing really to stop them floating away as well, though, is there? Yes, I do seem to recall that both the Turtles and the baddies spent a fair amount of this episode wearing magnetic boots which kept them on the ground when necessary, but a rather important point seems to have escaped the writer’s attention: magnetic boots wouldn’t really help because the Earth isn’t magnetic! (Again, if any physicists are reading this, I’m open to correction, but I’m fairly positive I’m right.)
Plus, of course, if everything’s floating away, once Shredder and Krang finally do get their act together and take over the world, there won’t be much left, because it’ll have all frazzled away in the atmosphere (unless, of course, the atmosphere would also depart – I’m not too sure on this particular aspect of what would happen if there were no gravity). On the other hand, Shredder and Krang always seemed to me to be peculiarly motiveless anyway: I mean, okay, they wanted to take over the world, but since they had everything they needed in the Technodrome anyway, I can’t particularly see why. The only possible answer I can think of is that maybe they wanted to hang around with people other than Bebop and Rocksteady, but if that was the case, then cutting the gravity out on Earth isn’t really the solution, is it?
Lastly, we have another problem. Admittedly, I don’t know how the situation in this episode was solved, but it seems to me likely that the Turtles did something which restored the gravity. This being the case, surely everything would have fallen. A long way. One suspects that after this episode, there wouldn’t be anything alive left on the planet, if this was happening in the real world. Then again, in the real world, things like this wouldn’t happen in the first place.
And before I finish this article, I would like to point out that it’s perfectly possible that I’m doing ‘Sky Turtles’ a grave injustice. I can’t actually be certain that it was about the gravity being cut on Earth, I just have the vague impression that it was. Whatever the case, I would like to thank everyone who came to that birthday party for providing me with one of my fondest memories.