Blast from the Past #563: February 15 and 20, 2008: Re: TMNT166WeddingBellsandBytesOUT

Subj: Re: FW:   TMNT166WeddingBellsandBytesOUT
Date: Friday, February 15, 2008 10:49:39 AM
From: Peter Laird
To:   Lloyd Goldfine

In a message dated 2/14/08 3:07:23 PM, Lloyd writes:

<<Hey Pete –

 Regarding Sid, the episode that featured him ended with both April and Casey not completely hating his guts.  If you remember, he’s on hand as they discover together that the treasure he was searching for all this time no longer exists.  I think April even gives him a few words about second chances.  I don’t think it’s out of the question for Sid to show up.

 Speaking of wedding guests, I’ve been talking with Stan about having Usagi and Gen at the wedding.  He’s all for it.  Our legal department is getting the paperwork in order, but I’m happy they were able to RSVP yes!

 Talk to you soon.

 Lloyd>>

Dear Mr. Encyclopedic Knowledge,


Thank you for the reminder! I think I was a tiny bit confused because I was thinking about the story that Dan Berger wrote recently (and I edited) for an upcoming issue of TALES OF THE TMNT wherein Sid returns and ends up transformed into a small wretched creature.


Now I'm clarified!


-- Pete

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Subj: Re:   TMNT166WeddingBellsandBytesOUT
Date: Friday, February 15, 2008 10:55:41 AM
From: Peter Laird
To:   Matthew
cc: Lloyd Goldfine

In a message dated 2/14/08 2:22:47 PM, Matthew writes:

"So we agree – Splinter suddenly being possessed by the Shredder does not follow the cyberspace “logic rules” that we’ve set up over the course of this season.  To solve this problem we’re thinking that at the end of TMNT164 “City Under Siege,” after the Turtles believe that they’ve destroyed the Shredder, we have a scene where we show the damaged Shredder just barely escaping destruction by surreptitiously sneaking back into cyberspace and infecting one of Master Splinter’s data bits with his code/programming – basically hiding out there with bad intentions.  Then, when the Turtles finally recover all of Master Splinter’s data bits and make him whole again – we’ll have established the logic as to how the Cyber Shredder could have gone along for the ride and incorporated your idea of the Shredder manipulating his code to do so.

 This will also address your concern regarding Splinter being possessed by Shredder (and your dislike for the bad guy replacing the good guy motif)  – instead it will be as though Splinter was acting as a temporary host for Shredder – and the Shredder was basically a great big cyber parasite, making a last ditch effort to escape into the real world for good and take out all of his enemies once and for all.  The Shredder won’t be replacing Splinter, rather, emerging from him in a wedding surprise that no one could have seen coming.

 As always, thanks for the notes Pete.  This story did have some major logic problems and your comments have been very helpful in (hopefully) putting together a more succinct way of ending this season and giving the fans an exciting climax.

Please let us know if you have any further thoughts.  Of course, we’re more than happy to make additional adjustments as we move onto scripting and all subsequent drafts.

 Best,

Matthew"


Matthew,


Thanks for the response. It's gratifying to hear that my comments have been helpful. The only thing I still have a problem with is the above.


I think the issue is that the writer is getting the real world and cyberspace -- and what can and can't happen in each respective realm -- confused. That somehow the Shredder could "infect" one or more of Splinter's data bits and later on use that infection as a launching point for "morphing out" of a fully-reconstituted Splinter is indeed a dramatic visual and I could see it happening... but only if it all happened IN CYBERSPACE. Having this bizarre "parasite emergence transformation" happening in the real world just doesn't make any sense to me, and I don't think it works within the rules we have set up.

The other big problem with this approach, as I see it, is that -- especially for the final episode of a season -- it feels very flat, given that this thing that emerges out of Splinter isn't even the Shredder entity that the Turtles have been contesting with all season long -- it's just a copy of a copy of the Shredder. The Shredder entity that the Turtles have been fighting is now a real character in the real world, having successfully transitioned from his state as a "scan" of the Shredder which had been stored in cyberspace into an actual physical being via the purloined designs for Donatello's cybermat portal. THAT is the Shredder that we want to see in this final episode, not some copy of a copy.


Maybe my alternative idea (the Cyber Shredder hiding a tiny bit of infected code which translates into a homing device when Splnter is rendered real again) isn't the best option (though I think it could work), and I am open to better ideas.  But I can't get behind the "Shredder emerging from Splinter" thing.


ALTHOUGH...


.... I just had another (quite possibly terminally wacky) idea. I'm not even sure I want to propose this, but in the interest of full disclosure, I feel I should at least throw it out for consideration. Here goes: What if Casey and April's wedding takes place in cyberspace? Think about it -- it would be a private location where a gathering of all these mutants and creatures and super beings and such could happen and not get noticed.  And, given that it is in cyberspace, the Shredder-out-of-Splinter transformation could take place, logically.
We could even throw in a bit about how doing it this way allows April to have the wedding in a location she has always dreamed about (TBD)... perhaps it's even someplace that she has either tweaked or fully created (through her own programming skills). It could offer some interesting visual opportunities, to be sure. And we could have some fun with how some of our "guest stars" react to passing through Don's cybermat and being turned into "virtual" beings.
I'm not saying I love this idea... but it is interesting enough (at least to me!) to consider.


-- Peter

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Subj: Re:   TMNT166WeddingBellsandBytesOUT
Date: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 11:58:48 AM
From: Peter Laird
To:   Matthew
cc: Lloyd Goldfine

<<Hi Pete,

Thank you for clarifying your comments re: TMNT166 “Wedding Bells and Bytes.”

 Having read them and in brainstorming with Lloyd, I think there might be a solution that would allow for the dramatic visual of the Cyber Shredder morphing out of a fully-reconstituted Splinter and, at the same time, explain the logic of it all.

 Here goes:

 Since the Cyber Shredder was created, for the most part, out of whatever Viral was made out of and Viral has always been able to move from the real world to the digital world (as established in Fast Forward), this might make the whole real world/cyber world crossover idea more consistent and logical with what has gone on before.>>

 Of course, the Cyber Shredder did not inherit all of Viral’s powers (after all, her programming was damaged when he took her over – which would explain why he wasn’t able to escape from cyberspace into the real world from the get-go), but perhaps the Shredder was able to salvage just enough of her abilities to, while imbedded and hidden deep inside one of Splinter’s data bits, keep Master Splinter in a kind of state of suspended digital animation after he finally makes it back into the real world.>>

Yes... BUT... as I recall it, Viral was never fully "physical", in the sense that she was more of an "energy being". And that's clearly NOT what we want this new Shredder to be when he comes out into the "real world". We want him to be a big strong guy (or, really, an evil Utrom in a robot exoskeleton) with actual metal armor with real metal blades.

And I must say I don't understand what that last line means. Very confusing.

 <<In regard to your concern that the Turtles will be fighting a Shredder that is a copy of a copy in this final episode, my apologies, I did not intend it to come across that way.

 The idea we are going for (and planning to set up at the end of TMNT164 “City Under Siege”) is that the Cyber Shredder we’ve been following all season long surreptitiously sneaks into one of Splinter’s data bits as a last ditch effort to save himself.  This Shredder would not be a copy of a copy but the same one we’ve come to know and loathe.   >>

But that fact remains that if we went forward with the "Shredder morphing out of Splinter" bit, we would still have TWO Shredders -- this one which is morphing out of Splinter, and the OTHER one (the one which is now real and physical after emerging from cyberspace through the duplicate of Donatello's "cybermat" portal) which is somewhere else, probably off hanging out with Khan and the Foot. The way I see it, even with your revised explanaton above, we still have another Shredder who is a copy of the original copy (the "scan" of the real Shredder which was stored in the "data vault" in cyberspace).
Also, the idea that the entirety of the Cyber Shredder can be surrpetitiously snuck into ONE of Splinter's data bits seems completely ludicrous to me. It's one of the reasons I suggested the infection of one of Splinter's data bits with code which turns into a tracking device when passed through the portal into the real world -- that's something which could be fairly simple and logically could be contained in one or two data bits.
More and more this "Shredder morphing out of Splinter" thing seems less like a worthy story-telling device and more like a cool visual that at one point entered the writer's mind, stuck there, and now refuses to be dislodged, even though it makes llittle or no sense. 
I really, REALLY don't like it.

<<Thanks for considering the above points, Pete.  Making this final episode as logical and dramatic as possible is very important to us, as I know it is to you.  Again, thank you for helping us get closer to that goal with your comments.

As always, please let us know any thoughts.

 Best,

Matthew>>