Mind Meld and Accidental Eugenics
We’ve done some broad analysis of television, comics, movies, etc., but not any on specific episodes by themselves. Let’s break that mold today and talk about Mind Meld!
Mind Meld? What’s That?
No, it’s not that thing that happen in Star Trek. I don’t even watch Star Trek, to know about the concept of ‘mind meld’ in that franchise. Rather, in this case, it’s an episode within Rise of the TMNT, happening within the first season.
The episode begins with the four turtles trying to steal the object called the “Dragon Tooth” with Donnie determined to steal the object from his enemies, the Purple Dragons. Meanwhile, his brothers are too busy trying to take a video of a pigeon eating pizza, much to Donnie’s annoyance. When they infiltrate the building, the alarms set on as it traps Mikey in beach ball (which is Donnie’s greatest phobia), thus turtles have failed miserably. Back at the lair, Donnie is furious that the plan failed, berating the three for not thinking. Leo mocks Donnie, causing Donnie to leave enraged.
Moments later, Donatello constructs a new invention that could increase everyone’s intelligence, he lures his brothers into the machine with the promise of pizza, activating the machine. It works, as his brothers come out smarter than before.
Donnie tries to steal the Dragon’s Tooth, again, this time with his new and improved turtles. The mission succeeds this time and as they celebrate, Donnie ponders on what to do with the piece of tech, along with his brothers, and finds out his brothers have perfected his inventions, which causes him less happy. Later that night, when the four brothers are asleep, Donnie is seen to be peacefully sleeping, while his asleep as well, but only their hands are seen writing on the notebooks without waking up. The scene then cuts to sleepy Leonardo, where his brain is growing to match his increasing intellect.
The next morning, Donatello is seen skating around in the giant skating ramp and sees his brothers carrying books and asks them to join him, only to be declined by them, saying that they have a lot of work to do as they leave, leaving Donatello disheartened. Later on, Donatello arrives with a box of pizza, calls his brothers for dinner, until he learns that his brothers are doing their work. Leonardo then rudely tells him to leave as they have a work to do. Donatello realizes that they’re just trying to get rid of him, he exclaims that he sometimes do it with them. The turtles then take off their bandanas and now they’re wearing purple bandanas with eyebrows like Donatello.
In his room, Donnie expresses to his robot, Shelldon, both his astonishment and sadness towards his brothers, how he misses them so much that he wants them back as they were. Realizing that living with three intelligent and no stupid brothers is too hard to handle, Donnie then decides to get them back.
Then it devolves into antics of Donnie trying to get a one up on his brothers, only to be outsmartred by them, before realizing that he can lure him in with the fear of beach balls. Once they’re trapped into the machine again, Donatello tries to get them back, but they’re just still too intelligent. Finally, having no choice, he decides to sacrifice the dragon’s tooth as the machine explodes. The three turtles escape the machine, and Raphael grabs the dragon’s tooth and glares at it with concentrating anger. Suddenly, Raphael then asks for $10 if he puts it in his nose, implying that they are back. Relieved to see his brothers back, Donnie lets out a sigh in relief and tells Raph that he’ll give him $20, ending the episode.
The Uncomfortable Implications of “Mind Meld”
When I first saw this episode back in October 2020, I’m going to admit that it left a sour taste in my mouth. I tried to wave it off as Donnie’s unethical experimentation on his brothers but that didn’t account for all of the discomforts I had with the episode. It took me until I was talking about this episode with some friends when I finally realized why I absolutely hated the episode so much. When looking at Mind Meld from a neurodivergent and disabled point of view, it’s pretty much eugenics.
For those who don’t know, eugenics was a set of beliefs/ practices that aimed to improve the genetic quality of a human population, historically by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or promoting those judged to be superior. Basically, white people believed to be superior and considered those who here BIPOC, disabled, mentally ill, poor, and/or neurodivergent to be inferior, did not want those ‘’inferior genes’’ to be passed down. It has an incredibly racist/ableist history, which some parts still persisting in the modern-day.
When you break the events down in Mind Meld, it follows the basic tenets of eugenics: Donnie saw perceived flaws in his brothers, their ‘stupidity’, and saw that as a detrimental flaw. Much like society when eugenics was heavily popular and more mainstream, saw these flaws as inherent, and rather than supporting people with ‘’less than ideal traits,’’ Donnie decided to get rid of it and make them like him because, once again, Donnie saw himself as the superior turtle and how his brothers should follow after him and be LIKE him.
He builds the machine, and lures his brothers in with the promise of pizza, not bothering to tell them he was going to experiment on them, much like how eugenics was carried out in real life. The whole episode feels like an analog for removing someone’s disabilities/inherent traits because Donnie felt his brothers were inferior and he himself was superior. thinking about it, it heavily butchers Donnie’s character, does a retrograde on Donnie’s characterization so far in the series. It’s repetitive, undermined his growth from Donnie’s Gifts, and presents him as an uncaring, insensitive jackass who didn’t care what his bros want.
Okay, if the writers REALLY wanted to have Mind Meld, then it should have been put at the beginning of the series instead of Donnie’s Gifts. If it was reversed, then we could have seen a growth in his character from trying to Fix People to being altruistic. Donnie’s Gifts was an episode that could be read in an angle of giving support to a Neurdiveregent person, albeit in a more flawed way, seeing as the gifts that Donnie gave his brothers were meant to help them with ‘flaws’ that they had: Raph’s impulsivity, Mikey’s acrobatics, and Leo’s puns. Mind Meld took all of that development that Donnie had from Donnie’s Gifts and threw it straight into the trash. Okay, Donnie was valid in his frustration with his siblings for their performance during the opening mission in the episode, but that frustration was no longer justified when he decided to experiment on them and make him more like them.
Mind Meld meld is also repetitive in the fact that it seemed to follow a trend of “Donnie is stubborn about this one thing and thinks he is right, then at the end, he realizes he’s wrong and either apologizes/fixes the mistake while still being sorta asshole-ish about it but you can see he’s changed.” Mind Meld also contributes to the up and down writing Donnie seems to suffer from like the writers couldn’t really figure out what they wanted him to be.
From the ego, violent tendencies, etc. is all very jarring? The very core of Donnie’s character is his altruism and fierce determination to help/save/solve, even if it’s to a fault. So why the Rise writers insist on him being this way is hmmm…. questionable. Like they forgot those things, instead made his intelligence/arrogance his defining traits. It’s been said before but intelligence isn’t a solid personality trait, its what done with that intelligence is what MATTERS. The hyperfocus on Donnie’s intelligence came at the cost of his kindness and made him stand out, but not necessarily in the best way possible.
Asides
AKA things I want to point out but didn’t quite fit in here.
1. If it hadn’t been for his brothers starting to brush him off and not starting to outsmart him, Donnie would have been completely okay with keeping his brothers like that and had no intentions of ever returning them to their normal selves/wiping them out fundamentally to keep them to be like him.
2. None of the boys are stupid. Not by a long shot and have shown it throughout the series that they have smarts and intelligence in other fields. Not to mention that Raph, Mikey, and Leo have demonstrated their intelligence in the episode “Smart Lair,” where we see the three able to rewire Shelldon’s AI, which by the way is a very difficult and complex thing to do, with Leo instructing and Raph and Mikey knowing what to do. So there is visible evidence that they are indeed very, very intelligent and this is just an example of some of the flawed writing within Rise via dumbing down characters unnecessarily for the plot.
2. Donnie’s Successful Mission Party: Happens after the second attempt of the Purple Dragons mission, it ends successfully, where he says:
“I’m so proud of you. Ah, they grow up so fast.”
“I am pleased to announce that we are finally an unstoppable team.”
“And I have been waiting for a long time to do this.”
Following after this is, Donnie looking up to reveal confetti falling down from the skylight, as an air horn blared and the ground opened to reveal a pair of speaker systems, a banner reading ‘’MISSION SUCCESSFUL’’ dropped down and hung above their heads, followed by techno music and lights. Donnie goes on to say, “Successful mission dance party!”
What? What was Donnie trying to say? That… that they’ve never had a successful mission, ever? They’ve had PLENTY of successful missions, even if they didn’t happen in the way that they expected them to but they were still successes, nonetheless. The four teens agreed on these being successful, so why didn’t they have a dance party back then, and only now? So why did Donnie say that this was a successful mission dance party?
Did Donnie lie back then? Did he really think that they weren’t capable of succeeding in his own eyes? What did he define as success and would they have ever been able to fulfill that definition of success? Then the answer comes when he says to himself, “Ah, it’s like looking into a beautiful, beautiful mirror.”
