Nicktoons TMNT Episode 17- TCRI

 By Mark Rodriguez

Originally written on Saturday, March 2, 2013. Keep in mind, these were our thoughts as they were back in 2012 when the show was new and was written shortly after seeing the episodes after their initial broadcast. At the time we had zero way of knowing what to expect.

After another Saturday with reruns, the Turtles return with a new episode that continues where ‘The Pulverizer’ left off. I was lucky enough to catch it Friday during the ‘Total Turtle Takeover’, and got to enjoy the new episode along with Paige, my meatball sub and onion rings. Here are our thoughts.

The episode starts off with the Turtles chasing The Kraang in their Patrol Buggies as they try to escape with the Power Cell. Of course the last episode ended with them pushing the Shell Raiser back home after the Kraang had already escaped with the Power Cell…. So I guess somehow they managed to grab their Patrol Buggies and chase the Kraang’s helicopter before it fully got away…. Must be one slow helicopter. Anyways, due to heavy traffic, the Turtles crash into an alley and The Kraang  get away with the Power Cell… again.

At their hideout, the Kraang now use the Power Cell to activate their dimensional portal. Without other options, the Turtles have to tell Leatherhead about this, hoping to get some idea as to where the Kraang’s main hideout is. Don is hesitant since Leatherhead has a temper and always ends up grabbing him by the face.

The Turtles find Leatherhead sleeping in his sewer home. When they try to wake him up, he goes crazy… and grabs Donnie by the face. After they manage to calm him down… the Turtles tell him that they lost the Power Cell he trusted them with to the Kraang. Don gets grabbed by the face and shaken around like a rag doll again.

After the mutant gator calms down, he tells the Turtles the only thing he remembers when he was captive by the Kraang is a symbol he draws for them. Don swears he’s seen it somewhere before and everyone goes home as he tries to figure it out. It’s the same symbol on Metalhead’s head, so Don knows it’s a Kraang symbol. Splinter helps him calm down and Don finally remembered where he saw it before.

Don takes the Turtles to the TCRI building and tells them he’s seen that symbol there (I assume from the episode where Baxter attacked the TCRI building and it was on the news). The Turtles have to find a way to sneak inside and destroy the dimensional portal.

Later on, Leo, April and Splinter study the blueprints of the TCRI building, while Don works on explosives. April determines that the bottom floors are normal and most likely has regular human employees that have no idea who they are really working for. The top floors are completely blank. Splinter determines that is where they must go, but they need some way to sneak in.

 Later that night, April shows up delivering a big box to the TCRI building. Miss Campbell is there as a secretary and tell her she has to leave (hey, Elvira gets some more lines!). April is surrounded by The Kraang in their human disguises, but she manages to get away with some yo-yo tricks and sliding out of the building before they can lock her in. The Kraang prepare to destroy the box April has delivered, and Leatherhead busts out, destroying everything in sight.

As Leatherhead smashes up the alien robots, the Turtles climb up the elevator shaft, fighting lots of Kraang along the way. When they make it to the top floor, they are knocked out by poisonous gas. When they wake up they are in a glass prison without their weapons and are right in the middle of the Kraang’s main base. Mike asks why the poison gas isn’t affecting the Kraang and Don says it must be what the air is like in Dimension X. Raph asks why they want to take over a planet where they can’t breathe the air. Mike jokes that they might mutate the planet so they can live on it and everyone else can’t.  Everyone is surprised as they realized that Mike just found out the Kraang’s main plan.

Leo figures out a way to escape, but they need a distraction. The portal starts to open up and the Kraang step out of the way. Leo tosses Don a small blade to use the cut the glass walls of their prison. Mikey gets into his shell (don’t know that works for mutant turtles…. Their arms and legs are too long to fit in there, but whatever) and the others throw him through the glass, shattering it. The Turtles fight the Kraang as they hold their breath, and Don knocks one of them through a window, letting the poisonous gas escape.

The Turtles can breathe once again, but the portal is activated and something managed to come through. A huge monster made of living stone steps out and he is too powerful for the Turtles to handle. On top of that, he has deadly lava spit. Don figures the explosives he has might take it down, but then he wouldn’t have any left over to destroy the portal. Leo suggests using them to blow them both up. He manages to wrap the bag full of explosives around the rock monster’s neck, but doesn’t know how to get it near the portal.

Just then Leatherhead comes in and sees the rock monster, calling it Traag and attacks it. Leo tells him to throw him into the portal. Don activates the explosives which seemingly blow up Traag and the portal device. However, just like Dragonball Z, once the smoke clears both the portal device and Traag are still intact. To make things worse, something else is coming through the portal. Leatherhead grabs Traag and they both go through the portal, turning it off and preventing anything else from coming through. Don says they have to destroy the portal, but lots of Kraang come rushing in and the Turtles have to escape.

Back home, the Turtles are sad to tell Splinter and April that they lost Leatherhead on their mission. Mike tells the others he found something during the fight with the Kraang, which turns out to be some kind of Kraang flash drive. Don hooks it up to Metalhead and looks through the files. April wonders why the Kraang are after her father if they want to terraform the Earth. Raph reminds her they were after scientists, but April said her dad was only a psychologist. Don finds out from looking over the Kraang files that the aliens are actually after April herself.

My Thoughts-        

It was a pretty good episode and we finally got to the bottom of the Kraang's main objective. I have to wonder exactly how many bases the Kraang have at their disposal. So far they have the Human Genome Project, TCRI and wherever they're holding all the scientists they captured. Speaking of which, hey, we have Miss Campbell again. So I guess they use um... Campbell robots whenever they need females... cause I guess the Kraang don't like to pilot female robots...? At least Elvira gets more to do.

Another point worth mentioning is that General Traag appeared in this episode. I guess. Honestly he just seemed like random rock monster # 35 and just a random monster for the Turtles to fight. He didn't talk, he didn't salute to the Kraang or anything of the sort, nor did they command him to attack the Turtles. If Leatherhead didn't call him Traag, and if we didn't have the 80's cartoon known for Stone Warriors from Dimension X.... I would have just considered the guy just a random monster to fight, not unlike Justin from the 'Alien Agenda' episode. As for the fight itself, it was pretty cool, and the rock monster was pretty unstoppable, but the character itself needs more personality when compared to his 80's counterpart.

It was also awesome seeing Leatherhead whip Traag around like a rag doll. Leatherhead is definitely the power player on the Turtles side, I hope we get to see him again soon. I also find it interesting because in the 80's cartoon Leatherhead never got to meet Traag. Again, it's too bad he was sucked into Dimension X at the end of this episode because I'm curious how it would have been if he ran into the Rat King.

Other final details I liked was seeing Metalhead throughout the episode, as well as when April said her father studies rat through mazes and Splinter said 'I like a good maze'. Also having Don yelling to Leatherhead about why he always happens to grab him by the face was a perfect way to take an old joke and extend it to making it funnier. It does seem that during fights, Don is stuck to being the unlucky turtle most things seem to happen to. And who can forget Leo impersonating the Kraang? Mike's Olympic joke, comparing the Kraang symbol to it was kinda stupid, but it was made funny when Splinter mentioned it. Yes, Splinter is so bad-ass he turns lame jokes into good ones.

Finally the only nitpick Paige and I found was the sudden rushed and ubrupt ending when Don mentioned they had to destroy the portal and then suddenly had to run out because more Kraang were on the way. Paige felt they should have made it into a 2-part episode instead of rushing to end the scene, and I felt that if it was the old cartoon there would have been some 4th-wall breaking joke of 'we gotta go because we only have 2 minutes left to wrap up the episode'. I don't know... leaving the portal device intact was kinda stupid, and I don't care how many Kraang were there, they should have still tried to destroy it or at the very least, take away the Power Cell again. What's to stop the Kraang from activating it right after they left? I guess there's no real hurry since you have to consider the Kraang activated the portal from the beginning of the episode... and it took all way until the end, which I assume is later that night or the next day, for something to finally step out of it...

I find it interesting the Kraang are after April however... and I assume it's because of the 'strange feeling' she gets sometimes. I wish it was expanded upon however, because honestly, if you haven't seen the 'Monkey Brains' episode you wouldn't know what it was all about. The Alien Agenda episode was supposed to be about Miss Campbell trying to capture April due to that special ability... but it was never mentioned or brought up anywhere in the episode, and it was basically a Karai and Leo episode to be honest. I mean seriously, just watching the episode alone without hearing any previews or online information elsewhere, you have no real idea why Miss Campbell wanted to capture April, before all focus went to Karai and the Kraang.  The ONLY ONE TIME it was ever brought up was when April somehow determined that the mutant monkey was once a human. I really hope they mention this again or they have April use her unique ability again, or else it won't make sense to have the Kraang target her for something she only did in a scene that lasted a few seconds 10 or so episodes ago.

I still enjoyed the episode and the nitpicks are minor. I just hope the following episodes continue with the threat of the Power Cell, the dimensional portal and April being the Kraang's main target. Let's not lose focus here guys. I also want to end this review with a thought Paige had when April said that there are regular people working on the bottom floors of the Kraang building, unaware that they're working for aliens. "Don't these people notice that all their bosses and supervisors look the same? Do they think they're working for octuplets or something?" Oh, and the Kraang playing with Mikey's nunchucks was funny.