TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, Episode 1 “Turtle Tracks” (8 out of 10) –Written by David Wise and Patti Howeth; Starring Cam Clarke, Townsend Coleman, Renae Jacobs, Barry Gordon, Peter Renaday, Rob Paulsen and James Avery; Originally aired December 14, 1987.
I’m sure there are very few of you who haven’t seen the original “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” animated series. I watched it endlessly growing up but it’s been several years since I last watched an episode. Today I watched the pilot again and was amazed at how well put together it is. With the exception of a few moments it actually takes itself pretty seriously and crafts a cool origin story.
A constant stream of crime has taken over New York. April O’ Neil reports.
April and her news team are attacked. The rest of her crew abandons her at the first sight of trouble. She throws the camera at her attackers and runs, slipping into the sewers for safety but the attackers climb down a manhole in pursuit, that’s when they meet the Ninja Turtles.
Once the villains are on the run, it is revealed to April that there are a group of mutants living in the sewers of New York, four turtles and a rat, masters in Ninjutsu, and they love disgusting pizzas.
Splinter offers to explain their unique origns and tells April the story of Hamanto Yoshi. Oroku Saki frames him as an assassin attempting the life of the beloved sensei, as a result Yoshi is banished from the foot clan.
Disgraced, he is forced to retreat into the sewers where the only friends he had were the rats, until four turtles were accidentally thrown down the drain.
Yoshi loved art and writing so he set up residence in the sewers and lived a simple, solitary life in the sewers writing, with his pet turtles. Until one day he found the turtles doused in glowing sewage. He retrieved the turtles from the mysterious material, getting it on himself as well. The sewage was in fact a powerful mutagen that caused them to take on the form of whatever animal that had most recently been in contact with. The turtles started becoming human, Yoshi had most recently been with the rats, they transformed accordingly.
The turtles name Yoshi Splinter, and he names them after his favorite painters. Knowing that the outside world would treat them as freaks, Splinter trains them in the art of Ninjutsu.
April doesn’t believe them and accuses them of committing the recent string of crimes and threatens to report them. The Turtles detain her until they can work it out.
While investigating the area of the attack in the sewers they find a matchbook from a place called Ninja Pizza and go to investigate there.
April goes to a Men’s clothing store to get them disguises, apparently long coats and hats is enough to successfully cloak them in one of the most population dense cities in the world. April continues to confuse their names as they walk the down the sidewalk, a nod to a problem in older comic books wherein all four of the Turtles had the same color mask, causing some confusion in identification. They eventually get to a street a block where every store has “Ninja” in the name and they enter Ninja Pizza.
April however goes to investigate the rest of the block and discovers a protection services company. When she walks inside she overhears a receptionist offering protective services to a scientific laboratory, when she gets of the phone she calls a security team and tells them they have another scientific operation set up to be taken down. Scandalous!
She goes to a payphone to call in her discovery but is abducted by the criminals, the Turtles finish their pizza and then discover she is missing, her belongings are strewn about the street corner. They follow the trail and find her tied up in a warehouse guarded by dozens of robot ninjas.
Oroku Saki observes all of the action by video from the technodrome, he recognizes their fighting style as the foot clan technique.
The Turtles rescue April but Oroku Saki calls all of the foot clan back to the technodrome to defend it from the Turtles. The foot fills the building with water to flush the Turtles and April away. They all escape to safety, returning the uniform of one of the robots to Splinter, confirming their relationship to the foot.
The episode ends here but effectively provides back story for our protagonists and sets up the conflict between the heroes and villains. The series gets a bit campier going forward but is fun the whole way through.
The original TMNT is available on DVD, either as single seasons or a complete series box set.