Disclaimer: I don't own the Turtles, or the Discovery Channel or any of their documentaries. I don't get paid for this and I mean no harm, please don't sue.
"Whatcha doin', Donnie?" Mikey asked as he entered the main room of the lair. He had been rather bored and whatever Don was doing had to be better than nothing at all.
"I'm watching TV."
Mikey jumped over the back of the couch and landed beside his brother. "I can see that. What is it?"
"It's a documentary." Don commented shortly.
It didn't look like any documentary Mikey had ever seen, though the little Discovery channel logo in the bottom right corner of the screen did suggest that it was exactly what Don had said. "Looks like CGI to me"
"Well, that too." Don replied.
Mikey sat quietly as an orangey-yellow floating blowfish-with-a-bird-head robot probe thingy crossed the screen and looked at strange animals. It really didn't look like any documentary he had ever seen before. The orange floating thing was kinda cute too. And the narrator kept calling it Ike, which Mike found rather amusing.
"So, what're we watching?" Mikey inquired again when some commercials started. "And before you say it again, I know it's a documentary."
"It's a concept animation of how humans might contact another planet and what kind of life they might find there." Don explained, more willing to talk now since the show was in commercial.
"Why don't they just go?"
Don just looked at his brother for a moment with one raised eyeridge.
"Oh, right. It would take a long time." Mikey supplied.
"To the nearest potential planet they know about, at 20 percent the speed of light it is still something like 46+ years for a one way trip to an observer on Earth."
Mikey whistled at that number.
"It wouldn't be quite that long to someone on the ship though." Don added nonchalantly.
"That's bizarre, Donnie." Mikey stated flatly as the show started again.
"That's special relativity."
Ike's little mission was cut off and some excited paleobiologist came onscreen and explained the animal that Ike had just been looking at. That this sort of thing came out of some scientist's imagination was quite beyond Mikey. Weren't scientists supposed to be stuffy, fact oriented types? Focus on the facts, not on the imagination? He glanced at his brother and wondered where he had gotten that idea from. Don was a science type and he had an imagination, how else did he come up with all the little things he built? April had worked for Stockman, once upon a time, and she had helped him pick out his Turtle Titan costume. She had an imagination. So much for that little stereotype, Mikey thought.
When the show went back to the floating blowfish robotic probe thing it was blue.
"Hey, wasn't he yellow last time?"
"Shh… They sent three. This is the other one that made it all the way down to the planet." Don informed quietly as he tried to pay attention to the show.
Mikey watched in silence until he found out this blue probe's name.
"You're kidding!" He exclaimed."
"Mikey," Don begged for silence in a slightly whining tone as he was trying to hear the program.
"Hey Leo! Come here, you gotta see this!" Mike shouted, ignoring Donnie's objections.
"They're named after Isaac Newton, and Leonardo Da Vinci." Donatello informed his brother. "As in famous people from human history. Now shush!"
Leo wandered out of the dojo just in time to see the blue probe knocked out of the sky by a strange and enraged animal.
"Oh, uh, that was you." Mikey told his blue masked brother cryptically as the blue probe's screen flicked black and it stopped transmitting.
Leo just blinked at his odd brother then shook his head and went to the kitchen for a glass of water.
"If that one was programmed to take greater risks," Mikey mused aloud when the show moved to Ike choosing not to approach an aggressive animal. The comment earned him a glare from his brother who was still trying to watch the program, "They should have named it Raphael."
A/N: The documentary that I saw that lead to this little story was called 'Alien Planet'.