The Catwoman from Channel Six

The Cat Woman from Channel Six is 17th episode in the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series. It is available on the DVD box set released on April 26, 2005.

Characters

 * Leonardo (Cam Clarke)
 * Donatello (Barry Gordon)
 * Raphael (Rob Paulsen)
 * Michelangelo (Townsend Coleman)
 * Splinter (Peter Renaday)
 * April O'Neil (Renae Jacobs)
 * Shredder (James Avery)
 * Krang (Pat Fraley)
 * Bebop (Barry Gordon)
 * Rocksteady (Cam Clarke)
 * Vernon Fenwick (Peter Renaday)
 * Irma Langinstein (Jennifer Darling)
 * Myron Bimbleton (Peter Renaday)
 * Angry Diner (Rob Paulsen)
 * Woo (Townsend Coleman)

Objects

 * Matter Transporter
 * Mind Control Collar

Locations

 * Turtles' Lair
 * April's apartment
 * Shredder's hideout
 * Woo's Oriental Palace
 * Junk Yard
 * Alleyway
 * City Zoo
 * City streets

Summary
The episode begins with the turtles watching a monster movie about a monster in Cleveland. Splinter says that the turtles watch too much TV.

Meanwhile The Shredder is experimenting with Krang's Matter Transporter in his secret hideout in an empty warehouse on the dock in New York City. With the Matter Transporter, he can teleport anyone or anything on the transporter's platform wherever in the world he wants in just a few seconds. The Shredder demonstrates it by sending Bebop and Rocksteady to a nearby landfill, where a machine grabs the two mutants and sends them down to the sewers. After recovering from their fall, Bebop and Rocksteady find the turtles' sewer lair by sheer dumb luck. The turtles fight Bebop and Rocksteady, but suddenly the Shredder, not knowing what is happening, "recalls" Bebop and Rocksteady back to his hideout. The turtles watch Bebop and Rocksteady vanish into thin air. The turtles call April O'Neil to come with a new TV, because Bebop and Rocksteady destroyed their old TV during the fight.

When April O'Neil arrives, she discovers that Bebop and Rocksteady lost some Chinese food they ate. She sees the text Woo's Oriental Palace on the food carton. The turtles wonder how Bebop and Rocksteady could find their sewer hideout, one of the biggest secrets in the whole New York City. They believe that the Shredder used some kind of machine to teleport them. April goes to Woo's Oriental Palace and asks if they had seen the two strange mutants. She gets the answer "yes," and that they came from a warehouse on the dock. April goes to the warehouse and discover the matter transporter. When April takes photos on the matter transporter, a stray cat arrives and leaps up on the control panel and accidentally presses a button. The cat then leaps on the matter transporter platform where April is standing and they both are hit by a bright light. When the light is gone, the cat runs away. A dazed April is left on the matter transporter feeling woozy and horrified at the fact her nails resemble claws. April goes home to her apartment, followed by some cats and notices both that her body and personality are undergoing some big changes. What is happening is that the incident at the matter transporter mixed her DNA with the DNA from the cat. April is slowly turning into a big, talking feline.

When Vernon Fenwick at Channel 6 says to April that she is soon on air, she throws a vase at him. April then collapses to the floor, and her transformation becomes complete. Not entirely aware of reality, April mixes her words with meeows and other cat sounds. Irma is worried and tries to stop April from doing anything foolish, but April leaps out of the window. She says that she is going to the Shredder's hideout to reverse the process. Irma finds April's Turtle Com and calls the turtles for help. The turtles had been at Woo's Oriental Palace in search for April.

Meanwhile, April returns to the warehouse to reverse the process, but the Shredder cages her and puts a Mind Control Collar on April's neck to ensure that April will help him to destroy Splinter. Her mutation has weakened her willpower to resist the collar's control. Now a loyal slave of Shredder, April goes to the zoo and sets a tiger free to go with her. The two felines then begin their search for Splinter. Shredder is able to control April's thoughts using a remote control. Using his transmitter, Shredder boasts to Krang concerning the "delicious irony" that Splinter will be hunted down and killed by a former ally.

The Turtles and Irma learn where the warehouse is thanks to April's photographs. In the sewers, Splinter is meditating to overcome his fear of cats. Even small cats scare him, and the arrival of the escaped tiger is his worst nightmare come to life. Combined with the shock of seeing April as a beastly predator, Splinter cowers in terror. While the turtles and Irma search in vain for April, Splinter uses his Turtle Com to call the turtles and tell them that he is in danger. Irma hears the name Splinter and believe he is cute.

When April and the tiger reach the turtles' lair in the sewers, they attack Splinter. Splinter almost succeeds in reasoning with April to regain self-control, but ultimately to no avail. It does, however, buy him enough time for the Turtles to arrive. Before April kills Splinter, Leonardo uses his katana swords to cut the Mind Control Collar from April's neck. Michaelangelo uses a mechanical toy rat to catch the tiger in a cage in the turtles' sewer lair.

In the warehouse, the Shredder discovers that the Mind Control Collar is destroyed. Suddenly, a rat (which Bebop had earlier used to mock the mutated April) bites Bebop and then leaps up on the Matter Transporter. Rocksteady tries to hit the rat with his baseball bat, but instead he hits the matter transporter, which starts to overload. Shredder, Bebop, and Rocksteady have to run out just before the matter transporter explodes and destroys the warehouse. The Shredder vows revenge against the Turtles.

Because the effects of Matter Transporter were only temporary, April soon becomes human again. Irma then arrives in the sewers. She wants to find Splinter. When she discovers that he is a rat, she screams. Everyone else has a good laugh.

=Quotes=

Splinter: I warn you...too much television warps the mind, and promotes violence.


 * - Splinter, on the evils of television. By the way, don't miss our show!

Customer: (approaches Turtles in trenchcoats) Who are you supposed to be? Humphrey Bogus?!

Leo: You hit the nail right on the head, sweetheart.

Mike: Yeah, now listen here, you mugs. I'm givin' the orders around here, see?

(Turtles stare)

Mike: All right, so I don't do Bogart.

Customer: ENOUGH stalling! You turkeys are about to get plucked!


 * - The Turtles encounter a disgruntled customer. Like April before him, he doesn't care for cheesy Humphrey Bogart impressions.

Mike: Man, there's nothing like a furious, fun-filled, food flinging fight! ''(turns to camera) Try sayin' that three times fast.


 * - Michelangelo, alliteration and you!

Irma: My best friend has turned into a cat! ....I don't know whether to call 911 or the animal shelter!


 * - Irma. Somehow, you get the feeling that she's used to this.

=Notes=

Animation Errors

 * Bebop's mohawk turns brown in some shots.
 * Right before Leonardo calls April for help, Michelangelo's lips flap for no reason.
 * Leonardo's bandanna turns red when introducing himself to Irma.
 * The molecular transporter in April's photos is radically different to how it is in real life.
 * Michelangelo chews out Donatello in Raphael's voice in one scene, when the latter finds a cat.
 * April's tail disappears between shots.
 * Leonardo manages to close in and cut April's mind control collar off, but when she regains her sanity, Donatello's the one holding the sword, and the scene continues as if he was the one who saved her. Seriously, how could the editors miss that one?
 * Raphael is seen with Michaelangelo's colours in the shot after Bebop disarms him.
 * When Rocksteady uses his dagger in the fight against the Turtles, his dagger sheath is missing from his back.
 * When Bebop and Rocksteady find the Turtles watching TV, Bebop is carrying a wooden dagger which changes into a baseball bat during the fight.
 * When Bebop and Rocksteady are flushed down the sewer pipes the close up shot of Rocksteady shows him with brown taping around his dagger handle.

Continuity Errors

 * Bebop and Rocksteady toss their Chinese food boxes away at the entrance to the Turtles' lair, but when April finds it, it's sitting on top of some wrecked furniture.
 * April couldn't have possibly taken that photo of the cat on the molecular transporter. Aside from the fact that it looks different (see the animation error above), she was zapped with the beam in the few moments the cat actually was on it. Besides, she stopped taking photos when she first saw the cat, anyway.

Logic Errors

 * Shredder uses the matter transporter to send Bebop and Rocksteady to a garbage dump (even announcing that before he does so,) but, when they arrive, they both come to the conclusion that it's an.....upscale cuisine restaurant, which apparently flushes its customers down the sewer to remind them to wash before they eat? Seriously, are they THAT dumb?


 * If Shredder wanted to know the location of the Turtles' lair, why didn't he simply retrieve the co-ordinates from when Bebop and Rocksteady were accidentally brought back?


 * We can clearly see the dilapidated condition of Woo's Oriental Palace from the outside, but it takes April to go inside to determine that it's a total dive. What's worse is that the inside of the restaurant is actually pretty presentable, which makes April's statement rather bizarre.


 * So....why did Bebop have that mouse in his jacket? Did he read this episode's script in advance?

Cultural References

 * Leonardo imitates Humphrey Bogart in the restaurant. Michelangelo follows this up with an Al Capone impression.

Trivia

 * The table holding up the Turtles' television set is missing a leg, and is supported by a few hardcover books to keep balance. Not that this matters for long, anyway, as Bebop totally wrecks the TV barely 3 minutes into the episode.
 * The Turtles (or at least Raphael and Donatello) have apparently eaten at Woo's Oriental Palace before, at least enough to know that it's bad news (and that includes the food.)
 * Woo's Oriental Palace is chock full of Asian stereotypes, from customers wearing gis and being sumo wrestlers, to Woo's act of going "Hee-YAH!" when chopping some cabbage and judo flipping a disgruntled customer.
 * This episode suggests that after the events of "A Thing About Rats", April has been staying with Irma in her apartment.
 * This is Irma's first interaction with the Turtles. She apparently took this a whole lot better than April did. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about her reaction to Splinter.
 * This is also the first time Irma's 'hopeless romantic' theme plays. It starts when a heartstruck Irma walks into the Turtles' lair, looking for Splinter.
 * When Michaelangelo kicks Rocksteady into the wall horn first it plays the same piece of footage from when Donatello did the same thing earlier but mirror-flipped.
 * As a mutant, April's claws are sharp enough to rip a metal lock from solid concrete. Yikes.
 * Understandably, Splinter has a fear of cats.
 * Playmates Toys created an April O'Neil action figure based off this episode, as part of their Mutatin' TMNT series. Mutatin' April (1993) was a part of the second wave of this series, along with Mutatin' variants of Shredder, Rahzar, Tokka, and Foot Soldier. The April figure could change from human to humanoid feline and came with accessories including clamp-on claws, mutatin' video bag, retromutagen ooze canister, and a mega mutation chart which illustrated April's transformation.
 * Sadly, the toy itself looks nothing like how April's mutant form is presented here, hewing more closely to a leopard than a cat.
 * This is the first of three occasions that April is temporarily turned into a mutant, the second being a fish woman in "Rebel Without a Fin" and as a giant wasp in "Revenge of the Fly".