Five Things That Could Have Improved Teen Titans?

[DisneyBoy]

I recently watched through the fifth season of Teen Titans, and found myself enjoying the series more than I'd remembered. Still, there are things about the show that just hold it back from being really great at times.

SO, looking back, what five things do you think could have improved the series overall? A stronger interpretation of a specific character? A different design scheme? A better ending to a storyline? I have some ideas, but I'm curious to hear what yours are first...

[Harlequinn]

1. Them giving us better origins for side characters.

2. Raven having a white cloak for the rest of the series after "The End-Part 3"

3. Mentioning Batman

4. Duela Dent

5.Being in the DCAU.

[The Penguin]

I have to say that getting rid of the anime influences would have about done it for me. It's the only show regularly featuring DC characters since BTAS I didn't watch because I just couldn't take that. The random pieces I've seen lately make it look decent, but the crazy big eyes, etc. just seemed so out of place in the few episodes I did try beginning to end.

[ABrown]

I really don't think that anything should've been done differently with Teen Titans. I mean story wise, I would've liked to have seen a little more of an origin for Slade. But as far as how the show was handled, I think everything was just right.

[AdamYJ]

I have to say that getting rid of the anime influences would have about done it for me. It's the only show regularly featuring DC characters since BTAS I didn't watch because I just couldn't take that. The random pieces I've seen lately make it look decent, but the crazy big eyes, etc. just seemed so out of place in the few episodes I did try beginning to end.

That's kind of what made the show what it was, though.

[Blackstar]

1. Forget that season 5 ever existed.

2. Wonder Girl should have appeared in a couple of episodes. They should have had at least 1 episode with the Founding Five Titans (Robin, Speedy, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash and Aqualad).

3. Have less emphasis on Raven (she's a very overrated heroine).

4. No goofy episodes like "Bunny Raven" (although I enjoyed "Mad Mod").

5. Cyborg should have had more episodes about him where he wasn't trying to prove that he was still human.

[Silverstar]

1. Diminish the anime-influenced look. The chibis, the sweat drops, they were just trying too hard with that stuff.

2. Tone down Raven's snarky sarcasm. I genuinely liked the way Raven was portrayed in "Go!". If her character had stayed along those lines for the entire series, I would have liked her a lot, lot more.

3. No Titans East. At all.

4. Do at least one episode which featured the Founding Five (Robin, Speedy, Aqualad, Wonder Girl and Kid Flash).

5. Put Superboy (Conner Kent), Wonder Girl II (Cassie Sandmark) and Impulse on the core team. Without those characters, something just seemed missing.

[JohanLiebert]

1. Get a rid of most of the new Titans but keep Kid Flash. He was more exciting in one episode than Justice League Flash was in three seasons. Not joking. He was funnier, too.

2. Less goofy episodes like Revolution/Bunny Raven and more goofy episodes like Employee of the Month / Date with Destiny, please. The silly episodes generally worked much better when the Titans were not thrust into a wacky world created by the villain.

3. Give Raven and Cyborg a secondary role in a seasonal arc. Starfire played the secondary role in Robin's arc, Beast Boy played it in Terra's arc, and Robin played it in Raven's arc, so it would be nice if Raven and Cyborg had their turn.

4. Keep the goofy drawings because some season 5 episodes looked really dull without them. I'm looking at you, Homecoming.

5. This kind of ties in with #1, but keep the story arcs on a personal level. A giant demon trying to take over the universe and a brain and a gorilla trying to kill all young heroes isn't as exciting as Slade trying to make one Titan his apprentice.

More or less, keep things the way the were before season 5.

[JAG]

1. A slightly more serious, realistic world. Bring in the cops, the military, maybe the government to some extent. The Titans being Earth's only line of defense and Jump City's only authority felt kind of strange. Also, acknowledge the fact that the Titans usually caused more damage than the villains. I wouldn't want DCAU levels of seriousness, but it could have been better than it was.

2. More effort could have been put into the honorary Titans. Some, like Speedy, Kid Flash, or Aqualad, were handled well, but people like Gnarrk...come on. And what was the point of introducing all the new characters at the last second and not even giving half of them lines? Kind of stupid, really.

3. The Titans' origins needed to be focused on a bit more.

4. The physics on the show were ridiculous. The characters could sustain practically any punishment with no trouble at all. Example: Trigon blasts Robin with a laser, throwing him halfway across the city, and Robin gets back up like nothing happened. Please.

I'll post 5 later.

[AdamYJ]

5. Put Superboy (Conner Kent), Wonder Girl II (Cassie Sandmark) and Impulse on the core team. Without those characters, something just seemed missing.

I think of those characters as being more Young Justice than Teen Titans, myself.

Then again, with very few exceptions (one of them being this series), I'm not really a Teen Titans fan.

[JD08]

1. Starfire Main season story.

2. Duela Dent

3. More episodes when Terra joined it just didn't seem so shocking when she betrayed them after 2 episodes and then were suddenly suppoused to aknowledge she's been with the titans for months.

4. More home interactions i liked those they made them more relatable

5. Godiva

the rest I can't agree upon.

The faux anime made it watchable to kids, When I was younger shows like JLA and JLU even X-men when I was 6 bored me because of it's serious tone but when Teen Titans came out it got me hooked because it wasn't so stuffy.

3. No Titans East. At all.

The Titans east were good additon and it also was a great tie-in to the comics.

Put Superboy (Conner Kent), Wonder Girl II (Cassie Sandmark) and Impulse on the core team. Without those characters, something just seemed missing.

That wasn't their team those 3 were never affiliated with Teen Titans until when the comic started back up. They were Young Justice members putting them on would put off original titan fans.

Wonder Girl should have appeared in a couple of episodes. They should have had at least 1 episode with the Founding Five Titans (Robin, Speedy, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash and Aqualad).

Wondergirl couldn't be on the team because she was dead and copyright issues prevented her from appearing. Even if they did do a Founding titans episode it would completely retcon GO! unless they go the route of XMEvo.

Raven having a white cloak for the rest of the series after "The End-Part 3"

Ever since put on that cloak I wanted her to stay that way.

[Silverstar]

Starfire Main season story.

The show's writers have said that TV's Starfire didn't need an arc since she had so many great stand-alone episodes--in other words, she wasn't deep or layered enough a character to have her own season-wide story arc, and frankly I agree with them. There wasn't really any kind of storyline they could've done with that version of Star which could've spanned across an entire season, certainly not a story involving Blackfire, who on the show was a lame, one-dimensional villain. With her comics origins removed (in the books, Blackfire was born without the ability to fly, and was thus scorned by Tameranean society and passed over for the throne in favor of her younger sister), Blackfire was just a petty brat who antagonized Star for no reason and committed crimes for fun.

The writers really dropped the ball when it came to presenting Starfire and the Tameraneans as any way deep. A story arc focusing around Star would've been impossible.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Yours Truly
5. Put Superboy (Conner Kent), Wonder Girl II (Cassie Sandmark) and Impulse on the core team. Without those characters, something just seemed missing.

I think of those characters as being more Young Justice than Teen Titans, myself.

You're right. I think I really wanted a Young Justice series.


Quote: Me Again

Wonder Girl should have appeared in a couple of episodes. They should have had at least 1 episode with the Founding Five Titans (Robin, Speedy, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash and Aqualad).

Wondergirl couldn't be on the team because she was dead and copyright issues prevented her from appearing. Even if they did do a Founding titans episode it would completely retcon GO! unless they go the route of XMEvo.

That didn't stop the Founding Five from appearing together in an issue of Teen Titans GO! comics.

-And again, I think that also stems from the fact that I really wasn't wild about how they decided to go with the New Teen Titans team for the series. The Founding Five or Young Justice would've been more entertaining to me. Except for Robin, Starfire and to a lesser extent, Cyborg, I really didn't care for the 80's Titans that much.

[JD08]

That didn't stop the Founding Five from appearing together in an issue of Teen Titans GO! comics.

-And again, I think that also stems from the fact that I really wasn't wild about how they decided to go with the New Teen Titans team for the series. The Founding Five or Young Justice would've been more entertaining to me. Except for Robin, Starfire and to a lesser extent, Cyborg, I really didn't care for the 80's Titans that much.

I understand about that Starfire arc although she had a great background they ruined it. But with the Titans Go! comic, it was under jurisdiction of the recent Titan books which means when Wonder Girl came back there, it was all fair game for her so it was too late for the series.

[Caswin]

Five things, eh? Let me see...

1. More internal consistency. If something happens, there should be a harder reason for it than author's fiat. This goes for both deus ex machina endings and motiveless villains.

2. A more realistic world. The first season had this right -- regular nods to the fact that there was a world beyond fantastic battles with two-dimensional-if-we're-lucky supervillains. That was something important that the show lost.

3. Tone done the goofy animation. I didn't mind it so much back then, but when I see an episode now, it does get to me. The worst example I can think of is from Trouble in Tokyo, where Cyborg is literally sliced into pieces mid-fight. It makes it hard to take anything seriously.

4. Character background. Again, season one seemed to be leaning toward this, peppered as it was with hints at the Titans' pasts, and even playing at Slade -- whoever he was. After that, though, everything we did learn felt more like a treat for fans who already knew the full story from the comics than exposition for people who only knew the show.

5. Hmm... those four covered a lot of ground. I'm apparently too tired to come up with something silly, so to expand on number one: Learn to write endings. In retrospect, that "Apprentice" had the best-executed resolution ("You lose me, you lose your apprentice!") of any of the season story arcs doesn't reflect well on the writers.

[Time Wizard]

Remove the Doom Patrol and have more Slade! I loved the first four seasons but I disliked the Brotherhood of Evil plotline along with the Doom Patrol. It would of been great to see Batman on the show at least in one episode instead of little references.

[Mister Intensity]

The show's writers have said that TV's Starfire didn't need an arc since she had so many great stand-alone episodes--in other words, she wasn't deep or layered enough a character to have her own season-wide story arc, and frankly I agree with them. There wasn't really any kind of storyline they could've done with that version of Star which could've spanned across an entire season, certainly not a story involving Blackfire, who on the show was a lame, one-dimensional villain. With her comics origins removed (in the books, Blackfire was born without the ability to fly, and was thus scorned by Tameranean society and passed over for the throne in favor of her younger sister), Blackfire was just a petty brat who antagonized Star for no reason and committed crimes for fun.

I have to disagree with that. Blackfire needed to appear at least one more time. I got the sense that the animated Blackfire's arc was her evolution from the jealous sister to the malevolent character from the comics with her hatred of her sister growing with each encounter. Blackfire's exile from Tamaran in her last appearance was a good setup for an adaptation of the storyline based on Blackfire's first comic book appearance in New Teen Titans 22-24. Alas the producers never went in that direction.

[JAG]

5. The creators should have thought out the stories a bit more thouroughly before starting the show. As a prominent example, Slade suffered heavily from this. Most of his earlier episodes revolved around the infamous question "Who is Slade?" Thing is, we never got an answer and that part of Slade's story disappeared after the first season, leaving many non-comic fans scratching their heads and speculating. I myself expected Slade to be Robin's long-lost father, before I got into comics and learned otherwise. In retrospect, the whole question of Slade's identity, while an effective way to enhance his air of mystery, seems fairly stupid and tacked on. A better question to ask would have been "What does Slade want?", as that ended up being a far more important aspect of his character than his never-revealed identity.

[Antiyonder]

That didn't stop the Founding Five from appearing together in an issue of Teen Titans GO! comics.

-And again, I think that also stems from the fact that I really wasn't wild about how they decided to go with the New Teen Titans team for the series. The Founding Five or Young Justice would've been more entertaining to me. Except for Robin, Starfire and to a lesser extent, Cyborg, I really didn't care for the 80's Titans that much.

That's because the rule only extends to other media (i.e. live action shows and cartoons). Comic book tie ins are fair game (i.e. Blue Beetle appearing the JLU comics).

The rule I believe is that Wonder Woman and cast can only appear if WW or WG is the main character or part of the regular cast. Hence why Diana never appeared in Batman Beyond or Static Shock.

If Wonder Girl was a member of the cast from the getgo, then she would have been allowed to appear.

[Kenny E. McCall]

I agree with all of your points everyone. My idea would have have been to do an episode of Justice League or Justice League Unlimited that introduced the new teen team, which would have been called Young Justice. That way, you would introduce Robin to the Justice League, and bring in the new younger characters that will correspond with each member of the League!

Superman - Superboy (Conner Kent - in a sequel to "Identity Crisis" from STAS)

Wonder Woman - Wonder Girl (Cassandra Sandsmark - use the little girl from Paradise Lost, she'll be a few years older in the JLU timeline.)

Batman - Robin (The Tim Drake version, natch!)

Flash - Impulse (Bart Allen. I'm going to skip all this time-travel stuff and make Bart one of Wally's cousins from Barry's side of the family who is gifted with the Speed Force as a result of a blood transfusion.)

Martian Manhunter - Miss Martian (I don't know how this is going to be done, maybe as a clone with female DNA created during J'Onn's time away from the JLU.)

Green Lantern - I don't know

Hawkgirl - I don't know.

[CartoonOverlord]

Personally I liked that they went with the more original characters for the main team instead of just the kid version of an older existing superhero, like Wonder Girl and Speedy. I would have found it kind of cheesy if they chose those characters instead.