Blast from the Past #508: October 23, 2005: Re: 132 ("Graduation Day: Class of 2105") First Draft and October 27, 2005: Re: Episode Micro-springs

Subj: Re: 132 ("Graduation Day: Class of 2105") First Draft
Date: Sunday, October 23, 2005 1:51:55 PM
From: Peter Laird
To:   Lloyd Goldfine

Lloyd,


Here are my notes on the Ep 132 first draft.


1.) Re: the following:

"FOLLOW CLOSER ON DON, taking in fear as he falls (SLO-MO).  He twists his head around and opens his mouth wide.  The water from the glass flows into his mouth.
ON THE FLOOR - as Don lands on his back with a THUD.
DON
<gulp.>
BACK UNDER THE BOULDER - grimacing Leo and Raph use all their might to heave the boulder off of their shellbacks.  It CRASHES to the floor.  The guys collapse from the effort.
DON hops up and steps up to Splinter.  Don still holds the now empty glass.
DON
I bring you your water, Master -- <BELCH> -- unspilled.
SPLINTER
Well done, Donatello.  But what "insight" have you displayed?
DON
Truth is in the details.  You said bring you the water, not what to carry it in."

While this is certainly a clever take on the challenge, it plays a little fast and loose with what "unspilled" means. You could argue that the water certainly DID spill, out of the glass and into Don's mouth.
Here's another option to consider, one which to me is more Don-like. What if Don figures out that the only way to bring the water to Splinter unspilled is to use the property of centrifugal force and SPIN the glass so that centrifugal force keeps the water in the glass no matter what gyrations Don is going through?


2.) Re: the following:

"SPLINTER
I separated them into THREE PIECES: two sticks and the chain."

Technical point: While Mike's old "classic" nunchuks had a chain joining the two sticks, his "future" nunchuks have a CABLE.


3.) Re: the following:

"ON LEO - Looking up, he's hit by the intensified reflection of the light beams.  Leo grabs his eyes and flails, blinded.  
LEO
Hey!  Who turned out the lights?!"

Given the context, Leo's line seems kind of inappropriate. 


4.) Re: the following:

"ANGLE ON LEO - he frowns and looks around as he hears what sounds like metal rubbed by a polishing stone <GRINDING>."

Technical point -- I doubt you could get any kind of highly reflective surface by "grinding" metal with a stone. Mikey should probably use something else -- maybe buffing the hubcap with his bandana or leather wristband or elbow pad.


5.) Re: the following:

"ON THE RINK - The building SHAKES (SFX) as a NASTY-LOOKING 30-FOOT-TALL ROBOT, holding a massive hockey stick, STOMPS down the aisle (crushing seats), making his way to the ice. "

Why does the robot crush seats? Seems over the top... and irresponsible for Cody to allow his robots to damage the facility. Also, it's a little much that the whole building should shake when the robot walks.
On a technical design note -- it would seem that a thirty-foot-tall robot would need a correspondingly bigger ice rink to skate and play hockey on. ISsthat the plan for this scene, and if so, how much bigger? I wonder if it might make sense to scale these robots down to fifteen or twenty feet high -- they would still be plenty intimidating to Mikey.


6.) Re: the following:

"A SECOND NASTIER ROBOT then rises up from behind the penalty box and CRASHES through it. "

As with the chair crushing bit earlier -- WHY?


7.) Re: the following:

"CODY
O’Neil Tech’s private robo-hockey team has off this week.  I called for a practice session."

I think it would be better grammar to say "O’Neil Tech’s private robo-hockey team has this week off." And why does Cody say "I called for a practice session"? The robots aren't "practicing" -- they're being used to try to stop Mikey from reaching his goal (no pun intended).
Another technical detail point -- will these robots have skates (or skate blades) on their feet? And will Mike also have some kind of skates so that he can credibly move around on the ice as needed?


8.) Re: the following:

"Just then a console beside Mikey get sucked OS by the affect of one of the Helix Creatures (SFX). "

That should be "effect", not "affect".
Also, given the way that the smashed machines release what appear to be physical manifestations of creatures from the games themselves, I wonder if this test might be better situated in Cody's "holodeck" training dojo instead of just some warehouse, so that these game creatures could be realized as holographic projections. Otherwise, their appearance from the smashed game cabinets seems a little too magical.


-- Pete

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Subj: Re: Episode Micro-springboards
Date: Thursday, October 27, 2005 1:37:51 AM
From: Peter Laird
To:   Lloyd Goldfine

Lloyd,


Here are my notes on the micro-springboards.


1.) MONSTER ON THE MOON: Is there just one alien race living on the moon? I thought there were many.
And why the moon, necessarily? There are other planets in our solar system which might by this time have people/aliens living on them, i.e. Mars.
Bishop's rationale for leading this secret mission instead of just calling in the government troops seems a bit weak. Maybe it would work better and make more sense if there is some specific reason why HE has to go on this mission -- maybe it's a oath he swore at some time in the past to help these particular aliens. (I don't know WHY right now, but I'm sure we can think of a good reason.)


2.) TIMING IS EVERYTHING: Could be fun.


3.) THE FALL OF DARIUS DUN: Could work. A key issue would be how to make Cody's battle armor able to hold its own against Darius' battle armor (assuming Darius is going to have something as formidable as the first battlesuit we saw him in (even though Jammerhead was using Dun's body at the time). And as that suit was destroyed in that episode, are we going to have a NEW battlesuit for Darius or a duplicate of that first one?
Also, we have to come up with a rationale for WHY whatever Darius is doing is so illegal that he will be forced to abandon his post at O'Neil Tech. Is ANY kind of weapons dealing illegal, or is it CERTAIN types of weapons?


4.) DNA IS THICKER THAN WATER: Could work, though I'm not sure if I buy the whole "I'm going to pretend to be good so I can get close to the Turtles, gain their confidence, and then when they're not on their guard I'll let my evil brothers in so we can sneak attack them" bit that Dark Leo indulges in. I mean, are the Dark Turtles SO unsure of their ability to defeat the Turtles that they have to go to these lengths?


5.) RACE FOR GLORY!: Interesting attempt to tie current Turtle continuity into the PLANET RACERS continuity, but I'm not sure if it works. It might... it might not. The obvious question is -- if Raph was such a huge influence and inspiration on young Godman (not GOODman) Falcon, why didn't Falcon recognize Raph when they met in "Across the Universe" in Season three?


6.) THUS SPAKE METHUSELAH: I'm not too sure about this one.


7.) THE MILK RUN: Some interesting elements, but it would need to be run through the "Logic Filter" for it to make more sense.


8.) THE MOUSER THAT ROARED: Again, some interesting ideas, but I'd have to see more of how Stockman survived all this time and why he's living underground and why he doesn't know what's going on on the surface. And why is he a "gigantic pulsating brain mass"?
And I think it's the GALACTIC Alliance, not INTERGALACTIC.


9.) THE TROUBLE WITH TURTLES: This one is not terribly appealing. Maybe it could be made so, but I don't know.

10.) ENTER THE JAMMERHEAD: A few intriguing ideas, but it makes NO sense to me that somehow Jammerhead can program in all the moves of not only the TMNT but ALL of Earth's great fighters and become the "Ultimate FIghting Machine"... but all these skills don't include the ability to improvise. (And HOW does he do this?)
The most interesting bit of this is the mention of Starlee's family (heretofore unseen) -- might be some intriguing possibilities there.


11.) TARNISHED SERLING: This is interesting, but I think suffers from misdirected emphases. It's not really very dramatic to have Serling's "mind" in Cody's battle armor battle an "evil" Serling -- that's not much of a contest. It's far more interesting (to me at least) if the weaker Serling has to put himself on the line to protect Cody by battling the far tougher "Turtle X" (or whatever it is that we call Cody's battle armor). Serling can display previously hidden levels of cleverness and bravery in his battle with the Turtle X armor. (And it's that armor suit -- NOT Serling -- which has the "failsafe program" within it which is activated by Darius and turns it on Cody and the Turtles.)
There could be a touching coda to this story where -- although he is victorious over Turtle X -- Serling is almost completely trashed. Cody tearfully pleads with Serling to not "die", and he tells Serling that he will fix him back up... and Serling asks him to do so in a way which will allow him to protect young Master Cody in a more effective way (and that way is the "Serling as robotic transforming exo-suit for Cody" which you wanted to do earlier).


12.) THE COSMIC COMPLETIST: An interesting idea, though the idea that this Completist would actually destroy a whole planet after taking a few samples for it is pretty horrifying -- and if we didn't KILL this fucker at the end of the story, we would not be doing our duty.
On the other hand, maybe we could have this Completist not destroy those planets but do something else -- CLOAK them, push them into other dimensions, etc. -- to accomplish the same goal of "not letting anyone else have one".


13.) CODY'S DAY OUT: The idea that Splinter would send Cody out after Darius Dun in this manner just makes no sense to me.


14.) ALL FOR ONE: I really hate the bit where the Turtles are all instantaneously melded together into one being due to being hit with a "gene bomb", but some of the other elements of this story might be worth pursuing.


15.) SH'OKANABO FINALE: This is kind of a mess, exemplified by this paragraph:

"In the final moments of the first episode, it looks as if the guys are stranded in space as the Earth is slowly pulled into Sh’Okanabo’s galaxy…until help comes in the form of TORBIN ZIIXX!  He yanks the guys through the time/space window… "

What the -- ??!! I have NO idea of what is supposed to be happening here.
Much work needs to be done with this one. Here are a few questionable areas:


a.) Is the portal moving OVER and AROUND the Earth or is the EARTH moving THROUGH the portal/time window? I think the former would make more sense.


b.) Why can't Bishop and all of the other aliens on Earth and their various forces destroy the time window?


c.) The "dead planet" seems totally extraneous. 


d.) Pitting the Turtles against vast numbers of "Kanobo drones" seems a waste and very unrealistic. It makes more sense if they have a small but KEY part to play in this huge battle -- not sure what it is off the top of my head, but something more suited to their ninja nature than trying to fight their way through legions of drones.


e.) Sending the Turtles back in time to defeat Sh'Okanabo BEFORE he even made it to Earth seems weird to me, especially as it does create a pretty significant time paradox. However, I do think that some clever use of the time window might be the way to have the Turtles defeat a foe which they have previously shown no capacity to defeat... maybe with Cody's help, they alter the nature of the time window and trap Sh'Okanabo into being trapped in it... but instead of being sent into the past, Sh'Okanabo is hurled into the vastly distant future, seconds before the heat death of the universe -- when every bit of mass in the universe is being compressed down into the infinitesimal speck from whence originally sprang the Big Bang (the creation of our Universe). The last we see of Sh'Okanabo is as he is being crushed down into this tiny speck -- never to be heard of again!


-- Pete