Why It Should Be Possible to Redeem the 1987 Baxter Stockman
By Lucky_Ladybug
Through the years, I have observed many fans of the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series who feel some level of sympathy for that version of Baxter Stockman. They often discuss how his humanity begins to fail him after his horrifying cross-fusion with the fly, rendering him more and more like an insect as the seasons go on. Some cite how he started out apparently desiring to be honest and how everything went wrong for him from day one, with both heroes and villains beating him down.
Occasionally I see someone who feels that he deserved everything that happened to him because of his actions in season 2. That is a sticky problem to address. He certainly committed terrible, even abominable, acts throughout his short time as Shredder's assistant. If he was sane but evil, as his 2003 counterpart definitely is, it would be far harder to dredge up sympathy for him---even though at the same time I feel that the 2003 Baxter suffered far worse fates than even he deserved. But when it comes to the 1987 Baxter, the situation becomes far more complicated.
Let's begin by examining Baxter's first two episodes, season 1's A Thing About Rats and season 2's Return of the Shredder. These two episodes, while not definitive in showing us Baxter's motives, are sufficiently and strikingly different in their portrayals of him, so much so that I feel all other episodes must be considered only after we weigh the evidence in these two.
In season 1, the first time we see Baxter is when he is pitching the concept of his Mousers to a pest control company. By all accounts and purposes, the invention is something very useful and helpful to Manhattan. Their sole purpose is to seek out and catch sewer rats, and since such rats are filthy and spread germs and disease, this is something that would highly benefit mankind.
The pest control company also knows it's a good thing. Too good, in fact, because it would rid the city of all rats and then the pest control company would be out of business. So Baxter is literally thrown outside, where he is immediately discovered by Shredder. We don't know if he tried other companies before this one or if it was the first, but it's highly possible that it's the latest in a string of rejections.
Once Shredder decides Baxter's invention would be perfect for seeking out Splinter, he sets about tricking Baxter as he tricks other hapless characters throughout the series. He sets himself up as a businessman interested in marketing Baxter's Mousers. Baxter exclaims that it's about time someone discovered him and realized his genius.
Shredder takes Baxter to his current hideout in an old mansion. Baxter expresses surprise and confusion, but Shredder waves it off. He also wants a master control for all the Mousers, and while Baxter probably should have grown suspicious at that point, there is no indication that he does. Once he is left alone to work on the project, he comments, "That guy must really have a thing about rats." He still innocently and naively believes that Shredder merely wants to go after the rats of the city, as Baxter intended the Mousers to do. He clearly has no idea that Shredder really wants them to commit a murder.
Baxter works long into the night, perfecting the master control while Shredder makes an army of Mousers. When Baxter is finally finished, all he wants is to go home to bed. He isn't interested in seeing the finished product, and Shredder likely only asks him if he is as a gesture of seeming goodwill. Once Baxter is allowed to leave, Shredder orders his Foot Soldiers to follow and kill him because "he knows too much." Unless something happened that canon did not show, all that Baxter knows is that Shredder wants to market his product and that he's operating in an old mansion with an army of mysterious ninjas. Shredder doesn't want Baxter alive to tell even that much, because Shredder has stamped Baxter's name on every Mouser so that he will be blamed for whatever damage is done.
The Turtles fall right into Shredder's trap. They see Baxter's name stamped on the Mousers that attack Splinter, so quite naturally they think Baxter is in on everything. They find him just as the Foot Soldiers are about to murder him at the factory where he is apparently living. Not realizing what's happening, they nevertheless battle the Foot Soldiers before tying Baxter to a post and interrogating him. He refuses to talk at first, but when Raphael threatens him he admits to where Shredder is staying. The Turtles then go off and leave him there.
He is mentioned in the following episode, where we see that Shredder's noose has worked only too well. Baxter has been arrested and will not be coming back for a long time. He is being blamed for the disasters the Mousers caused all over the city. April and the Turtles all believe he was responsible for that as well as for the collapse of April's apartment building due to the Mousers chewing through the walls. It's never said whether the charges are only for structural damage or if people were injured or killed in the collapse, and since this is a children's cartoon, perhaps we are better off not knowing.
Fast-forward to the first episode of season 2. Shredder has determined that he needs Baxter's help since Krang refuses to send Bebop and Rocksteady through the dimensional portal. Shredder journeys to Sunny Dale, Home for the Bewildered. In less flowery terms, it is clearly an insane asylum. Shredder breaks through an upstairs window and finds Baxter in what looks like a padded room, discussing the events of season 1 with a man who believes he's Napoleon Bonaparte.
Here is where things get strange. Baxter says, "And then we sent out an army of Ratcatchers, but we were stopped by a giant rat and four talking turtles."
What is a Ratcatcher? Naturally this name fits his invention better then Mouser, but Mouser was clearly its name in season 1. And the way he's telling it makes it sound as though he and Shredder actually were trying to conquer the world with the little darlings.
Baxter's reaction to seeing Shredder is also very strange. He falls to his knees, sobbing and calling him "Master" Shredder. He begs for Shredder not to hurt him for failing. Shredder reacts as though this is not unusual behavior.
In season 1, there is never any indication of a master and servant/slave relationship between Shredder and Baxter. They have a business relationship, or at least they do in Baxter's mind. Shredder tricked Baxter into believing that he would market his invention. Baxter never showed any sign of subservience. Instead, he was simply delighted to finally find someone who was interested in his machines. Later, he came across as somewhat belligerent and grumpy after being up all night working on an invention Shredder wanted that he didn't think was necessary. His master control, however, worked. So did the Mousers. It wasn't Baxter's fault that they didn't kill Splinter, especially since he didn't even appear to know that was their intended purpose. He believed they were going to seek out the normal rat population of New York City. He had no thoughts of conquering any place. The only way he "failed" was in breaking and telling the Turtles where Shredder had set up shop.
So what has happened by season 2? There is a clear contradiction with season 1 in Baxter's words.
To step away from fiction for a moment, I investigated the writing credits of both episodes. David Wise and Patti Howeth wrote season 1's A Thing About Rats. They were also responsible for the story of season 2's Return of the Shredder. However, it was Christy Marx and not they who actually wrote it.
From that information I would gather that David Wise and Patti Howeth came up with a working outline for Christy Marx to work with, but she filled in the details. For instance, they might have written "Shredder breaks Baxter Stockman out of the insane asylum," but not have penned the unusual dialogue. Christy, perhaps not having seen the season 1 episode, fleshed it out based on outlines she had and used the mistaken name Ratcatcher instead of Mouser. I could be entirely wrong, but that is what seems logical to me.
Regardless of how the discrepancy happened, there is still the problem of how to explain it within the canon of the series. As I see it, there are two main possibilities. One is that something happened that canon did not show, namely that Baxter was in on everything and fully knew what Shredder's plans were. Thus, his comment about failing "Master" Shredder is better put into perspective and makes more sense. The other possibility is that what we saw in A Thing About Rats is exactly the way it happened and that Baxter's sanity unraveled so seriously by season 2 that he has come up with delusional thoughts.
Return of the Shredder does make it clear that Baxter has snapped. Not because he was thrown in an asylum, but because when he appears in the climax and chases the Turtles with his economy-sized Ratcatcher, he cackles like a madman about "Turtles! Big, green, talking Turtles!" This is completely opposite to his stable, sane behavior in A Thing About Rats. It's actually quite tragic, but one only really grasps how much when comparing this episode to the earlier one. In season 1, Baxter displays no madness while talking with the Turtles. He is surprised, of course, but then he seems to take it in stride.
One is left to fill in the blanks of what happened in the interim between the two episodes. Why was Baxter thrown in the asylum? Was it because of the mistaken belief that he had deliberately tried to destroy the city with his Mousers? Was it because he no doubt babbled on about the big, talking Turtles and the Turtles were so new to the city that he was thought quite mad for insisting on their existence? Was it a combination of both and also his tales of a mysterious man claiming he would market the Mousers, a man who could not later be found? And could it also have had something to do with his estranged brother Barney, from season 4's Raphael Knocks 'Em Dead, apparently doing nothing to help him get out of such a mess?
(Naturally, it is understood that Barney Stockman had not been conceived of by the writers during season 2. But since as of season 4 he exists, one must fit him into any backstory for Baxter.)
Let's assume that Baxter was completely sane when condemned to Sunny Dale. He certainly appeared sane in season 1 and there is no reason to doubt that he was. Months passed between seasons 1 and 2, enough so that his short, respectable hair had time to grow into a wild, long style reaching his shoulders. He was accused of all manner of crimes that he did not knowingly commit. No one believed his tales of the truth, not even his brother, who clearly reviles him in season 4. Over and over, he had to hear that it did not happen that way, it could not have happened that way, and he is delusional for thinking it did. When he didn't hear that, he was likely being patronized in a way that clearly showed he was not believed. Perhaps he finally broke, becoming convinced that he truly was mistaken and that he really had tried to conquer the city with his Mousers. And since he knew Shredder had been there, he convinced himself that he had failed Shredder. That was the state in which Shredder found him. The strain of everything that happened to him, including being thrown in the asylum, made him go mad when he wasn't before.
Of course, Baxter's line about sending out an army of Ratcatchers could simply mean that they sent out said army to locate rats, not to conquer the world. If it wasn't for how Baxter then reacted to Shredder, this might seem like a greater possibility. Baxter's bizarre greeting to Shredder shows that something is clearly off compared to season 1.
Throughout the rest of his season 2 arc, Baxter serves Shredder. He is often alternately skittish and idolizing, knowing of Shredder's temper yet apparently pledging his loyalty because Shredder set him free. Nevertheless, he doesn't always blindly jump to attention when Shredder wants something. He still retains a more belligerent, independent side at times, such as when he wants to eat an ice cream cone instead of calling Krang right then---although when Shredder actually threatens him, he does as ordered. He occasionally giggles madly but does not show any other bursts of absolutely insane behavior until his horrible transformation. Still, judging from Return of the Shredder, I firmly believe his mind was not in the right place from that point on. And that, I feel, does make a difference and makes him more sympathetic and worthy of a possible redemption than his counterparts, especially the 2003 Baxter.
Unlike Bebop and Rocksteady, who blindly adore Shredder for some reason despite his constant verbal and physical abuse, Baxter only stands so much before he can't take it anymore. Curse of the Evil Eye shows him becoming fed-up and hurt enough that he decides to take the mystical Eye of Sarnoth for himself instead of continuing to help the ungrateful Shredder re-locate it. He has been beat down too much by life to take it any longer and he reacts by embracing the idea of finally having the power to triumph over his enemies. He also behaves as a (temporary) oppressor to someone in his way, much as Shredder has done to him. It is human Baxter at his darkest, and yet also, perhaps his most human. And even in the middle of his darkest moment, he shows that perhaps he hasn't fallen as far as he will later.
When cornered by the Turtles, Baxter sends a clay monster to attack them. He even threatens them with the "Turtle Soup" idea that Shredder made infamous in season 1. Yet when the monster has overpowered them, Baxter tells them to surrender and says he may let them live if they acknowledge that he has done what Shredder could not. Despite his earlier threats, he really doesn't seem to want to kill them. All he truly wants is to be acknowledged as having bested Shredder, his oppressor, and defeated Shredder's greatest nemeses. He doesn't have to kill anyone for that to be true, and he knows it.
What's confusing is exactly how Shredder handles this betrayal. Naturally he threatens Baxter with much destruction and death, but the following episode carries on as though nothing has happened. Of course that is not unusual for children's cartoons, but considering that the Eye of Sarnoth plotline was an arc spanning several episodes, it seems odd that this glaring incident was not mentioned any further. Despite Wikipedia's claims, there is no evidence that Shredder started plotting against Baxter from this episode on. I would be curious to know where the following episode, The Case of the Killer Pizzas, falls in production order. But regardless, the episode after that, Enter: The Fly, shows that Baxter is indeed still working for Shredder and that months have passed while they work with their current project. Shredder apparently let the betrayal go and Baxter went back to being subservient.
Of course it is this fateful episode Enter: The Fly when Baxter as we know him changes for the rest of the series in more ways than one. Shredder immediately abandons him when Krang finally agrees to send Bebop and Rocksteady but needs someone else to go through the portal in exchange. Krang has no interest in Baxter and promptly decides to kill him in a horrifying way: disintegration. Baxter is dragged down the hall, pleading for his life and insisting he could be of use, but all to no avail. When a fly follows him into the disintegration chamber, his utter terror as the machine comes on turns immediately to hatred and vengeance when he survives but is cross-fused with the fly due to the machine malfunctioning. Just like with the Eye of Sarnoth, Baxter's inner bitterness and rage over constantly being mistreated has broke free, but this time in a far more primal and animalistic manner.
It is immediately apparent that Baxter's mind is failing from being mixed with the fly's. His dominant human emotion is revenge on those who have mistreated him. At the same time, his memories are fading. Shredder is easily able to manipulate him into believing that the Turtles caused his accident, because he does not remember. After Shredder talks to him for a few moments, tricking him in his fragile state, Baxter muses, "That's right . . . we used to fight against the Turtles together." It is a very sad line, really. It looks as though the events of that episode all take place over the same day, yet in Baxter's mind after his horror, it is already far away, in another lifetime. Perhaps also, to a fly with such a limited lifespan, one day is a much longer period of time and Baxter is falling prey to the fly's interpretation.
His first two episodes in his mutant state show that he does still have the ability to think and reason enough at times to make new inventions and come up with scientific solutions to some problems. But the fly has already taken great hold over him, and with each succeeding episode, his humanity retreats further and deeper into himself. He becomes interested in garbage, bright lights, and sugar. He commands armies of flies. By his final episode, he is so far gone that he can't even remember why he wants revenge on the Turtles any longer.
And that is the state in which he is left. It's ironic that the otherwise very light-hearted installment in the Turtles' franchise, the 1987 series, gives us a story that stands out as very dark and very grim when one really stops to look at it. It is the tragic tale of how one who begins as an honest person completely falls into insanity and darkness. Yet since there is no definite end to his story, there is still the hope for redemption at some future point.
Baxter is a strange man. He is a myriad of contrasts: meek and mild, bitter and angry. He is a genius, yet he is clumsy. He is highly egotistical, as all Baxters are, and yet this personality trait is tempered by his other sides. He feels far more sympathetic than the cold-hearted 2003 Baxter, who uses his Mousers to rob banks and wants to murder April for witnessing it. And he is also different from the 2012 Baxter, who retains a definite pathetic quality and can't seem to do anything right, yet hangs on Shredder and wants to impress him even after his mutation. 1987 Baxter, who tries to be honest, is driven mad, won't stand for being abused indefinitely, and becomes obsessed with revenge after being cross-fused, seems like someone who really deserves to have a second chance to live an honest and sane life.