Sons of the Silent Age (2003 episode)

"Sons of the Silent Age" is the eighty-first episode of the animated series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), which originally aired on October 1, 2005.

Major Characters:

 * Donatello (Sam Regal)
 * Leonardo (Michael Sinterniklaas)
 * April O'Neil (Veronica Taylor)
 * Michelangelo (Wayne Grayson)
 * Raphael (John Campbell)
 * Casey Jones (Marc Thompson)

Secondary Character

 * Merwoman & four Mermen
 * Power Plant workers

Voice-over introduction
April: I love nature. Its beauty, its balance and perfection. Nature reminds me of what I learned in school about the scientist Charles Darwin. Darwin believed in the survival of the fittest. He explained how life on Earth could be defined simply as the struggle for existence. But, it seems to me that the struggle for existence is never very simple."

Plot synopsis
The four turtles, along with April and Casey, are planning a camping trip downriver during their stay at Casey's grandmother's farm. While telling "Utrom jokes" by the campfire, they are surprised when a female fish-person walks out of the river and collapses in front of them. While April and Casey try to revive her, the turtles are pulled down into the river by the fish-woman's four male companions. The fish-woman telepathically relates the story of the five creatures, the last of a race of fish people, to April before she dies. The four male creatures at this point rush to the surface and carry her away. April realizes that she has been poisoned by a nearby nuclear plant, scheduled for demolition, and that a leak at the plant could threaten the fish-woman's last clutch of eggs. April, Casey and the turtles rush off to the plant and rig one of the cooling towers to explode rather than implode, thus plugging the leak. When the officials arrive, they find out the dam is contaminated and orders the area cleaned up. As the episode ends, the eggs hatch.

Trivia

 * This episode was based directly on the storyline of Eastman and Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #28, from Volume 1 of the original Mirage comic. However, that comic ends with the four fish-people taking the dead female back into the river. April realizes that the four of them are the last of their kind that there will ever be, as are the Turtles! No such realization occurs during this episode because the second half of the story deals with April, Casey and the TMNT saving the fish creatures' offspring!