BRIEF STORYLINE: Donatello uses his ingenuity and uses spare circuits from the space ship, constructs a tracking device after the batteries in the alien crystal coverger died. The turtles are on the hunt for the second fragment of the Eye of Zarnov. In the streets, the tracking device locates it's signal to a bank where robbers are invading the premises. The turtles stop them, while Shredder and Baxter Stockman are secretly tracing their tracks and finds the second fragment! Shredder quickly contacts Krang and tells him that the potential power of this second fragment is that when linked to a computer, the computer will have unlimited power. Krang somehow sees a flaw in this plan because of Shredder's bad success rate on his ventures to rule the world.
In the meantime, the turtles tracking device is experiencing technical difficulties and wants to short-circuit their Turtle Van. The TMNT contact April and arrange to meet her at a close-by construction site. They think April may have a lead on these unexplained goings-on, and want to stop Shredder, whatever he is up to now.
Meanwhile, Shredder illegally intrudes into a Hi-Tech Lab and connects the second fragment to the computer mainframe called: O.M.N.S.S -(Pronounced Om-nis). This stands for Omnipotent Multi-process Nexus Subuniversal Sentient. This computer has advanced artificial intelligence, and is able to track down the turtles and sends them a real shock by chucking energy through telephone & electrical wires across the city and to the construction site where the turtles are. This brings nearby construction vehicles to life, that drives on their own and attack the turtles. However, the turtles use their brains and outsmart the machines by making them turn against each other. Phew!
The dreaded O.M.N.S.S needs more power for to complete Shredder's orders. So it drains all the energy of the city's power plants. Machines everywhere are going cuckoo, threatening the turtles and the human population very seriously indeed. Can the turtles get clanking and oiling their brains on how to get to Shredder and Baxter Stockman's secret hideout and stop O.M.N.S.S?
TMNT REVIEW HQ COMMENTS: This is a good tension-packed episode, which sees machines tear or break through anything to get to the turtles. However it doesn't get off to a great start, when the turtles are training against each other with some muddled looking editing. Let me remind you this is part of a 4-part adventure, a rarity in this cartoon as most of the TMNT's adventures just lasted the the one episode.
The action begins again when th turtles are chasing the bank robbers and the quality of this scene is a mixture of good and bad. The action changes shots quickly to good effect. The bank robbers get engulfed in paint in the end, not ripped apart by the turtles. During this scene Shredder cruelly insults Baxter with something like "where swine like you should be- in the garbage!". The relationship between Baxter and Shredders feels worser than the Shredder, Bebop & Rocksteady relationship ever was.
During that same fight, there's a feature which you might see in many cartoons, particularly japanese Manga cartoons or Pokemon. In a fight, when something or someone is moving fast, the background becomes blurry, and striped lines appear. This feature doesn't really occur in later seasons. It happens more often in the new 2003 cartoon.
Baxter Stockman comes across in these early episode, as this guy who tags along with the tougher charcter who is Shredder, and you feel he is gutless. Later on in this episode, we get this unusual, unstereotypical, unexpected remark from this beefy looking taxi driver. After the hassle with the turtles, he say " this place used to be a refined city of culture". Quite funny too.
What an impressive entrance for O.M.N.S.S, with this mechanised, metallic-looking face appearing on the computer monitor after Shredder & Baxter hook the Fragment with the computer. A splendid choice of voice for him, giving an unemotional, scary feel.
The turtles first showdown with crazy machines is the construction vehicles. It's a mixed affair, but good tension and unpredictability, espcially when crazy dude Michaelangelo nearly kills himself while sitting on a box to lure this stamping vehicle to destroy itself. It's a box of explosives.
Other features to take note of is, Vernon seems to appear more suave and sophisticated-acting than normal, in this episode. The sequences of O.M.N.S.S sending his power to parts of the city are well done. Another funny moment is when this small policewoman robot turns up in front of the turtles, and they interrogate it to spit out where the source of this power to make machines alive is coming from, says "i will interface" wheras, a human would usually say " i will talk" or " i will confess"! The best exciting scene is when the Turtle Van is out of control with the turtles inside trying to desperately steer it. They manage to stop, just inches away from a wall. The scene and music highlight the panic effectively.
The action gets better near the end and rightfully so. The best being these household robots ripping through the walls and attacking the turtles. And it is impressive at times. It's quite funny how O.M.N.S.S has all this massive power, able to control the whole city, and yet it only takes April to pull out the plug and thats it! In the ending, when the turtles are usually all laid-back, more tension is squeezed in when they think its another bezerk robot in their very own lair, however it's only a little toy robot Michaelangelo is controlling by remote!
"THE MEAN MACHINES" GETS A: 3/5 RATING.
