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“Artless”

Season 7, Episode 5 First US Airdate: October 2, 1993

The Turtles clash with a pair of intergalactic art thieves.

“Artless” is the fifth episode of the “Vacation in Europe” side season of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Doug Molitor returns to the series as the writer of this adventure after an extended absence, his prior contributions being “Beware the Lotus” and “Four Musketurtles” back in season three.

Continuing their journey through Italy, the Turtles arrive in Florence, where April reports from the monastery where Leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper. Watching in addition to our heroes are an alien couple, floating blobs Dob and Yikum, who happen to be passing through our solar system and decide to acquire the painting for themselves. As April quizzes Professor Marco about the restoration work needed for the painting, it’s surrounded in pink light, vanishing seconds later.

The Turtles discuss retrieving the painting, though Michaelangelo fails to see what makes it so important. Splinter of course is a noted fan of the Rennaissance masters, having named the Turtles after them, and takes his students out onto the streets of Florence with a view to educating them. Despite attempting to keep a low profile, our heroes attract the attention of a group of sightseers who mistake them for movie stars. (Mikey remarks on the absurdity of this as “who’d pay to see a movie about us?”, a gag that probably landed much more effectively in 1990 – when this episode was written, and the first TMNT movie was breaking records – than it does for anyone watching in the US in 1993, months after the poor showing of the third film.) The group are eventually able to lose the onlookers, meeting up with April and explaining to her their intent to help track down the missing painting.

Elsewhere, a pair of museum guards are horrified to find themselves face to face with a pair of enormous aliens in the shape of Dob and Yikum. The men open fire – notably, with real weapons instead of the laser blasters often used by police and the military in TMNT - but their ammunition has no effect. Both guards flee after being physically ejected from the building.

Splinter follows through on his plan to educate the Turtles about the work of their namesakes, taking them to see Michelangelo’s statue of David. Strategic camera angles are used in close-up shots to get around rendering a fully nude man in the show (in wider shots, the offending details are simply omitted). The statue begins to glow at the same time Dob and Yikum arrive, now smaller in size than when they confronted the guards. They announce that they’re from the planet Lookra and intend to take the statue for themselves. The Turtles step in to stop them but are thwarted by a forcefield and having their attacks easily brushed off. Splinter intervenes and is also quickly dealt with. Dob and Yikum shrink both themselves and the statue of David down as the Turtles are sent flying through the roof’s glass dome. This ascent only lasts so long, and our heroes begin falling, about to meet their demise upon hitting the streets of Florence as the first act concludes.

The Turtles are still plummeting when act two begins, with Donatello producing a rocket pack from his shell to break their fall. Our heroes land on the side of a roof, sliding down before finally arriving at ground level, a group of onlookers waiting for them. This time the crowd is considerably less friendly, all of them acting on the assumption that the Turtles must be responsible for the recent art thefts. April and Splinter – who for some reason wasn’t sent into orbit earlier – arrive in the Turtle Van, providing the green teens with a means of escape.

April replays her own report in the back of the van, recounting the recent theft of another statue, this time Donatello’s depiction of St. George. With thefts of pieces by Leonardo, Michelangelo and now Donatello all taking place, a pattern seems to be taking shape. Each work of art was reported on by April prior to being stolen, hence the assumption is that Dob and Yikum are monitoring the news broadcasts. With that in mind – and given that April will be reporting on the works of Raphael next, in Rome – the Turtles hatch a plan to strike back.

The green teens don robes as they sneak into Vatican City. After waving them goodbye, April is accosted by a distraught Vernon, who declares he’s been “a nervous wreck” since her disappearance while they were in Florence, and that their next broadcast will begin momentarily.

Based on April’s research, Raphael’s mural “The School of Athens” is the most likely target for the two aliens. The Turtles arrive to find it already missing, and noting a crowd of screaming tourists, determine that their foes are now in the Sistine Chapel. There, Dob and Yikum are seen discussing the possibility of taking the whole roof back with them to sell on to other aliens. Splinter attempts to reason with the raiders, but to no avail; the Chapel begins glowing with pink light, heralding its imminent teleportation. We get a rare moment of interaction between Peter Renaday’s most prominent characters next, as Vernon arrives with April and Splinter pleads with both to flee the area; Vernon remarks that while he can handle shockwaves, “It’s giant rats that freak [him] out”. April finds herself tossed into a crowd of tourists, separated from both her co-worker and Splinter.

The Turtles are transported to underground catacombs near Rome, where they again confront Dob and Yikum. After the alien couple learns of their names a misunderstanding unfolds, wherein the Turtles are mistaken for the creators of the stolen artworks. Our heroes attempt to turn this to their advantage, representing themselves as the Rennaissance artists and asking for their works to be returned; this backfires, as Dob and Yikum are keen to take the creators of the works back to their own galaxy.

As act three opens the Turtles are placed in stasis, stripped of their weapons. The team try and reason with their captors, pointing out they’re not the actual Rennaissance artists, but these pleas fall on deaf ears, with Yikum declaring that the Turtles can produce “nick-naks” for them back on their home world.

April drops a coin in a fountain as she wishes to be reunited with her friends, and moments later Splinter arrives to greet her. After April bemoans that the two aliens are too powerful to be defeated, the mutant rat points out that “the secret of martial arts is to turn your foe’s very strength against him”. With that in mind, he has devised a way of hitting back. Later, April and Splinter are seen convincing Vernon to help with a news broadcast at the coliseum. This attracts the attention of Dob and Yikum, who lift the entire structure, but the energy required places an enormous strain on their equipment. This allows the Turtles to break free of the forcefield restraining them and escape through the warp field, arriving in the coliseum.

Having been stripped of their weapons – please ignore the fact that Raphael is still drawn with his sais – the Turtles suit up with gladiator weapons mounted within the coliseum. Dob and Yikum arrive to confront them, hurling bricks and weapons at our heroes. With their systems overloading, the two aliens are briefly captured but escape again, the Turtles heading off to confront them once more.

The thieves are performing repairs on their equipment when the Turtles arrive at the catacombs in their van, with Leonardo declaring that “First we’ll take back [our weapons], then we’ll take back that artwork!”, which would make a lot more sense if the team weren’t drawn emerging from the van with their weapons. A battle unfolds in which the team begin doing damage to the alien technology. This concludes only when April intervenes, informing everyone that this battle is over “a bunch of worthless junk”. Splinter steps in to point out stickers placed on each item declaring that they were “Made in the Crab Neubla”, each of them a forgery rather than the genuine article. Concerned at being seen to be frauds on their own world, Dob and Yikum are convinced by Splinter to return the artworks.

Later, Splinter reveals to the Turtles that the stickers were placed on the items to convince Dob and Yikum the artworks were forgeries. Meanwhile, April carries out a follow-up report on The Last Supper with Professor Marco, who is horrified to find the sticker still present on the painting, believing this to be an indicator that “Leonardo was a space alien!”

“Artless” is perhaps the strongest episode of the Vacation in Europe arc so far, a step up in terms of both production values and storytelling compared to the outings that preceded it. In the wider scope of the series villains other than Shredder are almost invariably underwhelming, usually some schmuck – typically a gangster or a scientist – flanked by two goons who winds up with a machine, ray gun or another macguffin that the Turtles need to deal with. None of this applies to Dob and Yikum who represent the kind of far-out villains more in keeping with the fantastical aspects of the series, and present the team with a meaningful challenge. I’m not convinced there would be much mileage in them making a return appearance after this, but as a one-off they provide a welcome break from the norm; as we established in the Turtlethon entry for “Venice on the Half-Shell", attempting to integrate Krang’s usual plots to revive the Technodrome into these European adventures, which are focused much more on art and history than on scientific themes, simply wasn’t working.

“Beware the Lotus” was the forty-seventh episode of the series and the last time we looked at a story contributed by Doug Molitor, all the way back in November 1989. Approximately one hundred Turtlethon entries have been and gone since then (counting only the actual episodes and not supplemental material), though given that the Vacation in Europe episodes only appear here due to being broadcast as the first half of season seven after gathering dust for years, that doesn’t really count for much. Mr. Molitor will provide one more script for the show, “Turtles on the Orient Express”, later in this odd little stretch of the series.

NEXT TIME: The Turtles arrive in Portugal for “Ring of Fire”!

#Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #TMNT #TMNT 1987 #1992 #1993 #Vacation in Europe #Artless #Dob #Yikum #Dob & Yikum #Dob and Yikum #Ninja Turtles #Turtlethon

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