Street Sharks (1994)
First episode title: Sharkbait
How familiar with the show am I?: I hadn't heard of this show.
We had quite a calm and friendly show last time and there's another one next time, so how about some action this week? This show has four brothers that all become half-human mutant animals, and it probably wants to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but instead of turtles it's sharks!
After a rockin' and rollin' theme song that tells us "they bite, they fight" - didn't they get that from Itchy and Scratchy? - we open with a big wire fence that says "Government Property, No Tresspassing", in front of an imposing and futuristic building. A bearded man climbs up it and uses a bolt cutter on the spiked chains at the top, doing the one thing the sign asked him not to do.
We get to see inside before he does. A bald man with a metal eyepatch and a vague accent, who is of course a villain, is in a lab surrounded by tanks containing aquatic creatures, and ranting about someone.
Dr Paradigm: He dares to say no to me? His mentor, his idol? Pitiful, stupid loser. Doesn't he know I always get what I want, one way or the other?
His manner of speaking makes it seem like he should have some classier insults up his sleeve than "pitiful, stupid loser". Anyway, he's at a computer, talking to himself about what DNA manipulation can do in the right hands, while the monitor displays diagrams of human, swordfish, and lobster DNA being combined with each other. He ominously grins as he presses the enter key.
There are also a swordfish and lobster in the tanks, which he passes as he goes over to some test tubes in a freezer. It seems he has the DNA of Genghis Khan, and of "Captain Blood". The latter is the name of a 1920s novel about a pirate which has multiple film adaptations - it seems odd to follow up the real life warlord with a fictional character, especially when you could use a more well-known non-fictional pirate like Blackbeard.
The bearded man finishes picking the lock on the door, and this sets off an alarm in the bald man's lab - he sees the bearded man on a monitor and recognises him as "Dr Bolton". But he also continues his experiment on the test tubes, using "particle acceleration" and "proto-virus". The former is of course a real thing you can do in physics, but doesn't have much to do with DNA as far as I know, and the latter looks to be something hypothetical about the evolution of viruses.
Bolton makes it into the lab and is shocked by what he's seeing. Bolton addresses the bald man as Paradigm - presumably his real surname but it would make a cool villainous alias. Bolton tells Paradigm he doesn't want to see "my findings" used this way, but Paradigm prevents him from turning the machine off, and some huge needles go into the tanks and inject the lobster and the fish. The two humans observe as the creatures writhe around in their tanks:
Paradigm insists that he's bringing about the perfection of humanity, but the creatures shatter the tanks and continue to writhe on the floor. I like the word "writhe". One of those words that really sounds like what it is. Anyway, the experiment makes Paradigm realise he's been thinking about this wrong the whole time and he starts reprogramming his machine quickly. Bolton tries to flee but Paradigm locks the door remotely, and another needle comes down from the ceiling... injecting Bolton with the new mixture! As Paradigm tells him how much this will improve him, we don't get to see what Bolton is becoming, as his shadow morphs and grows larger - and then the next thing we know, the locked door is smashed open, and whatever Bolton has become is now on the loose!
On the floor, Bolton has left behind the shreds of his jacket, and his sci-fi gadget of a watch. Paradigm picks the latter up, saying that he has always liked this watch. Why, does it do anything more than just being a watch? Wait and see! Paradigm's about to leave, but someone tells him "not just yet", and he turns back to see that the lobster and swordfish have finished their mutation, into partly human forms! The episode barely names them, so I've had to rely on the internet to learn that they are Slobster and Slash respectively. And they look vicious.
Now we get our first view of the wider setting of the story. It wasn't obvious from just seeing the one building before, but the whole city - "Fission City" - is futuristic. A news helicopter for "Guy in the Sky" informs us of how bad the pollution levels and hole in the ozone layer are right now. That's not even relevant to the story - it's just the dismal future that this show is set in.
Reporter: Yuck! Even the state university gets failing grades for air quality!
That's a nice transition, as we see Paradigm head into the Bio-Engineering department of the university. There is a lab where a woman who is actually dressed like she's in a lab, and a guy in shades who doesn't look like he fits in there at all but he's cool, are both doing some kinds of experiments. Paradigm enters:
Lena: Dr Paradigm, Dr Bolton never showed up for his morning lecture!
Paradigm is unconcerned (obviously), but when Lena insists that they should call Bolton's sons, Paradigm seems to get an idea - he tells her to call the sons and tell them their father wants to meet them at the old nuclear plant. Lena is of course confused, and is even more suspicious once she realises Paradigm is wearing Bolton's watch. But once he leaves, and Bends (shades guy) openly tells her that he wouldn't trust Paradigm either, she's still going to make the call... because Paradigm is her academic advisor. They let a guy like that be in charge of students, huh?
We're a quarter of the way into the episode and we're about to meet the main characters! We see each of Bolton's sons in turn. I'm not going to wait until the exact moments their names are said to name them. So first we see John Bolton, reading a book in his room while a machine makes him a cup of coffee and a plate of egg on toast - hey, we've seen something like that quite recently! Although, in this case, the machine is powered by a rat in a wheel.
He gets the phone call from Lena, and the message gets passed on around the brothers. We quite briefly see Bobby Bolton, on rollerskates as he takes the call and bragging about how he'll get there first. Oh yes, mobile telephones seem to be common in this future, although obviously they didn't predict how the design would change. When the big and muscly Coop Bolton gets the call, he's playing in an American football game, and has just smashed into a goalpost, wrecking it. Clint Bolton, on the other hand, is in bed in his underwear, and goes back to sleep before the call is even over. I like how they've established something about each of their personalities here.
This is followed by a race to the power plant - John's on a bike, Bobby's still on the rollerskates from before, and Coop's on a skateboard. There's a lot going on in this section, but one moment I'll highlight is when Bobby inadvertently takes a shortcut through what looks like a hotel, checking himself out in a mirror as he passes, showing us a bit more of his personality. All three of them get some cool stunts in - it's a nice sequence. They're all just about to arrive at their destination at almost the same time, when Clint arrives first using a jetpack, sleepily asking them all what took them so long.
I do have to mention the elephant in the room here - none of the boys look anything like their father. Dr Bolton looked vaguely Indian - at the very least, he had brown skin - and all the boys are distinctly white. It's not impossible for them to take more after their mother, but all four of them? Of course, they could be adopted. Given the storyline's focus on DNA, later episodes may or may not rule that out.
When Paradigm comes out of the power plant to greet the boys instead of their father, they are immediately suspicious, and when he says he'll take them to meet him, they realise he's wearing their dad's watch and start demanding to know what he's done. I like that the boys are way less gullible than the average cartoon character here. They also mention that they know their dad wouldn't have given the watch to him because "Mom gave it to him" - we don't hear anything else of the boys' mother, so I'm inclined to assume she's dead. I think this settles the question of whether the watch has any kind of special powers, though - it doesn't, its only significance is its importance to Dr Bolton, and its futuristic appearance is simply because we're in the future.
Bobby grabs Paradigm, but Paradigm clicks his fingers, and Slash and Slobster reveal themselves. This is the brothers' first time seeing any kind of mutated creatures, one would assume, but their only reaction is to call both of them "ugly". What sympathetic heroes we have here...
The Boltons can't stop the two mutants from lifting them up, and they all travel by helicopter to Paradigm's lab. The next we see of the brothers, they are trapped, each strapped to a slab.
Coop: What is he gonna do with us?
John: He has a gene slammer like dad! Except we're his guinea pigs!
So the boys already have some knowledge of what their dad's technology can do. Again, it's good that they are portrayed as being on the ball about what's going on rather than just reacting in confusion - unfortunately, they're helpless to do anything about it.
Four of the massive syringes like before descend from the ceiling and inject the boys. They're all in pain, and Clint manages to break free of the slab, but there's no visible change, and Paradigm's reaction suggests this isn't what he wanted to see at all. He orders Slash and Slobster to get rid of them, making it sound like he reckons they're as good as dead, so they drag them to one of those... big open drain things? I guess like a canal but there's no water in it right now? I never know what to call them. As the two mutants walk away, a passing jogger sees them, and her screams are extremely believable. Like, this is one person actually shocked to see two big mutant sea creature people. Or maybe it's just the bodies they've dumped.
The woman runs off, and then water floods into the drain and washes the brothers away. When the woman comes back with two cops, she swears that that's where she saw four bodies being dumped by fish monsters. The cops look... sceptical.
That part was at night, so now it's morning again. I'm glad the Guy in the Sky guy tells us - I think the sky is intentionally darker at all times of day than it would be in real life, to go with the pollution. At the university, Lena is worried because Dr Bolton still isn't showing up to his classes and his sons are missing. Remember, she was the one who told them to go to the power plant, so now she feels guilty. She needs to stay in the lab in case they call there - does she not have one of those fancy mobile phones? - so she asks Bends, who is unsuccessfully tinkering with something mechanical, to go out and look for them.
Meanwhile, the boys wake up at the now-mostly-dry part of the canal they've been washed to. They still look human right now, but they all have headaches and are hungry. One cut later and they're getting burgers from a fast food stand somewhere... and that's when the transformation kicks in. I guess it needed some fuel to jump start it! The brothers really sound like they're in pain while transforming, and bursting out of their shirts like the Hulk. The fast food man looks pretty scared!
The brothers have become half-human, half-shark. I'm going to cheat and check what species they're each meant to be as I know nothing about sharks. John becomes a great white, Clint is a brown hammerhead shark, Bobby is a blue tiger shark, and Coop is an orange whale shark. The internet also indicates that they get new names in their shark forms, but those don't get mentioned in this first episode, so I won't confuse things by switching to those now.
Seeing their new forms in a mirror that Clint was carrying, they're angry at Paradigm, but Bobby still likes the sight of this own face even as a shark! Coop says he's still hungry - well, they never finished their burgers - so they all start eating the food stand itself! A bunch of police cars show up, and, realising they won't be able to explain themselves, the sharks jump into a nearby lake, simultaneously shouting "Shark dive!" like they all just came up with a new catchphrase at once.
Somewhere else, a car has crashed into a fuel tanker - it's all on fire and the driver of the car is trapped and screaming for help. The sharks arrive, and apparently, they're not just able to swim like sharks, but they can tunnel through ground with their fins sticking out of it as if it was water! That's just what powers shark DNA gives you! They get the woman out of her car by chewing through the parts of it, but she's just as scared of the shark-people as she is of the fire, and flees the scene. And then the cops show up again, so the sharks tunnel away. The Guy in the Sky is once again reporting on all this, and he's appropriately surprised by the sharks too. Realism!
Lena was watching all this on TV - well, a little handheld one, but she's still living in the past enough to use a corded landline telephone. She calls Bends (he has a carphone) and warns him of the trouble, but then he runs right into the sharks. Somehow it takes him a few seconds to realise that that's what he's looking at... but then, as soon as they tell him who they are, he accepts it unquestioningly! He did seem a little disconnected from reality already. And then the woman from the car accident spots them and starts screaming about sharks again, and they have to flee in Bends' van to get away from the police again!
Bends: Fasten your seatbelts - we're in for a jawsome ride!
The phrase "jawsome" is in the intro too, so it must be a catchphrase. Now we have a big action-packed chase sequence, with the van going off a bridge, and the news helicopter trying to get a closer look and crashing! Eventually the sharks escape the police by biting a big hole in a billboard advertising an amusement park - big enough to hide the van inside the billboard, somehow! Like, it really doesn't look like it should fit.
Then it's what looks like late in the evening, and Paradigm, Slash, and Slobster are looking around the city in their helicopter. Remember, the sharks have been spotted on TV now, so Paradigm knows they're not dead. The van is still in the billboard, hours later - how have Bends and the sharks not got too hungry by now? But Slash spots the van, so the helicopter starts firing laser blasts at the billboard and they're forced to flee. So here's another chase sequence, this time with the helicopter chasing the van and firing the whole time. Paradigm does actually use Slobster's name here, which I missed the first time around - Paradigm insists he wants the sharks alive (presumably to study), but Slobster wants to scare them, and says that he knows all about intimidation. From his days as a normal lobster, or from the DNA of those villainous humans?
Bends and the sharks arrive at an amusement park. Strange place to try and hide in, and immediately a kid gets excited to see these cool shark-men, who he obviously thinks are part of the attractions. Bends tells him they're going to be part of a ride called "Street Sharks", and the sharks like the name, so that's what they're called now. This is one part that feels a bit forced - does that sound like the name of a ride to you?
Right away, Paradigm's helicopter shows up and starts laser-blasting the sharks, making the park's visitors scream and scatter. The villains get out, Slash burrows underneath the brothers to make them fall into a pit, and Slobster chops up a bunch of totem pole props and dumps them on top to try and trap them. Hilariously, Paradigm seems to think this was enough to defeat the sharks, and is ready to load them into the helicopter and leave - it's not long before they just burst back out of the pile! They're mutant shark-people, Paradigm! You created them!
They dump the totem poles onto Slash and Slobster, but Paradigm fires the helicopter's laser to get their attention. He starts to give an almost convincing argument for why they should come with him, since they might not survive for long without his help... until he mentions their father, enraging them. Remember, as far as they're concerned, he might well have killed their father! They rip a Ferris wheel from its base and roll it at him:
He manages to escape by not simply running in the path of it but actually running out of the way! Clever. Meanwhile, Slash and Slobster have got back out of the pile:
Slobster: Where are these sharks? I'll teach them the meaning of fear, then snip off their heads and use them for bait!
Bait for what? They're sharks! Maybe these guys just always talk in maritime terms. The pair of them smash up a rollercoaster to make it fall down on the sharks, and apparently then report back to Paradigm that the sharks are defeated without stopping to check, allowing the sharks to push the rollercoaster the other way towards all three of them! I'm a bit confused about what the animation is suggesting here, as Bobby rollerskates over to the bad guys to taunt them, but then is back with the other sharks to finish tipping the ride over. In fact, the rate of animation issues - which were basically non-existent earlier - seems to have greatly increased in the last couple of minutes of the episode, as if the animators were facing a time crunch... Anyway, Paradigm and his minions flee the scene, right before:
Bends: Who called out the tanks?
A bunch of futuristic army tanks and helicopters all advance on the sharks, and then the episode ends! Yes, this was apparently a multi-part episode all along! That does explain why it took so long to meet the main characters and even longer for them to become sharks, since the timings for the story would have been based on the whole set of episodes, but it still took me by surprise the first time!
Overall I enjoyed this. Yes, I said at the start that it's trying to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but that's probably an imposition by the network or the toy company - it's clear that the people actually making the show wanted to deliver something worth watching anyway. And they unironically gave someone the surname Paradigm. I love that.