Spoilers Is Dal R'el's augment status an "informed ability"?

[Yistaan]

I've only watched a few episodes of Prodigy Season 2, but don't worry spoil me on the rest of it if it contributes to the topic, I don't care. For those who don't know, an "informed ability" is where a character's skill and abilities are frequently mentioned by the cast, but are nonexistent in practice.

Let's just say, I LOVED Prodigy Season 1. The complaints about it being a kid's show felt trivial, we had a cast of kids flying around and doing their own thing and Trek taking risks that it doesn't in it's usual Starfleet setting.

The first few episodes of Prodigy Season 2 are a letdown so far. Back in a Starfleet setting, while most of the kids are fitting in Dal isn't rising up to the occasion. He's shown as a slacker, he can't be bothered to read Temporal Mechanics 101, he skips class, seems clueless a lot of time, etc.

Wait, wasn't this guy supposed to be an augment?

Let's look at other Trek augments, starting with Khan. These guys aren't just super strong, but super smart. Khan took over the Enterprise after a few minutes of reading some tech manuals in sickbay. In the Kelvin Timeline, he's designing superweapons for Section 31.

What is Dal doing? He hasn't read Temporal Mechanics 101? He should be a master at time travel after just one glance at the book. He's skipping class? He should be answering all the questions in class and then some. Adam and Arik Soong, and Khan, would be rolling over in their graves (or in the latter's case his particle remains rolling over in the remains of the Genesis planet or whatever)

There were already signs of this in Season 1. When Dal bodyswapped with Janeway, his augment intelligence should have been enough for him to fake being Janeway for quite a while. Instead he's almost instantly caught, but I let this slide as I figured it was a one-shot comedy episode.

But Dal's stupidity seems to be a completely recurring thing in Season 2. YES I know he was portrayed as "stupid" in Season 1 too, but honestly the gang had no duties and maybe he was just lazy. But now that Dal is in a setting where he has to step up, he falls apart completely contrary to whatever intentions that his augment designers had for augments in general. Like I said, I haven't finished Season 2 but I do know that by the end Dal's stupidity is so prevalent that

Spoiler

when he cedes captaincy of their new training vessel to Gwyn in the S2 finale, Chakotay apparently sighs with relief or something like that

Thoughts? Why make Dal an augment if they're not even going to portray him as one? At this point he should've just been a Pakled.

 

[Christopher]

Dal's augmentation does not give him superior abilities (except in that one episode in season 1 where he had his latent genes activated). He's an augment because he's an artificially engineered hybrid of multiple species, period. As explicitly established in the first-season finale, part of the reason he was admitted into the Academy prep program is because he doesn't have any special enhancements that give him an unfair edge.

 

[fireproof78]

Thoughts? Why make Dal an augment if they're not even going to portray him as one? At this point he should've just been a Pakled.

No Pakleds. Stupid species belongs in the junk drawer of bad ideas (and no, LD didn't make it better).

Making him an augment was all about him discovering his identity and who he was, his quest for a place to belong. He had to make his own place, rather than finding his "parents" that he kept imagining.

 

[Sumire]

Dal last season called himself a “failed genetic experiment” so I don’t think we are supposed to be gawking in amazement at his superiority. While, yes, (as far as we currently are aware) he seems to have been created more as a “let’s see how this combo works” style experiment rather than a “we can make him better, stronger, faster” style augment, a lack of interest in textbooks is not stupidity, nor is it laziness.

As someone who works with and is a part of the neurodivergent community, the implication that the only valid type of intelligence is the type that excels in school, is (in my opinion) rather shortsighted. Dal has shown amazing ingenuity, flexibility, tenacity and resourcefulness. As Zero says to Dal in the first episode, “Everyone wants to escape. But you're special. You're the only one who still thinks he can.” Dal also keeps trying to communicate even when communication is strategically denied to the enslaved populace. He tries gestures and drawing and never just gives up and resigns himself to merely doing what he is told to do.

That free-thinking, unflagging energy served him very well on Tars Lamora. That it doesn’t serve him as well at the academy doesn’t mean those traits aren’t valuable, just that they don’t mesh well with sitting and learning by reading and rote memorization. One could easily argue that Dal is more of a kinesthetic learner who learns astonishingly well by doing.

 

[Christopher]

Dal last season called himself a “failed genetic experiment” so I don’t think we are supposed to be gawking in amazement at his superiority. While, yes, (as far as we currently are aware) he seems to have been created more as a “let’s see how this combo works” style experiment rather than a “we can make him better, stronger, faster” style augment, a lack of interest in textbooks is not stupidity, nor is it laziness.

As someone who works with and is a part of the neurodivergent community, the implication that the only valid type of intelligence is the type that excels in school, is (in my opinion) rather shortsighted. Dal has shown amazing ingenuity, flexibility, tenacity and resourcefulness. As Zero says to Dal in the first episode, “Everyone wants to escape. But you're special. You're the only one who still thinks he can.” Dal also keeps trying to communicate even when communication is strategically denied to the enslaved populace. He tries gestures and drawing and never just gives up and resigns himself to merely doing what he is told to do.

That free-thinking, unflagging energy served him very well on Tars Lamora. That it doesn’t serve him as well at the academy doesn’t mean those traits aren’t valuable, just that they don’t mesh well with sitting and learning by reading and rote memorization. One could easily argue that Dal is more of a kinesthetic learner who learns astonishingly well by doing.

Intriguing observations. I've often felt that Trek's tendency to convey the Federation's educational system as no different from the present-day model is a failure of futurism. You'd think that by then, they'd understand that there are better, more varied ways for people to learn, and that different people benefit from different approaches. You'd think that would be especially the case in a multispecies academy -- although I suppose the counterargument is that Starfleet is a military service and thus would want its members to learn to fit within a standard, regimented structure, more than might be the case for a civilian educational system.

 

[valkyrie013]

Well, Lets take 2 examples. Dal, and a T"Lena from Andoria (Made up person)..

Dal, growing up in Tars, and other various ships and Feringi.
T'Lena, Normal growing up in a core world of the Federation.

Dal, knows nothing of any history or knowledge of the Federation or technology, sans anything Gleamed in the time on the Protostar.

T'Lena, knows all, benifiting from a general education system.

Both join Starfleet, T'Lena already has a head start, knowing everything she knows from being a citizen and living in the Federation, Dal on the other hand has to learn EVERYTHING that T'Lena knows starting. Severe handicap.
Now this isn't limited to Dal, There are a number of non federation people that might be in the Academy. and most would have the same handicap of not being "In the know" of Federation life. Even then, you have plenty of species that are just so out of "Normal" that they would have difficulty attending the academy from Physically to Mentally..

 

[Deks]

Dal is only an 'augment' in the sense that he is a hybrid of 26 different species that reside in the Federation... but beyond that, he doesn't have any actual enhancements that are frequently accompanied by genetic manipulation.

That's why he was allowed to join SF, but I suspect that they would have to be lenient either way mainly because of Janweay's good defence of him, and also for what he did for SF (I mean he didn't technically 'steal' the Prototsar... they found it, and took it for a joy ride before deciding to take it back to the Federation - although they did pose as SF officers, so that one was an offense technically speaking).

 

[Yistaan]

Dal is only an 'augment' in the sense that he is a hybrid of 26 different species that reside in the Federation... but beyond that, he doesn't have any actual enhancements that are frequently accompanied by genetic manipulation.

That's why he was allowed to join SF, but I suspect that they would have to be lenient either way mainly because of Janweay's good defence of him, and also for what he did for SF (I mean he didn't technically 'steal' the Prototsar... they found it, and took it for a joy ride before deciding to take it back to the Federation - although they did pose as SF officers, so that one was an offense technically speaking).

Even if he's not an "augment" in the traditional sense you think that he'd at least be programmed with a good work ethic or something. Oh well

 

[fireproof78]

Even if he's not an "augment" in the traditional sense you think that he'd at least be programmed with a good work ethic or something. Oh well

Why would I think that?

 

[Commander Troi]

He's a 17 year old, with all the issues that entails. Also, he was a slave for most of his life. He hasn't exactly had a chance to learn good study habits. The fact that we've seen him rise to the occasion more than once shows that he has potential. But he's not a Khan-style augment.

 

[Christopher]

Even if he's not an "augment" in the traditional sense you think that he'd at least be programmed with a good work ethic or something.

I can see no possible reason why anyone would think that. Presumably his creators' goal was to test whether they could even combine 26 different species' genes at all. Anything beyond that would be a separate experiment. And Dr. Jago in "Masquerade" said their work was sloppy and it was a miracle Dal was even functional. He was probably proof of concept.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I really thought after that episode where he kept gaining the traits of his component species, that it was gonna become his superpower. I'm glad they didn't do it, though. This ain't X-Men.

 

[Yistaan]

I really thought after that episode where he kept gaining the traits of his component species, that it was gonna become his superpower. I'm glad they didn't do it, though. This ain't X-Men.

Honestly if you replace Janeway in Prodigy with Picard you might start struggling to tell the difference from X-Men.