Baxter Stockman

[gremcint]

So I've been rewatching my favourite version of TMNT, the second animated series that end with the Ninja Tribunal and fighting a demonic Shredder. The fifth season with that part was unaired but not hard to find, I don't like it after this season. "It's Ninja Time" go fuck yourself writers.

Anyways, there is a character called baxter stockman who throughout the series works for 3 major villains making robots and other sciency stuff for them.

When he works for the original shredder whenever something of his fails to defeat the turtles he is punished. How is he punished? he is dragged offscreen and comes back the next episode missing a body part. Serious, Arms, legs, eventually he's just a brain in a jar controlling a robot. He tries to build a new body and it falls apart as he goes insane in it. He is ressurrected and put into a new robot body complaining that they should have just let him die.


I find this rather disturbing.


You know for kids, right?

[Nekojin]

It's worth noting that Baxter Stockman was the first "villain" for the original TMNT comic series, and he's undergone more character appearance changes (seriously, almost everything but gender) than pretty much any other character in comic history. Seriously - go look at the Google Image archive of him.

I mean, how do you reconcile this (his original appearance):


with this (first animated series):


and this (a cancelled animated series):


And pretty much every version suffered from SOME form of writer sadism. The first animated series version (which, AFAICT, is the only Baxter that had any redeeming qualities whatsoever) was transformed into a human fly, and went progressively more insane over the course of the series.

He's written to be a loser - either a genius loser whose brilliant idea was to invent the Mousers so that he could steal money (never mind that licensing them could get him MORE money), or a slightly-mad, but generally benevolent, scientist who had the misfortune to fall in with the wrong crowd, or what you described. At nearly any point, he could end most of his troubles by getting away from Shredder, Krang, and the others, or at least get his mind out of being bad for its own sake. But he doesn't, and won't.

Because he's Meg - the character that the writers love to hate.

[anakhouri]

Baxter Stockman was back in the mid-2000's TMNT series, and I think he is also in the new (2012) series, the one my son likes. In both of those he seems to be African-American again and resembles the original design. I don't know much about the mid-2000's series but in one of the picture books we read, BS was in a robot body, just a head inside the clear torso.

Since the original TMNT comic was not meant for children, I'm not surprised some of the darker things slipped into the kids' versions- especially that late in the show, when they probably realized that their fans were getting older, or that adults also liked the show.

[lordlundar]

Baxter Stockman was created to be an interesting character. Just likeable enough for you to feel sorry for him when he gets the comeuppance from whoever he crosses but not enough to actually say he didn't deserve it. It's a delicate balance and I do think every incarnation of him was handled well in that respect.

As for the dismemberment issue, yes he was progressively losing body parts as the show went on but it was never shown. The first incident was Shredder saying "example of those who fail me", fade out then Stockman shows up later with a cybernetic arm. Beyond that it was simply he shows up with less flesh the next time he's involved. So darker but not gruesome which is how the show was to be presented.

[Bloodsoul]

I'm not sure if the fate of Baxter doesn't bother me because I'm an adult now or because I'm used to it after having grown up watching Batman: The Animated Series and somewhat similar shows.

Be right back, gonna re-watch "Heart of Ice…"

[EricKei]

Just as an aside -- in the original comics, erstwhile heroine April O'Neil was his lab assistant...But that promptly changed when she found out about his little robot friends and tried to feed her to them. Cue the turtles ^_^

edit: I find it kind of interesting that the Mouser design is almost exactly the same in the original comics and in the animated show o_O ... One of the few things that they brought over more-or-less untouched.

The (actually quite understandable for the time) kiddification of the IP one of my personal favorite gripes, tho some mystify me >_< I like to put it this way: In the old comics, Splinter was always a rat, Casey Jones is a combat-hungry nutcase (not much of a change there), Raph is almost as bad as Casey, and there are no sentient alien brains trying to take over the planet. The talking alien brains are the good guys

Side side note -- I'm not sure which series it was (I wanna say it was the first TMNT spinoff from the late 90's/early 2000's), but they had one early episode ("The King") which was an almost word-for-word and scene-for-scene carryover of the classic comic's Jack Kirby tribute issue. Kinda cool, actually. It's the one where Fugitoid is introduced, as Donatello ends up on another planet/dimension/whatever.

[lordlundar]

Side side note -- I'm not sure which series it was (I wanna say it was the first TMNT spinoff from the late 90's/early 2000's), but they had one early episode ("The King") which was an almost word-for-word and scene-for-scene carryover of the classic comic's Jack Kirby tribute issue. Kinda cool, actually. It's the one where Fugitoid is introduced, as Donatello ends up on another planet/dimension/whatever.

That was the 2000's series. The early seasons were nearly directly derived from the comics. The only real difference was a heavier focus on Shredder (the comics had him originally a minor villain that was to be beaten then not returned to) but beyond that was pretty close to the comics.

[violiav]

Actually I've got (maybe) a kids TMNT picture book from 89/90 that depicts that story.
Eta:
found it!