Nicktoons TMNT Episode 42- The Lonely Mutation of Baxter Stockman

 By Mark Rodriguez

 Originally written on Wednesday, May 7, 2014. Keep in mind, these were our thoughts as they were back in 2013 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.

Fans of the classic TMNT have been wondering what was going to happen to Baxter in this series. Why? Well for whatever reason, Baxter always seems to go through some kind of transformation from one series to the next. In the 80's he was accidentally turned into a fly. In the 2K3 series, Shredder kept removing body parts every time he failed until Baxter was reduced to just being a brain in a jar put inside several different kinds of robots. In the Mirage comics he had the same fate as the 2K3... except he did it to himself...

The moment we saw Baxter with a Mutagen collar device, he knew he was going to mutate sooner and later... and based on this show's love for the 80's show... we knew it just had to be a fly... Well, let's see how it went down in the 2014 version.

The episode opens in Shredder's lair and the Foot Clan Leader is tired of Baxter's failures by now, and Rahzar is watching and taunting. Baxter suggests a mutant duck named Ace Duck, or maybe mutant pigs and rhinos. Shredder is not amused and Baxter said he'd be much more useful to him as a human that as some kind of animal. Shredder says he doesn't make idle threats and pressed the button to activate the Mutagen Collar. Baxter panics and after a while it looks like Shredder was bluffing... but then one of the Mutagen bottles explodes and hits Baxter with the ooze. As he suffers his mutation he runs into a fly...

After the epic theme song, April and Don are up late working on the Retromutagen. Don finally succeeds in making the Retromutagen, but he says its takes 10 bottles of normal Mutagen to make and he only has enough for two batches. They can finally cure April's dad and she happily kisses Don on the cheek. He also suggests using it to make Splinter human again... but he hesitates and says they should try to cure April's father first. Mikey jokes about being human with the Retromutagen and Raph reminds him that he'd just become a regular turtle again.

Later on, Rahzar returns with some Robo-Foot to see what Baxter's new mutation would look like. Baxter breaks the lights and flies around, hiding in the darkness. He attacks some of the Foot robots and flies away before Rahzar can catch him.

Outside the Turtles and April try to catch April's dad. Baxter manages to find them and overhears about the Retromutagen. As he flies in to attack, this scares April's dad away. During the fight, the Retromutagen vial falls and breaks, and Baxter flies off with April.

At the lair, Don tells Splinter he only has one vial of Retromutagen left and it will takes months to make more to cure Splinter. Splinter says he might not be human but still has his humanity, and his place is now with the Turtles. Casey is eager to join in on the action and Mikey is happy to slip back into his Flyturtle costume.

At Baxter's place, April surprised him by being able to fight back. The mutant fly still manages to tie her up and suspend her over a huge vat of Mutagen. Baxter figures if he jumps into the vat of Mutagen with April, the extra human DNA would make him human again. April tells him she might just make it worse.

 

Don, Leo and Casey arrive but Baxter spot them and a fight breaks out. Baxter spits on the rope (acid spit) and it slowly eats away at it as the heroes fight him off. The rope does snap and despite Don's best efforts to catch her, she falls into the vat of Mutagen. Baxter is about to dive in after her but Casey smacks him out of the way. Surprisingly, April is not affected, being completely immune to Mutagen.

Meanwhile, Raph and Mikey are chasing after April's dad, Raph with a hand-glider and Mikey in his 'buzz buzz' fly costume. Back to the others, Rahzar arrives with Robo-Foot, and once he hears about the Retromutagen, he wants it too. The Turtles escape with April, and Baxter flies after them, and Rahzar sends the Foot after all of them.

Raph and Mike manage to catch April's dad and April arrives to try to calm him down. Baxter then arrives and snatches the vial of Retromutagen out of Don's hands for a second time. April and Casey stay behind to watch April's dad while the Turtles, Baxter and the Foot continue to fight over who gets to keep the vial.

Eventually April and Casey ride April's dad and fly into the scene, using the mutant bat to chase after Bazter. Baxter crashes into a billboard and the vial falls and shatters. April manages to make her dad fly right under it so the chemicals would splash over his head.

April's father is finally back to normal (they resolved an actual major plot thread, whaaaaa???) and April kisses Don again. Don rubs it in to Casey and the vigilantee is not amused. Mike continues to annoy Raph with the 'buzz buzz' catchphrase of his Flyturtle costume.

Back to the bad guys, Rahzar and the Foot bring Baxter back to the Shredder. Shredder wants him to create one final mutant for him, threatening to crush him like a bug if he fails again.

My Thoughts-

There's quite a bit to say about this episode. We get more shout-outs to 80's characters like Ace Duck (who only had a cameo in the old cartoon) and 'pigs and rhinos'. The kicker is, they already confirmed that Bebop and Rocksteady will in fact be in this series.

The main draw of course, if Baxter becoming a fly. He definitely looks a lot more disgusting in this version, more of a realistic fly monster than the 80's cartoon. And of course, for extra gross out factor, they make Baxter eat like real flies eat (with acid vomit and all that). I was disappointed that they brought him back to work with Shredder again in the end. I was kinda hoping he'd return to be an independent villain, but it seems whenever he does break free, he gets re-captured and forced to work with him again.

For those that forgot, the Baxter in the old series wasn't exactly mutated into a fly... at least not in the regular way. Similar to The Fly movies, Krang was going to vaporize him in a Disintegration Unit (you know, for kids!) but a fly happened to fly in with him and well.... yeah. While he was still himself in the first episode, he went crazier as time went on, even forgetting why he hated the Turtles in the first place. Will this also happen to this version of Baxter?

Casey finally notices that Don likes April and perhaps vice-versa. To this point, Casey mostly disliked Don because Don disliked him, and he wasn't going to put up with that crap. Now that he's in on it, I guess we have to see how this will develop. As for April... immune to Mutagen? Major cop out. I would have loved to have seen her mutate into... well anything. I mean they had the Retromutagen so they could have undone whatever she would have mutated into. But then again, we do know that April is part Kraang... and we already saw that the Kraang Water didn't burn her arm off (Paige reminded me).. so yeah. I guess this means the Kraang can't be mutated either.

The real question is what awaits April's dad? Will he just be shoved into the background again? Or will yet something else happen to him that will be his excuse to be left out of most of season 3? If anything, at least he and Kurtzman can exchange notes. Maybe he can shed some light on what it was like being a mutant. Or maybe he's be even more shell-shocked than he was before. If being kidnapped by aliens freaked him out, being a mutant bat for several weeks should push him over the edge. Nahhh... he'll be shoved into the background again.

I'm ending this article with a random thought from Paige while watching Amazing Spider-Man 2. She thought the clutzy, nerdy dork Max Dillon, before he became Electro, reminded her a lot of this version of Baxter Stockman.