Character Review: Dr. Quease

Since there are so many different Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle characters I could never get around to doing a review for every character in our video blog.  I decided to do some character reviews for minor characters here on our website.  These reviews will be about characters who only appeared a handful of times, though people have either asked me to review or are characters I feel deserve some spot light!

The character I’m going to focus on this time is Dr. Quease, who was originally named "Dr. Faboo" in the Saban Mini Bible.  The Mini Bible was their basic info about the series before the scripts were written.  Here is what it says about Dr. Faboo (aka Quease).

Dr. Faboo is New York City's most under-rated criminal brain.  A sick and twisted genius.  Dr. Faboo has an unholy passion for tampering with living flesh and destructive machines.  He is a great perpetrator of foul deeds and is completely nuts!

Dr. Faboo is obessed with the Turtles. His objective is quite simple.  Catch a Mutant Turtle crack its shell and find out what makes it tick.  Plain and simple, the lunatic wants to do experiments on the Turtles - He wants to unlock the secret to their Mutant abilities.

Dr. Faboo has mastered all known technologies and science: From simple digestive techniques, bio-brain augmentations, and primitive mutant freak breeding, to complex astrophysics, electronmagnetics, particle theory, neuro-acoustics, and cosmo-optice.  Faboo has aced the Trakian 20 cm Split Deam Violator all 733 of the Lunan modified matter regeneration timephase systems, antimatter microdot quark duplication, and subatomic Borinium time-phase technology.  Faboo is forever tinkering with flesh and machines - But he's yet to manufacture an intelligent fully functioning independent Mutant.  The Turtles are the key!  He must study their guts - But in order to do that, he will need to catch one.  This is Dr. Faboo's prime objective: Trap a Turtle, slay it, filet it, and create a new race of customized creatures... Dr. Faboo is the craziest man on the face of the earth!

Well, from what everyone knows of Dr. Quease, some of those ideas did stay with him, though as I said this is from before the show was fully written or filmed.   Anyone who watched the series knows that Dr. Quease started off just as this scientist that Donatello was a fan of, who got kidnapped by the Rank.  Dragon Lord offered Quease a job and he took it. There was some character growth in Quease through the series to the point where he realized that Donatello is worth more to him alive than dead.

Really Quease is one of my favorite TMNT Villains!  I have personally found throughout the years that I like villains with character growth to them.  Be it how they got into what they’re doing or seeing something that they did not originally see in the heroes.  A lot of the time I watch a movie or show and the lead villain is just evil because they want to be.  There is no feeling behind it, besides for their anger and hate.  I can never get into a villain like that, which is why it is hard for me to find a villain I can say I like.  Though Dr. Quease was something different.

I first learned of Dr. Quease while I was on the set of the Next Mutation in July 1997. He was the villain in the episode I got to watch get filmed.  His make up really turned me off, and all I could think about was how much of a Saban show this was going to be.  I stood back and watched and found myself laughing at the actor who played Dr. Quease, Simon Webb.  He stayed in character as long as the make up was on, and he was great at what he did.  Though I really did not take full notice to his character until my ride home from that trip, as I was given a gift of scripts.  Lots of scripts from the Next Mutation series.

The long car ride from Vancouver, BC back to Detroit was enough time for me to read every single one of these scripts and I found myself loving the character of Dr. Quease.  From his introduction episode to Trusting Dr. Quease, he was a wonderful character.  I enjoyed the way he was introduced, with Donatello being a fan and witnessing Dr. Quease get kidnapped by the Rank!  Don decides he needs to save Dr. Quease though by time he does get around to helping, he is too late.  Dr. Quease has been employed by the Dragon Lord to catch the Turtles.  This is something Don personally has a hard time coming to terms with, as he has been a fan of Dr. Quease’s work for a long time. I really became a fan though with the episode “Trusting Dr. Quease”.  In this episode Dr. Quease is threatened to catch a Turtle in a certain amount of time, and to Dr. Quease’s liking he gets a chance almost right away to catch Donatello.  Though it is to Dr. Quease’s surprise that Donatello understands his research.  He realizes he’s got some time before he has to catch a Turtle, and so he lies to Don to keep Don coming back.  The two of them make a connection as friends, only for Don to learn that Dr. Quease was going to betray him.  At the end of the episode though, Dr. Quease let’s Donatello get away, telling him how he was more useful alive.  Character growth like that made me like Quease as a character so much more.

I would of loved to have seen where things went from there with Dr. Quease.  He was the one character in the Next Mutation that I would like to see appear in one of the other medias just to see this character grow more.  The 4Kids series sort of got that with fanboy reaction from Donatello with Baxter Stockman, but there was never a connection between Baxter and Donatello.

My biggest disappointment with Dr. Quease goes to the action figure.  It was on the back of the box, but it never got released.  I would love to get my hands on a prototype of the Dr. Quease action figure.

For anyone curious of how I got on the set of Ninja Turtles : The Next Mutation watch this episode of Cowabunga Corner.

What are your thoughts of Dr. Quease?  Did you watch the Next Mutation?  Did you like his character growth?   Please share your thoughts and comments below!  Remember that all email addresses are kept private.