Zach and Casey meet up with April, Irma and Splinter outside the Channel 6 building. Splinter now has some undefined handheld tracking device that doesn’t work in determining the location of the Turtles, and so Zach guides the group in searching for them by foot. (I don’t know why Zach gets to lead, I’d argue that he’s the least capable person here, even Irma has greater credibility.)

The one member of the Channel 6 crew that The Rogues considered worth capturing was Vernon, who is dragged along by Leatherhead as he marches through town with the rest of the group. Cracks start to appear in the Rogues’ united front as Antrax makes an off-hand comment about how the world will soon be ruled by insects, agitating Rat King who dreams of a world conquered by rodents. Tempestra does her best to hold the operation together as Chrome Dome breaks off from the team to recharge, noting that he “has no use for money anyway”. Okay, but... neither do you, Tempestra, you’re basically an overgrown video game sprite.

Splinter and the other allies of the Turtles watch Chrome Dome break into a nearby building and follow him. Inside, Casey attempts to take on the robot but is hopelessly outmatched, getting tossed through the air without ever seen landing, presumably due to Saturday morning rules about how normal humans can be treated. Splinter and Zach attempt to double team the enormous warrior but are easily brushed aside. Eventually the group outwit Chrome Dome by luring him into a hydraulic press, rendering him non-functional.

Zach hooks a standard PC up to Chrome Dome’s head and types “Where are the Turtles”. Somehow not only is the offline robot able to offer up this information but also a real-time countdown for the disintegrator device. With only a little over six minutes remaining, the group rush to the aid of our heroes.

I’m sure everyone is itching to see how our favourite characters are going to get out of their current predicament. I refer, of course, to Bebop and Rocksteady, who have built a tower of wooden crates to reach the trap door. Punching their way through it, The Boys rush off to rescue their boss.

Shredder and Krang are setting up to teleport the starship when Tempestra arrives, requesting the money agreed upon as the Turtles have been defeated. The video game villain is assured by Shreds that her payment will be materialising shortly.

Inside the pest control statue Raphael retains his bad attitude, convinced that no human would ever do anything to help them in their time of need. Zach uses his small stature to slip through an air grate – I'm not sure why a roof-mounted statue of a pest control mascot would have all these facilities, but it does – and he soon frees the team, though a minute of time remains until the disintegrator is due to go off.

The Rogues are thrilled to see the starship materialise, Shredder agreeing to share its riches with them. Moments later the Turtles arrive, using the device to blow up the ship and its contents. None of this is enough to placate Tempestra, who still demands what she’s owed on behalf of her team. Shreds counters that if the Turtles had been finished off as agreed, then none of this would have happened, but is outnumbered and forced to flee alongside Krang, the Rogues hot on their tails. With impeccable timing, Bebop and Rocksteady emerge in a transport module, pulling their bosses inside before tunnelling back underground.

Now down to six members, the group of villains find themselves face to face again with the Turtles, with Donnie declaring that they “can’t beat all of us”. (Considering the only capable fighters the Turtles have added to their side since the last time are Casey and Splinter, I’m not convinced this is a monumental shift in the balance of power.) Realising that they won’t get paid for fighting now anyway, the Rogues break up, scattering into the night. In a rather defeatist moment, Michaelangelo remarks that there’s no point in pursuing them as “you know the villains always get away in the end”.

Splinter points out to Raphael that the events of the evening show how wrong he was about all humans being ungrateful and disdainful towards the Turtles. Raph agrees, but his new, kinder stance is immediately put to the test when Vernon emerges to yell at the team for allowing him to be dragged around town by Leatherhead. Michaelangelo gets the last word, pointing out that Vernon barely qualifies as a regular human being anyway. (Ouch!)

Throughout much of the time I’ve been writing Turtlethon “Night of the Rogues” has loomed large on the horizon, a marker that represents the point where the classic era of the series approaches its end. Here we have, at least on paper, one big blow-out that serves as a celebration not only of the many supporting villains the Turtles have encountered over the course of the show, but also the friends they’ve made along the way. There is a sense throughout that this is indeed a big event episode, but I can’t shake the feeling that the finished product pales in comparison to what it could have been. Shredder finally getting fed up and building a supergroup made up of the coolest villains we’ve seen in the show is the kind of fanservice I can get behind, but the line-up we get here could use some tweaking. So let’s do it.

Rat King, Slash and Leatherhead have all earned their place in this group, though how Shreds found Slash following the events of “Donatello Trashes Slash” remains unanswered. Similarly, while I’m a big Tempestra fan, her inclusion here makes absolutely zero sense, both in terms of her prior defeat at the hands of the Turtles and why a video game character is so keen to get paid. Ideally, then, the show would be allowed more time to show Shredder going around and recruiting each of the bad guys: this feels like a significant enough storyline that it deserves to be a two-part episode.

I hate that I have to say this because I do enjoy cool robots, but for all the hype leading up to his creation Chrome Dome was defeated so quickly that it invalidates his inclusion here. The one thing he had going for him was that he was staggeringly huge, and now he doesn’t even have that to the same extent. Scumbug and Antrax don’t fit either, this should be a group entirely consisting of established villains and each would be better served appearing in their own spotlight episodes.

That leaves us with three spots to fill, though admittedly it’s tough to select villains who are a good fit for this group. I would like to humbly suggest Alpha-1, the super-intelligent Foot Soldier: though Shredder didn’t get along with him, it’s not hard to envision a scenario where Shreds pulls the robot out of whatever dimension he wound up in and is somehow able to regain control over him, forcing him to work as part of the group. Rudolph Cobrato was a one-and-done villain who was defeated at the end of “Snakes Alive!”, but would work great within this group were he to somehow revert to his mutant form; finally Wingnut and Screwloose would provide two villains for the price of one: they were woefully underused in their one and only appearance, and if Zach must appear they have a prior history with him that could be worked into the proceedings too.

As alluded to earlier, Splinter only being able to come up with two allies to call for help and one of them being Zach, of all people, is some weak sauce. My ideal line up, I think, would retain Casey alongside Usagi, Mona Lisa, REX-1 and Aunt Aggie, with April, Irma and Splinter on the sidelines offering support in their own way. Again, we’d need at least two episodes to convincingly round up all these past characters and integrate them into the story, though with only fourteen episodes produced for broadcast in 1993 that’s a bigger ask than it was in years prior.

Armchair booking notwithstanding, the finished product is hampered by the diminished cast of voice actors. James Avery is gone, but I wish this could have been his last appearance instead of “White Belt, Black Heart”, as Shredder’s frustrations boiling over and leading to the creation of his villain supergroup feels like a big enough and fitting way to bow out. The absence of Jim Cummings as Leatherhead doesn’t help either.