Blast from the Past #500: September 26, 2005: Re: TMNT Premise 130 ("The Journal") beats

Subj: Re: TMNT Premise 130 ("The Journal") beats
Date: Monday, September 26, 2005 2:57:24 PM
From: Peter Laird
To:           Lloyd Goldfine

Lloyd,


        Here are my notes on the Ep. 130 revised premise beats.

While this is an improvement on the last version, it is still not very satisfying. One of the big problems is that if we DO establish -- as in this premise -- that there IS an authentic Casey Jones journal and the Turtles (in their first, brief glance inside it) realize that it tells the story of their future in the past, after they have returned from THIS future (does that make sense?), then one of the big mysteries of this season -- "Will the Turtles ever make it home to their original time?!" -- is basically blown. There is no longer any... wait a minute...


... you know, I just realized -- we've ALREADY blown that bit, with at least one reference that I can recall from a recent premise: the "Donatellium" that Don supposedly created sometime in the past, but at a time AFTER the Turtles were sucked into the future. So we already know that at least Don makes it back.


I also think more needs to made of the point that Splinter (not Cody so much) makes to the Turtles about "knowledge of one's future". He should make a compelling argument to the Turtles that at least temporarily convinces them not to look further into the journal.


Also, there needs to be more time than one day between the time the Turtles find and want to look at the journal and the time they "snoop" their way to it and read it... time enough for Cody and Splinter to have thought up and made (via the handy-dandy Transcendental Lathe?) a duplicate journal with the fake histories. Maybe a week would be good.


Perhaps, too, we should cover a lot of potential problems which might arise from the existence -- even if "safely" locked away -- of a journal which actually does contain details of the Turtles' future... and I have an idea to accomplish that which might be fun. Here it is:


The Turtles find Casey's journal and START to look at it. They see the first few pages, and Don realizes what it is and shuts it. They start to have an argument about whether they should continue, and that's when Splinter walks in and stops them.
A week later, the Turtles can't resist their burning curiosity anymore and individually sneak into the Trophy Room to look at the journal (as written in the revised premise).
They read all the crazy stuff in the journal and then we have the reveal that Splinter and Cody created it to teach them the lesson about seeing the future, etc.. The REAL journal is locked away.
The kicker to this version is shown in a coda which involves only Cody and Splinter, in which we see that after those first few pages in the journal, the rest of it is BLANK! Splinter says something about how it is just like Casey -- the man could never have had the patience to keep up with a journal like this.
(A variant of this could be that the Turtles are STILL burning with curiosity after they go through the "fake journal" thing, and once again they sneak into the trophy room and pick the lock on whatever it is that holds the journal... and then THEY see the rest of the journal is blank and all have the same realization that Splinter had... that Casey was not a journal writer.)


-- Peter