What if Donnie didn't do machines at first?
 

You know, after 're-watching the first few episodes of the TMNT 4kids series again, a thought covered to me about future incarnations. In the past, Donatello was always a full-fledged scientist right when the turtles started their careers, self-taught to the point he could build advanced vehicles and weapons, even though he had been brought up in a sewer by a rat with martial arts skills, but no scientific knowledge, and books and tv will only get you so far.

Now, over here we have April, Baxter stockman' assistant, who helps him build the mousers, and probably went to college for advanced engineering, who has the self-taught Donnie run circles around her. Would it possibly be better to have Donnie just have a basic scientific knowledge at the start, then have April be the Turles Q, developing their gadgets for them, and have Donnie slowly learn his skills from her, until he becomes the tech genius we all know and love? It'd give April a niche on the turtles team, and create a neat teacher-student dynamic between her and Donnie. Wouldn't that be interesting? Or is it a stupid idea?

I like it. That'd be a good new dynamic for a future take...

Thanks. It just didn't make any sense to me, even in Mirage, that he was the equal of people who had a lifetime of education, being only a teenager with access to science programs and books. I can see him having the potential to be a super-genius, but it would make more sense if he was mentored by another scientist. And April's science ability always seems to take a back seat to Donnie, when she had been Baxter's assistant.

Something a few people and I are doing is starting Donnie off as a regular inventor. One of the things he struggles with especially is understanding the mutagen and more advanced science fields, such as forensics.

As you can guess, something along the lines mentioned I'm interested in seeing appear. :)

He wasn't that way in Mirage. Not until, say, Volume 4. By which point he's in his 30s... Maybe in Volume 3, but he was a cyborg.

ehhh, I suppose so. I thought they portrayed him as a capable scientist throughout, but I'll concede early mirage lacked the fantastic gadgets the other versions and vol. 3 and 4 had. Still, there is no source in mirage where he attained such knowledge, it's still self-taught.

Nope. Unless being able to fix a water heater makes you a scientist.

Volume 3, we find out Donnie rebuilt Zog's Triceraton aircar from "Return to New York." And in Volume 4, Donnie builds a mechanical exosuit for his shrunken self.

But in Volume 1, there is no mechanical wizardry on display; he's tinkering with circuitboards and doing heavy thinking like fractals and chaos theory, but all of that is completely believable. No cartoony "does machines" stuff.

That's always something that's bugged me about various portrayals of Donnie. Just because he's a computer geek, that doesn't mean he knows everything about every other branch of science.

I mean, my boss has a Phd in nuclear physics, and I've had to help him set up his Out of Office Assistant on more than one occasion.

You can be a scientist without being a mechanical engineer.

Fair enough, in Mirage he wasn't shown to be a genius until vol. 3/cyborg stuff. I haven't re-read early mirage in awhile.

But he's still portrayed as a genius coming out of the gate in all other versions besides mirage, without any explanation. And I think future versions could have April be the tech genius for the team, and teach Donnie.

I don't think even then. Being able to manipulate his cyborg body and interface with stuff was because he was a cyborg... not because he was a genius.

It's probably no coincidence that most of them suck. That said, your idea about April being the Q and Donatello being the understudy isn't terrible.

And that is thanks to Fred Wolf and the theme song. :tlol:

I do like your idea, though. Or even better, have April be a programmer and Don a mechanical engineer. Then a show or comic could have things like Metalhead or whatever exist but their creation is more believable.

One lone genius in the sewers making everything from a turtle-themed FBI surveillance van to an armored hang-glider is just... well, it sells toys and we all loved it as kids. :trazz:

Yeah, but rebuilding a Triceraton aircar is probably a lot harder than rebuilding a Chevy engine. There has to be some sort of antigravity generator, for one.

Unless we assume most of the sci-fi components were intact and all Don had to do was route some wiring, repair some body damage, and assemble stuff with nuts and bolts. That's still believable for a grounded Mirage Volume 1 intellectual introvert.

Don builds crazy stuff in Mirage too. And of course he's an expert on science and studying stuff. Look at the Utrom adventures in Tales V. 2 when he pilots ships in space or study's Splinter's DNA or runs tests on Gamera Raph or studies the toxidity of water.

Utrom adventures: usually only involves piloting spaceships. Not much different than driving a car if you have some sweet autopilot systems. Or not much different from flying a plane. Believable and not genius-level.

Studying Splinter's DNA and running tests on Gamera Raph... okay, you've got me here, but this Volume 4 Don in his 30's. No telling how much he's learned from, say, Honeycutt or the Utroms.

Toxicity of water? You can probably get a kit and a couple of YouTube tutorials to learn how to do that.

I could see April, after being mentored by Dr. Stockman, being a mentor to Donatello, whose "inventions" might as well have come out of Home Alone because hey...what's a fourteen/fifteen/sixteen year old in a sewer got to work with? Then once she enters the fray and they have a bunch of MOUSERS lying around, he's able to get the boost he needs for invention.

He'd be great with the basic physics and understanding how machines work, but wasn't able to actually make anything new because he didn't have the material until April shows up.

And THEN starts running circles around April, once he gets a grip on mechanics and continues finding more teachers. Such as Professor Honeycutt, or Harold, or Leatherhead, or Dr Xeinos, expanding his knowledge of mechanics to genetics, engineering, chemistry, biochemistry, and so forth. Though, with so many geniuses (and genius students of geniuses) teaching him, it would likely culminate in him going on a "I'm the ultimate genius!" power trip at the age of twenty and someone having to wrangle him under control.

That's not a bad thought, Don learning under April as a means to grow in his interest.

Personally, I've always felt that fans (and some aspects of some of the shows) make Don TOO good. In my mind, he's an inventor/mechanic/handi man type with an interest in other sciences but he shouldn't be an expert in all of them. I've seen people make him an expert in physics/genetics/engineering/medicine and that's way too much. There are all kinds of different fields in science and being good in one does not make you an expert in all of them.

Well, repairing an alien hover car in front of you is less "OMG, you're a technical genius!" and more just problem solving. You can deconstruct a thing and see how it works.

Very true. But if repairing alien technologies relied on, say, alien manufacturing processes or alien metallurgical elements, there's no way Donnie could replicate those processes and elements WITHOUT Fred Wolf levels of deus ex ma--I mean, genius.

Then he and machines would just be friends.