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The Fifth Turtle
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987 Cartoon) episode
The Fifth Turtle Title Card
Season Code: 03
Episode: 08
Original airdate October 4, 1989
Written by Francis Moss
Producers:
Episode chronology
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"Burne's Blues" "Enter the Rat King"
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1989 Season
September 25, 1989 - Feburary 9, 1990
List of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episodes
Tmnt1987logosmall

Episodes:

  1. "Beneath These Streets"
  2. "Turtles on Trial"
  3. "Attack of the 50-Foot Irma"
  4. "The Maltese Hamster"
  5. "Sky Turtles"
  6. "The Old Switcheroo"
  7. "Burne's Blues"
  8. "The Fifth Turtle"
  9. "Enter the Rat King"
  10. "Turtles at the Earth's Core"
  11. "April Fool"
  12. "Attack of Big MACC"
  13. "The Ninja Sword of Nowhere"
  14. "20,000 Leaks Under the City"
  15. "Take Me to Your Leader"
  16. "Four Musketurtles"
  17. "Turtles, Turtles Everywhere"
  18. "Cowabunga Shredhead"
  19. "Invasion of the Turtle Snatchers"
  20. "Camera Bugged"
  21. "Green With Jealousy"
  22. "Return of the Fly"
  23. "Casey Jones - Outlaw Hero"
  24. "Mutagen Monster"
  25. "Corporate Raiders from Dimension X"
  26. "Pizza by the Shred"
  27. "Super Bebop & Mighty Rocksteady"
  28. "Beware the Lotus"
  29. "Blast from the Past"
  30. "Leatherhead: Terror of the Swamp"
  31. "Michelangelo's Birthday"
  32. "Usagi Yojimbo"
  33. "Case of the Hot Kimono"
  34. "Usagi Come Home"
  35. "The Making of Metalhead"
  36. "Leatherhead Meets the Rat King"
  37. "The Turtle Terminator"
  38. "The Great Boldini"
  39. "The Missing Map"
  40. "The Gang's All Here"
  41. "The Grybyx"
  42. "Mister Ogg Goes to Town"
  43. "Shredderville"
  44. "Bye, Bye, Fly"
  45. "The Big Rip-Off"
  46. "The Big Break In"
  47. "The Big Blow Out"

1987 Season1988 Season1989 Season1990 Season - 1991 Season1992 Season1992-1993 Vacation in Europe sideseason1993 Season1994 Season1995 Season1996 Season

The Fifth Turtle is a season 3 (1989) episode of the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series. It originally aired on September 14, 1989, in syndication. It is available on DVD in the box set released on December 6, 2005.

Appearing in The Fifth Turtle (1987 TV series)[]

Major characters[]

Minor characters[]

Species[]

Objects and vehicles[]

Locations[]

Plot[]

Donatello is interested in astronomy and uses his knowledge about where Jupiter was in 1909 to learn its present location, 80 years later. The other Turtles interrupt him and when Donatello believes it is the Shredder but it is the Turtles who have no more pizza.

Dressed in human disguises, Donatello and Raphael go to the supermarket store to buy some pizzas. It is late in the evening. They have a feeling that they are followed. On their way back, they try to take a shortcut but meet a gang of young street punks who try to rob Donatello and Raphael of their money. Donatello and Raphael take off their clothes to show they are turtles. Suddenly, a young boy wearing a turtle costume, and who calls himself Zach "Master Ninja Turtle and the Scourge of Evil Doers," appears. Zach is equipped with an ice hockey stick as a weapon. Zach tries to attack the street punks, but falls to the ground and Donatello kicks a dustbin towards the street punks. A fight erupts between the Turtles and the street punks, and the street punks soon run away. Zach tells the Turtles that he has got some information about them, and now he wants to help them fight crimes.

Donatello and Raphael tell Zach that he should go home before he gets in trouble. Zack leaves them, but first he picks up Raphael's Turtlecom, that Raphael lost in the fight against the street punks. Raphael learns that he lost his Turtlecom.

Meanwhile, inside the Technodrome down below the city, Krang tells Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady that within 24 hours there will be a rare planetary conjunction, involving the Earth, the Moon, the Sun and Mars. Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady take a transport module to the surface to steal some "Capsidium Crystals" at Marconi Labs and place them under the telescope inside the planetarium. When the sunlight from the planetary conjunction hits the Capsidium Crystals, it will create enough energy to re-power the Technodrome and raise it to the Earth's surface.

When Zach comes home, his bigger brother doesn't believe Zach when he said that he found the Turtles.

Later that night at Channel 6, April O'Neil and Irma get information about a break-in at Marconi Labs. Two thieves are described as looking like a rhino and a warthog. That can only mean Bebop and Rocksteady. April contacts the Turtles via her Turtlecom and they say they will come. Zach, who has Raphael's Turtle com without Raphael's knowledge about it, gets the same information as the Turtles, and tells April that he will come.

At Marconi Labs, Bebop and Rocksteady steal the Capsidium Crystals when the Turtles and April arrive. Zach arrives on his bike but falls into a pit in the center of the room. This gives Shredder the opportunity to escape with the stolen Capsidium Crystals. But first, Shredder pushes a button in the lab which starts a swinging pendulum, so the Turtles have to save Zack from being crushed. Bebop and Rocksteady make things worse by standing and firing at the Turtles with their guns. Raphael saves Zach, and Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady escape. But Rocksteady tells April that tomorrow, they will raise the Technodrome.

Zach tells the Turtles that his name is Zach, and that he soon will turn fourteen years. After a short discussion, Zach disappears and Raphael realizes that Zach has his Turtle Com, so Zach could have known that the Turtles were at Marconi Labs.

The Turtles return home to their New York City sewer lair in the Turtle Van, not knowing Zach followed them on his bike. When the Turtle Van parks, Zach uses a trick to follow the tracks of the Turtles.

Back in the Technodrome, Krang blames Bebop and Rocksteady for the mistake because they told about their plan.

In the sewers, the Turtles and Splinter talk about what Rocksteady said about the Technodrome. Donatello says that during tomorrow's conjunction, Shredder can raise the Technodrome.

Suddenly, Zach arrives and tells them that he used his equipment to find them. Zach is welcomed by Splinter for, even if he is young, doing something that many older and wiser people tried but never did: finding the Turtle's sewer lair. He also commends Zach for besting his students; then the Turtles react in shock that they failed to realize they were followed. He shows Raphael's Turtlecom, and shows a sound-trick with it by using a microphone.

In exchange for promising not to interfere with the Turtles anymore, the Turtles give Zach a tour of their lair.

Meanwhile, Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady hide in a basement and watch a video about the incidents at Marconi Labs. The videotape shows Zach on his bike, and Shredder calls the police and tells that he found a bike he wants to give back to the owner, using the number on its plate. The police give Shredder Zach's address, and he writes it down. He then sends Bebop and Rocksteady to go to the home of Zach and kidnap him.

Bebop and Rocksteady arrives at Zach by climbing up a ladder. Zach sleeps, but awakes when he hears something outside. He sees it is Bebop and Rocksteady. He promptly hides among a bunch of toys and stuffed animals, remaining completely motionless. Rocksteady surmises Zach is not home, so they should leave before they attract attention. But Bebop mentions the word planetarium before he and Rocksteady go away.

When Krang hears that Bebop and Rocksteady failed to capture Zach, he tells Shredder that he will send some Foot Soldiers instead.

Donatello learns that Shredder can use the planetarium across from the City Park in his plans.

Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady arrive at the planetarium. Zach also arrives on his bike, and he believe Donatello is smart enough to learn that Shredder needs the planetarium. Rocksteady captures Zach.

The Turtles arrive in the Turtle Van. Donatello and Raphael fight the Foot robots while Leonardo and Michelangelo go inside the planetarium.

Shredder shows Leonardo and Michelangelo that Zach is captured, and forces the two turtles to give up.

Outside, Donatello and Raphael manage to send the Foot robots, who are firing laser, down to the Technodrome in the transport module. Donatello and Raphael go inside the planetarium, but is captured by Shredder. Shredder has tied all the Turtles and Zack to chairs. The planets are aligned as Krang drives the Technodrome towards the surface.

Donatello says that the Capsidium Crystals are sensitive to sound. Zack uses his Turtle Com-sound trick with Donatello's Turtlecom, and the planetarium echoes with an ear-piercing sound that shatters the crystals. The Technodrome to falls back toward the center of the Earth.

The turtles use a broken crystal shard to cut themselves and Zach free from their ropes and go after Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady, who escape. Shredder throws a smoke grenade to cover their escape. Then they see that the transport module is gone, they jump down in the hole and fall down all the way back to the Technodrome.

Back at the turtles' sewer lair, Zach is given his own Turtle Com, and they tell him that he can always come to them. The turtles later drive Zach to his home. When Zach's brother mocks him, asking if he was looking for his "imaginary friends", the Turtles are then seen in their van, waving goodbye and commending Zach for his help, leaving Walt dumbfounded.

See also[]

Quotes[]

Shredder: You will not stop me, you meddlesome reptiles!
Michelangelo: Get serious, dude! They don't call this The Shredder Show!


Notes and errors[]

  • In the first shot of the Technodrome careening down the underground shaft, its tracks are colored white.
  • When Donatello is explaining Shredder and Krang's plan on the computer, his mouth doesn't move for the rest of the line.
  • When Donatello and Raphael are leaving the pizzeria in their disguises, they remove their human masks to reveal their turtle faces without their trademark eye masks. But when they strip of their human clothes to show the street punks they are turtles, the eye masks suddenly show up on their faces from out of nowhere.
  • When Donatello and Raphael are surprised to see Zach show up, Raphael is seen with Leonardo's colors in one shot.
  • The bottom of Rocksteady's stomach is colored the same color as his pants when he opens Zach's closet.

Trivia[]

  • The scene where Zach hides in the closet is similar to a similar scene in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, to the point there is an E.T. plushie among Zach's other toys.
  • When the Turtles and Zach were all tied up, the boy mentions that he has an idea to stop the Shredder and Krang's plans, but that he needs one of their Turtlecoms; Raphael sarcastically retorts making a similar reference to the Ghostbusters motto, "Who Ya Gonna Call? Ghostbusters!".

Home media releases[]

VHS[]

DVD[]

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