Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Season 1, Episodes 17-20: Green With Evil, Pt. 1-5
I had fun with this show, I admit, but I will also be the first to say that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is, at its core, a pretty poorly-edited adaptation of a Japanese show, ultimately made to be a toy advertisement. It certainly succeeded, considering how huge Power Rangers was back in the day, but it's a huge, huge stretch in trying to say that the show's genuinely good. It's entertaining, but everything is episodic at best and incoherent at worst, working off of a combination of general hilarity in the dialogue and editing choices, as well as simple spandex action scenes, to really be entertaining.Well, that changes (sort of) in the first ever five-parter, the point that everyone swears up and down is super duper badass and the huge turning point in many living rooms in the 90's. The five-week part saga of Tommy the Green Ranger, the hero with the character arc, who goes through such an epic tale of redemption and glorious development that he became the main character in subsequent episodes. And... well, there really isn't much competition for character, is it? Everyone else is kinda one-note... but we'll see if the Tommy episodes do end up impressing me!
Episode 17: Part 1: Out of Control
We set up the first episode out of the five-parter... with a karate tournament, which is certainly a way to introduce us to Tommy Oliver. He's introduced as a newcomer both to their high school, and is set up as a pretty worthy rival to Jason, what with his constant jump-spin-kicking and yelling what the internet calls me is apparently written out as "SICK-IYAAAH". It's... it's a lot more coherent than a lot of the other guest stars we've had in this show before, and the subsequent karate tournament, while nothing particularly spectacular by the standards of the show, at least does sort of show just how skilled Tommy is, coming into a draw with Jason fair and square. Meanwhile, Kimberly is totally into Tommy.
Thanks to the logic of the show, Rita Repulsa is also watching the karate tournament and thinks that the super-sweet spin-kicking karate teenager is the perfect vessel for the Green Ranger. Why or how Rita is able to give Ranger powers isn't explained (and knowing this show, I'm not sure if it'll ever be), and I'm not quite sure why everyone in Rita's team is completely supportive of Rita's power to get some random teenager and give then Green Ranger powers. Is there a rule that prevents Goldar from channeling Green Ranger powers or something?
The next day at school, Bulk and Skull kind of harass Kimberly... which, honestly, isn't very successful at all, but Tommy shows up to rescue the damsel-in-distress (and honestly, considering Kim's track record in the past couple of episodes, she's probably the most stone-cold killer among the Power Rangers) and scares off Bulk and Skull by doing like six spin-kicks in quick succession. Note that Tommy doesn't actually kick the bullies, he just makes Bruce Lee noises while he does spin-kicks in place, which is sufficient to scare Bulk and Skull off. Kim quickly asks Tommy out on a date later that day in the Youth Center.
Which, of course, doesn't happen because we get a montage of a surprisingly long sequence of Rita mumbling random gibberish as she casts a spell with skulls and candles and what's essentially a satanist ritual or some shit to bring Tommy to her. Which... manifests in a bunch of Putty Patrollers that show up and ambush Tommy in a random alleyway. Kudos to the writers for showing some restraint, Tommy isn't in full Mary Sue territory and actually ends up being blindsided by the Putties, being actually shown to be overwhelmed and having difficulty until around halfway through the fight. At which point, of course, he goes full on Bruce Lee on the Putties. This display convinces Rita that apparently Tommy's perfect as a Green Ranger... okay? Like, pulling off a Steve Rogers with that random trash can cover and Tommy's constant SICK-IYAAAAH's are entertaining, but even Billy can beat up a bunch of Putties. I think Rita's just obsessed with that plan because Tommy keeps wearing green everywhere he goes.
Anyway, Rita ends up kidnapping Tommy via her crystal ball, and we go through what's admittedly a pretty awkward segment of special effects involving magic ball teleportation and a coccooned-up body to disguise that none of the Moon crew and Tommy are ever in the same room at any point in the process of shooting, and we even have closeups to some random Asian guy (Tommy's Zyuranger counterpart) at a couple of points. And thanks to Rita's spell... Tommy's reduced to basically being generically evil, talking like a robot and about how he could best serve his empress. Rita wastes no time in giving us the information dump, telling him all about the five Power Rangers, giving him the green Power Morpher, and revealing that apparently, only a Power Ranger can enter Zordon's Command Center. And Tommy has to kill Zordon.
At no point in this five-parter is it evre mentioned how Rita came into the possession of the Green Power Morpher, or why she hasn't used it to infiltrate Zordon's base until now. Like, not even a simple handwave that it only works on humans (or teenagers with attitude) or anything. We just have to go with it. Mmmmkay.
And Tommy henshins into the Green Ranger, teleporting immediately into the Command Center and taking out Alpha-Five... by slotting a CD-ROM into a convenient slot on the robot's back. Okay. Tommy then exchanges some angry dialogue with Zordon about how he's going to destroy him 'cause he's evil and stuff, and... credit where credit's due, Zordon's voice actor does manage to convey a sense of panic withot ever breaking from the over-dramatic speech pattern we're used to getting from Zordon. Anyway, Tommy rips out all of the cables from the Command Center's computers, shutting Zordon down... seemingly for good. I mean, it's the Power Rangers and he comes back, but this part of the episode plays the 'death' straight, which I appreciate.
Rita decides to continue with the next phase of her plan, which apparently just involves a giant Goldar smashing some stuff in a random mountain range, which... seems pretty ineffective. Alpha manages to send a garbled tranmission to the Power Rangers, who were hanging out the RAD Bug and talking about how Tommy totally stood Kimberly up for her date. Unable to teleport, they take the RAD Bug and fly to the Command Center, and find it fucked up... and Billy basically sort-of fixes Alpha from the viruses infecting him by pulling out the CD, because 90's-era writers don't really understand technology all that well.
After a Power Ranger morphing-and-teleporting sequence, we instead get a Rangers-vs-Putty fight shoehorned in, before going full Megazord to fight Goldar... who quickly disappears. And then the Green Ranger shows up. Now Mighty Morphin Power Rangers isn't like, the most intricate of shows, and it's even formulaic, but it is admittedly pretty surprising after 16 episodes of the Megazord basically being a 'kill everything but recurring villains' button, and for the Green Ranger to straight-up teleport into the cockpit, punch the shit out of Trini, cause the Megazord's head to go into a bit of a fritz and then punch the Rangers out of the Megazord's helmet.
The Green Ranger then absolutely and utterly demolishes the other Power Rangers five-on-one, effortlessly. Jason tries to invoke the Conservation of Ninjutsu trope and demands a 1-v-1 fight, but logic trumps dramatic tension, and the Green Ranger demolishes Jason and the Power Rangers with a green Hadoken-Kamehameha.
Sure, the Rangers survived via Alpha's Deus ex Teleportation, and this is where the episode ends, with a massive 'to be continued'. Zordon is missing (presumed dead), the Command Center is fucked, they've got a single villain that's able to take out five of them in single command, and even the Megazord got fucked! And he's a human, too, such a different feel from the generic putty monsters we've seen throughout the entire series. The logistics on Rita's plan is very iffy, but in MMPR standards it's actually pretty well-done, and the sheer intensity and just how different it feels from the rest of the show (even if it doesn't thankfully go full-on dark-n-gritty) really does set a tone for the rest of the five-parter, even if it doesn't necessarily start off perfectly.
Thanks to the logic of the show, Rita Repulsa is also watching the karate tournament and thinks that the super-sweet spin-kicking karate teenager is the perfect vessel for the Green Ranger. Why or how Rita is able to give Ranger powers isn't explained (and knowing this show, I'm not sure if it'll ever be), and I'm not quite sure why everyone in Rita's team is completely supportive of Rita's power to get some random teenager and give then Green Ranger powers. Is there a rule that prevents Goldar from channeling Green Ranger powers or something?
The next day at school, Bulk and Skull kind of harass Kimberly... which, honestly, isn't very successful at all, but Tommy shows up to rescue the damsel-in-distress (and honestly, considering Kim's track record in the past couple of episodes, she's probably the most stone-cold killer among the Power Rangers) and scares off Bulk and Skull by doing like six spin-kicks in quick succession. Note that Tommy doesn't actually kick the bullies, he just makes Bruce Lee noises while he does spin-kicks in place, which is sufficient to scare Bulk and Skull off. Kim quickly asks Tommy out on a date later that day in the Youth Center.
Which, of course, doesn't happen because we get a montage of a surprisingly long sequence of Rita mumbling random gibberish as she casts a spell with skulls and candles and what's essentially a satanist ritual or some shit to bring Tommy to her. Which... manifests in a bunch of Putty Patrollers that show up and ambush Tommy in a random alleyway. Kudos to the writers for showing some restraint, Tommy isn't in full Mary Sue territory and actually ends up being blindsided by the Putties, being actually shown to be overwhelmed and having difficulty until around halfway through the fight. At which point, of course, he goes full on Bruce Lee on the Putties. This display convinces Rita that apparently Tommy's perfect as a Green Ranger... okay? Like, pulling off a Steve Rogers with that random trash can cover and Tommy's constant SICK-IYAAAAH's are entertaining, but even Billy can beat up a bunch of Putties. I think Rita's just obsessed with that plan because Tommy keeps wearing green everywhere he goes.Anyway, Rita ends up kidnapping Tommy via her crystal ball, and we go through what's admittedly a pretty awkward segment of special effects involving magic ball teleportation and a coccooned-up body to disguise that none of the Moon crew and Tommy are ever in the same room at any point in the process of shooting, and we even have closeups to some random Asian guy (Tommy's Zyuranger counterpart) at a couple of points. And thanks to Rita's spell... Tommy's reduced to basically being generically evil, talking like a robot and about how he could best serve his empress. Rita wastes no time in giving us the information dump, telling him all about the five Power Rangers, giving him the green Power Morpher, and revealing that apparently, only a Power Ranger can enter Zordon's Command Center. And Tommy has to kill Zordon.
At no point in this five-parter is it evre mentioned how Rita came into the possession of the Green Power Morpher, or why she hasn't used it to infiltrate Zordon's base until now. Like, not even a simple handwave that it only works on humans (or teenagers with attitude) or anything. We just have to go with it. Mmmmkay.
And Tommy henshins into the Green Ranger, teleporting immediately into the Command Center and taking out Alpha-Five... by slotting a CD-ROM into a convenient slot on the robot's back. Okay. Tommy then exchanges some angry dialogue with Zordon about how he's going to destroy him 'cause he's evil and stuff, and... credit where credit's due, Zordon's voice actor does manage to convey a sense of panic withot ever breaking from the over-dramatic speech pattern we're used to getting from Zordon. Anyway, Tommy rips out all of the cables from the Command Center's computers, shutting Zordon down... seemingly for good. I mean, it's the Power Rangers and he comes back, but this part of the episode plays the 'death' straight, which I appreciate.
Rita decides to continue with the next phase of her plan, which apparently just involves a giant Goldar smashing some stuff in a random mountain range, which... seems pretty ineffective. Alpha manages to send a garbled tranmission to the Power Rangers, who were hanging out the RAD Bug and talking about how Tommy totally stood Kimberly up for her date. Unable to teleport, they take the RAD Bug and fly to the Command Center, and find it fucked up... and Billy basically sort-of fixes Alpha from the viruses infecting him by pulling out the CD, because 90's-era writers don't really understand technology all that well.
After a Power Ranger morphing-and-teleporting sequence, we instead get a Rangers-vs-Putty fight shoehorned in, before going full Megazord to fight Goldar... who quickly disappears. And then the Green Ranger shows up. Now Mighty Morphin Power Rangers isn't like, the most intricate of shows, and it's even formulaic, but it is admittedly pretty surprising after 16 episodes of the Megazord basically being a 'kill everything but recurring villains' button, and for the Green Ranger to straight-up teleport into the cockpit, punch the shit out of Trini, cause the Megazord's head to go into a bit of a fritz and then punch the Rangers out of the Megazord's helmet.The Green Ranger then absolutely and utterly demolishes the other Power Rangers five-on-one, effortlessly. Jason tries to invoke the Conservation of Ninjutsu trope and demands a 1-v-1 fight, but logic trumps dramatic tension, and the Green Ranger demolishes Jason and the Power Rangers with a green Hadoken-Kamehameha.
Sure, the Rangers survived via Alpha's Deus ex Teleportation, and this is where the episode ends, with a massive 'to be continued'. Zordon is missing (presumed dead), the Command Center is fucked, they've got a single villain that's able to take out five of them in single command, and even the Megazord got fucked! And he's a human, too, such a different feel from the generic putty monsters we've seen throughout the entire series. The logistics on Rita's plan is very iffy, but in MMPR standards it's actually pretty well-done, and the sheer intensity and just how different it feels from the rest of the show (even if it doesn't thankfully go full-on dark-n-gritty) really does set a tone for the rest of the five-parter, even if it doesn't necessarily start off perfectly.
Episode 18: Part 2: Jason's Battle
So how does part 2 stack up? Well, one complaint that I'll be having throughout this five-parter is that they really under-utilize Tommy as a character. Spoiler alert, he spends aroud 90% of the five-parter as a robotic, brainwashed dude, so it really makes it hard to care about him as a character, beyond the vague knowledge that he's human, so our heroes can't really Toku-splode him like the other weekly monsters. Honestly, I'd rather have Tommy actually interact with the Rangers beyond that short karate tournament scene, because when part 5 rolls in and everyone's talking about how we need to save our buddy Tommy, it doesn't really jive all that well, y'know?
Part 2 tries to give Tommy some focus from a screen-time point of view, at the very least, but, again, a good chunk of it is kind of ruined by the fact that it's ultimately just a brainwashed dude. The Power Rangers themselves are sort of down. Billy is still trying to fix Alpha properly, as well as the rest of the Command Center (with a hilariously gigantic giant sci-fi gun). Alpha gets properly rebooted this time, and we go through a bunch of obvious recap dialogue about how Zordon's gone and how resource-wise, they're kinda fucked. Jason, in particular, has been shoved to the background for the past dozen episodes despite being the theoretical main character, and we actually do get significant focus on him in this five-parter, something I really do appreciate. He's actually acting like a leader, talking about how there's still a lot of work to be done and whatnot, trying to keep the other Rangers from freaking out.
Meanwhile, high off the fact that they've actually got an uncontested victory for once, Rita aims to sic the Green Ranger on the Power Rangers again, until Goldar and Finster suggests that Rita give Tommy the Sword of Darkness, to power him up even more. Which, of course, is another thing that no one ever mentioned before, but this one is a lot more forgivable than the random power morpher Rita has somewhere in her ratty moon robes. Finster also drops hints that the Sword of Darkness will help Rita corrupt Tommy's mind as long as no one destroys it, not at all being subtle that this is going to be a plot point.
Rita teleports Tommy back to Earth, and considering that he's brainwashed into being a good slave to a moon-witch, there really is no in-story reason for Rita to let Tommy go through a fascimile of his normal civilian life. Out-of-story, though, it's obviously to give us this hilarious scene as Evil Tommy meets Bulk and Skull, attacks them with hilariously poorly-edited eye beams, causes the two bullies to stumble with burning shoes into a dumpster, leading to the perfect delivery of "I dunno, he should get his eyes checked" from Bulk. It's something that really shouldn't be funny, but man, Bulk and Skull's actors really do sell their lines.
Also, Tommy has eye-beams. He never does this to actually fight the putties, but he has eye-beams in his human form. Does the Power Rangers' morpher devices also allow them to have superpowers in human form, too?
Now the Power Rangers going back into their civilian lives makes a lot more sense, since, y'know, they have their wits about them and everything. It's sort of filler (Billy and Trini fixing the computers is the most obvious filler in the five-parter), but I'll take what little characterization I can get, with Jason unloading a barrage of punches on a punching bag and confiding to his best buddy Zack about how he's kind of bothered with the Green Ranger (and sort of connect the dots that he attacked the Command Center). And Kim sort of tries to talk to Tommy, only to find that not only does Rita turn her into an evil green space-spandex-warrior, she also made him a douchebag supreme.
Also, again, I try not to comment on the 90's fashion in this show, but from part 2 onwards Tommy wears this... this utterly gloriously ridiculous thing that I can really only describe as a net-suit. What the hell!
At which pointthe script Rita decides that we've had enough of civilian scenes, and apparently Evil Tommy negging on Kimberly is enough of a sign to set up the Sword of Darkness trial. Which means Rita teleports Tommy onto a beach... gives a speech to tell Tommy what to do, and then teleports Tommy to a different part of the beach. And then Tommy... has to fight a bunch of Putties. Which was the exact same thing that Tommy did in part 1, making this sequence feel particularly pointless, and a stellar exercise in shoehorning an action scene that really doesn't add much to the story.
Which isn't to say that it's not entertaining, of course, because Tommy's action scenes are pretty great, and we get the hilarity of him doing all of his karate moves in that hideous green net-suit... including a slo-mo sequence of him jumping and landing crotch-first onto a Putty Patroller, just to backflip him off. Which is so unnecessarily ridiculous.
Rita gives Tommy the Sword of Darkness, and after a mission statement to absolutely destroy the Power Rangers, especially that Red Ranger... we cut away to the high school, where Jason immediately meets Tommy, talking about how they missed the chance to work out together, something that quite literally randomly came up, and is not a reference to an earlier conversation. It's not something I glossed over, Tommy and Jason's interactions quite literally amounted to that karate tournament and nothing else. And it's really hard to handwave it away considering the sheer amount of runtime the makers of the show actually had to fill up with pointless filler scenes. Tommy blasts Jason in the back with green energy, teleporting him to the "Dark Dimension", which really is just a small room with green pillars and a fog machine left on.
And Jason gets to fight Goldar! Which is really the most relevant Goldar has been in this entire series, and... I know that Goldar's sort of an iconic character, but he really doesn't make for a particularly interesting villain. He's familiar enough to us that seeing him mock Jason is pretty neat, though, and we do get a bit of sadistic personality with him tormenting Jason with the fact that he can't transform, and Goldar's going to take his sweet, sweet time delivering the killing blow. Again, standard Saturday morning cartoon villain flaw, but give Goldar a break.
And... and this episode sort of cuts back and forth from the other four Rangers going from the RAD Bug to the Command Center and sort of regrouping, while Jason continues to fight Goldar. Or, well, mostly being ineffective becuase a karate teenager can't really do much damage against a moon-werewolf-griffin-creature. The four Rangers, sans red, fight the Green Ranger with his brand-new-spanking Sword of Darkness, but, of cousre, the Green Ranger utterly curb-stomp the Power Rangers. And... y'know what? Despite the rather silly scene arrangement of these episodes, I do have to admit that the action fights are pretty good.
The Power Rangers get so desperate in fighting Tommy that they summon the Megazord, which is kinda overkill, but it's not like Zordon's there to admonish them for breaking Zordon Rule #2. The Megazord, as it turns out, is still a giant fucking building-sized robot and without the element of surprise allowing him to kick the Rangers out of the cockpit, the Green Ranger's best shot is deflected with the Megazord's shield, sending evil brainwashed Tommy teleporting away.
The episode ends with the continuation of the Jason and Goldar fight, and becasue we're about to reach the end of the episode, Goldar decides that fun time's over and he's about to murder Jason with his sword. There's a tense bit where it seems that Jason might reach his little transformation trinket, but Goldar knocks him down, leading to another tense "to be continued..."
Overall, it's clearly a collection of scenes that are meant to both be filler and build-up, but ultimately actually stands up as a reasonably solid encounter. Which is not something I can say for...
Part 2 tries to give Tommy some focus from a screen-time point of view, at the very least, but, again, a good chunk of it is kind of ruined by the fact that it's ultimately just a brainwashed dude. The Power Rangers themselves are sort of down. Billy is still trying to fix Alpha properly, as well as the rest of the Command Center (with a hilariously gigantic giant sci-fi gun). Alpha gets properly rebooted this time, and we go through a bunch of obvious recap dialogue about how Zordon's gone and how resource-wise, they're kinda fucked. Jason, in particular, has been shoved to the background for the past dozen episodes despite being the theoretical main character, and we actually do get significant focus on him in this five-parter, something I really do appreciate. He's actually acting like a leader, talking about how there's still a lot of work to be done and whatnot, trying to keep the other Rangers from freaking out.
Meanwhile, high off the fact that they've actually got an uncontested victory for once, Rita aims to sic the Green Ranger on the Power Rangers again, until Goldar and Finster suggests that Rita give Tommy the Sword of Darkness, to power him up even more. Which, of course, is another thing that no one ever mentioned before, but this one is a lot more forgivable than the random power morpher Rita has somewhere in her ratty moon robes. Finster also drops hints that the Sword of Darkness will help Rita corrupt Tommy's mind as long as no one destroys it, not at all being subtle that this is going to be a plot point.
Rita teleports Tommy back to Earth, and considering that he's brainwashed into being a good slave to a moon-witch, there really is no in-story reason for Rita to let Tommy go through a fascimile of his normal civilian life. Out-of-story, though, it's obviously to give us this hilarious scene as Evil Tommy meets Bulk and Skull, attacks them with hilariously poorly-edited eye beams, causes the two bullies to stumble with burning shoes into a dumpster, leading to the perfect delivery of "I dunno, he should get his eyes checked" from Bulk. It's something that really shouldn't be funny, but man, Bulk and Skull's actors really do sell their lines.Also, Tommy has eye-beams. He never does this to actually fight the putties, but he has eye-beams in his human form. Does the Power Rangers' morpher devices also allow them to have superpowers in human form, too?
Now the Power Rangers going back into their civilian lives makes a lot more sense, since, y'know, they have their wits about them and everything. It's sort of filler (Billy and Trini fixing the computers is the most obvious filler in the five-parter), but I'll take what little characterization I can get, with Jason unloading a barrage of punches on a punching bag and confiding to his best buddy Zack about how he's kind of bothered with the Green Ranger (and sort of connect the dots that he attacked the Command Center). And Kim sort of tries to talk to Tommy, only to find that not only does Rita turn her into an evil green space-spandex-warrior, she also made him a douchebag supreme.
Also, again, I try not to comment on the 90's fashion in this show, but from part 2 onwards Tommy wears this... this utterly gloriously ridiculous thing that I can really only describe as a net-suit. What the hell!
At which point
Which isn't to say that it's not entertaining, of course, because Tommy's action scenes are pretty great, and we get the hilarity of him doing all of his karate moves in that hideous green net-suit... including a slo-mo sequence of him jumping and landing crotch-first onto a Putty Patroller, just to backflip him off. Which is so unnecessarily ridiculous.Rita gives Tommy the Sword of Darkness, and after a mission statement to absolutely destroy the Power Rangers, especially that Red Ranger... we cut away to the high school, where Jason immediately meets Tommy, talking about how they missed the chance to work out together, something that quite literally randomly came up, and is not a reference to an earlier conversation. It's not something I glossed over, Tommy and Jason's interactions quite literally amounted to that karate tournament and nothing else. And it's really hard to handwave it away considering the sheer amount of runtime the makers of the show actually had to fill up with pointless filler scenes. Tommy blasts Jason in the back with green energy, teleporting him to the "Dark Dimension", which really is just a small room with green pillars and a fog machine left on.
And Jason gets to fight Goldar! Which is really the most relevant Goldar has been in this entire series, and... I know that Goldar's sort of an iconic character, but he really doesn't make for a particularly interesting villain. He's familiar enough to us that seeing him mock Jason is pretty neat, though, and we do get a bit of sadistic personality with him tormenting Jason with the fact that he can't transform, and Goldar's going to take his sweet, sweet time delivering the killing blow. Again, standard Saturday morning cartoon villain flaw, but give Goldar a break.
And... and this episode sort of cuts back and forth from the other four Rangers going from the RAD Bug to the Command Center and sort of regrouping, while Jason continues to fight Goldar. Or, well, mostly being ineffective becuase a karate teenager can't really do much damage against a moon-werewolf-griffin-creature. The four Rangers, sans red, fight the Green Ranger with his brand-new-spanking Sword of Darkness, but, of cousre, the Green Ranger utterly curb-stomp the Power Rangers. And... y'know what? Despite the rather silly scene arrangement of these episodes, I do have to admit that the action fights are pretty good.
The Power Rangers get so desperate in fighting Tommy that they summon the Megazord, which is kinda overkill, but it's not like Zordon's there to admonish them for breaking Zordon Rule #2. The Megazord, as it turns out, is still a giant fucking building-sized robot and without the element of surprise allowing him to kick the Rangers out of the cockpit, the Green Ranger's best shot is deflected with the Megazord's shield, sending evil brainwashed Tommy teleporting away.The episode ends with the continuation of the Jason and Goldar fight, and becasue we're about to reach the end of the episode, Goldar decides that fun time's over and he's about to murder Jason with his sword. There's a tense bit where it seems that Jason might reach his little transformation trinket, but Goldar knocks him down, leading to another tense "to be continued..."
Overall, it's clearly a collection of scenes that are meant to both be filler and build-up, but ultimately actually stands up as a reasonably solid encounter. Which is not something I can say for...
Episode 19: Part 3: The Rescue
You know, I'm not mad that Goldar didn't kill Jason. It's fucking Power Rangers, I expect 90's cheese and Japanese spandex karate, not some dark and gritty story with death and whatnot. I do expect Jason escaping in something more interesting than "lie down in like the unbelievably-thin layer of fog, and take advantage of Goldar's absolutely shit vision". Like, holy shit, this sequence ended up being pretty anti-climactic, and it basically is sort of an endless time-eating sequence of scenes that felt particularly repetitive as Goldar just randomly slowly stabbing into the fog ineffectively, even though the audience can see just how unimpressively low the fog-bank actually is. After the buildup of a hopeless situation that seems to be ther eto set up a huge hero moment for Jason, we get this rather asinine scene. This continues for a while, with short interludes where Jason stands up and yells a bit, and ducks away a bit, and it really is such a scene with a lack of any sort of tension that I really don't care.
While all of this is going on, something I didn't mention is that throughout episode 2, Alpha-Five is trying to technobabble his way and 'lock on to' Zordon to restore him. Billy joins him in this episode. We're never really given much explanation to just how this works (it's certainly none of the 'time warp' stuff we got before), only that it vaguely resembles someone trying to get a radio signal, because presumably that's the extent of technology the writers think kids will get. It's utterly bland padding, not helped by the dire dialogue Alpha Five and Billy are saddled with.
Also, while all of this is going on, Rita is on a roll with new villains, and decides to summon another powerful minion, Scorpina... and the sequence of scenes that led to her revealing her form is as follows: Rita casts a spell, causing a lightning strike. A random boulder rolls around a forest with bizarrely gigantic mushrooms. We get a closeup of a bunch of scorpions crawling over a patch of rock that's beating like a heart. Then the boulder rolls up a random flight of stairs in a city, and then we immediately cut to Scorpina already formed, without any effect to indicate that the boulder is Scorpina.
What the fuck. Presumably, this makes a lot more sense in the original Japanese version? Presumably? It's such a non-sequitur here. Like, Scorpina looks cool and all, and like Rita, one of the few cases where a non-suited Japanese actor from Zyuranger shows up in MMPR, but her introduction genuinely feels utterly random and out of nowhere, and that rock bit was never explained.
We spend around half the episode alternating between the Goldar/Jason scenes and generic exposition, until Kimberly, trying to find the MIA Jason, runs afoul of Bulk and Skull, who try to flirt with her while offering to help find Jason. Kimberly tricks Skull into kissing Bulk in the cheek and the two panic and run out of the Youth Center because it's the 90's, and back then no one thought twice about 'lolgay' jokes. And then Kimberly bumps into Brainwashed!Tommy, who Rita allows to wander around and work out in the gym to show off his massive biceps. Tommy acts like a dick. Zack shows up, they follow Tommy, who is kinda suspicious... but really, they have no real reason to do this, Tommy's literally a new kid who had one positive interaction with Kim, it's not like if it's a member of the core five that got brainwashed. Zack and Kimberly end up fighting a bunch of Putties that show out of nowhere, they briefly note that it's so odd that the Putties don't attack Tommy, before literally dismissing this piece of information for the rest of the five-parter and returning to the Command Center.
And Rita apparently has Tommy walk from where he's working out, walk past a park, send a bunch of Putties to distract two Power Rangers, just to have Tommy teleport into the Dark Dimension to kill Jason because Goldar is taking forever. It is such an insipidly long and roundabout way of storytelling and event-setting. Jason and the Green Ranger have a bit of a staredown, and Jason yells how disappointed he is that this random dude that "wears a costume like us" is evil. Ooookay? Like, I know the Green Ranger becomes good later, I really do, but I really don't follow the logic of this bit on Jason's part. And then... we basically have a repeat of the Goldar/Jason fight, where the vastly powerful enemy keeps knocking Jason down onto the fog-machine floor and he just has to keep dodging and weaving and shit-talking. It's really boring. Like, shit, as my commentary on the second part of this arc would show, I don't care for padding as long as it's vaguely entertaining, but this isn't even that. Hell, I can't even make fun of it, it's just utterly banal and boring.
This scene is intercut with a random bit of Finster, Squatt and Baboo waxing lyrical about how scary Scorpina is, but she's literally been off-screen since that random rock scene at the beginning of the episode. This episode's kind of a clusterfuck of editing and scene-selecting choices, huh? It's just Jason being beaten down by a bad guy in the Dark Dimension, while Alpha and Billy try to fix the random space-machines, and finally, around three-fourths of the way through the episode, they teleport Jason before the Green Ranger skewers him, rendering the entire episode's main plot as an utterly bland and pointless sequence of repetition essentially pointless. We don't even get a good fight out of it.
And then we get a scene of the Rangers talking and obviously mentioning but not realizing that they keep bringing up random events where Tommy is behaving suspiciously. And we get interrupted by Scorpina attacking Angel Grove. Hey, this is one of those "let's just stall until we get a huge toku fight in the last two minutes" episodes, right? At least we'll get a cool scene of Scorpina, the villain they sort of built up throughout the episode, being a badass threat, right?
No. We get a Putty fight, Scorpina and the Power Rangers exchange a couple of blows... and then we cut to the moon where Goldar claims that Scorpina is outnumbered and mut retreat. And we immediately cut to Rita being fanned by the two stooges, while Goldar and Scorpina enter the base, with Scorpina angrily arguing with Goldar about how he pulled her out of the action. This is pointless, and honestly, just pretty poor editing. And then we get a pretty long scene of each of Rita's minions offering to go and murder those dang Power Rangers, before Rita decides to send Goldar (rendering the aforementioned Scorpina action scene even more pointless). Rita at least gives us a pretty cool twist, though, noting that she's going to cause a solar eclipse, depriving the Megazord from its solar power energy.
Wait, what? That's... that's a detail that, like Jason and Tommy's work-out date, or the Sword of Darkness, or the Green Ranger powers, or Scorpina, that the show has never mentioned before. And it's something that we don't get any specifics of, so we don't know why Rita hasn't done it earlier. Y'know, the flaws of this show is arguably part of what makes it so entertaining, but when you get an episode that's as bland as this one, the shitty plot developments and random ass-pulls get even more pronounced.
Part 3 of 5 ends with Rita sending Goldar to Angel Grove to become giant and smash buildings, and the Power Rangers are like 'oh no' even though they beat up Goldar in a biweekly basis.
And... yeah, as you can tell, part 3 sucks. It really does suck. I did not enjoy watching this episode at all, and everything that goes on here really felt superfluous or poorly edited. A lot of the scenes themselves would've worked better if they were shorter or better integrated into the other episodes -- Goldar and Jason's 1v1 would've worked better if it happened and ended alongside the "Power Rangers fight without their leader" climax of Part 2, while they really should've saved Scorpina's debut until Part 4, when they actually do something with her, instead of introducing her, but keeping her off-screen throughout almost the entire episode then sort of blueballing us when she even tries to do anything. Boo.
Again, a properly written five-parter would've had part 1 really establish and hammer home Tommy as a proper character, properly establishing him as a person that the Power Rangers are emotionally invested in, instead of brainwashing him into a robot like 3 minutes in, which would make his evil-OOC behaviours more striking. Shuffle a couple of scenes around, wipe out basically 90% of part 3, have Scorpina debut in part 4, and we'd have a far more satisfying arc. Instead we get this.
While all of this is going on, something I didn't mention is that throughout episode 2, Alpha-Five is trying to technobabble his way and 'lock on to' Zordon to restore him. Billy joins him in this episode. We're never really given much explanation to just how this works (it's certainly none of the 'time warp' stuff we got before), only that it vaguely resembles someone trying to get a radio signal, because presumably that's the extent of technology the writers think kids will get. It's utterly bland padding, not helped by the dire dialogue Alpha Five and Billy are saddled with.
What the fuck. Presumably, this makes a lot more sense in the original Japanese version? Presumably? It's such a non-sequitur here. Like, Scorpina looks cool and all, and like Rita, one of the few cases where a non-suited Japanese actor from Zyuranger shows up in MMPR, but her introduction genuinely feels utterly random and out of nowhere, and that rock bit was never explained.
We spend around half the episode alternating between the Goldar/Jason scenes and generic exposition, until Kimberly, trying to find the MIA Jason, runs afoul of Bulk and Skull, who try to flirt with her while offering to help find Jason. Kimberly tricks Skull into kissing Bulk in the cheek and the two panic and run out of the Youth Center because it's the 90's, and back then no one thought twice about 'lolgay' jokes. And then Kimberly bumps into Brainwashed!Tommy, who Rita allows to wander around and work out in the gym to show off his massive biceps. Tommy acts like a dick. Zack shows up, they follow Tommy, who is kinda suspicious... but really, they have no real reason to do this, Tommy's literally a new kid who had one positive interaction with Kim, it's not like if it's a member of the core five that got brainwashed. Zack and Kimberly end up fighting a bunch of Putties that show out of nowhere, they briefly note that it's so odd that the Putties don't attack Tommy, before literally dismissing this piece of information for the rest of the five-parter and returning to the Command Center.
And Rita apparently has Tommy walk from where he's working out, walk past a park, send a bunch of Putties to distract two Power Rangers, just to have Tommy teleport into the Dark Dimension to kill Jason because Goldar is taking forever. It is such an insipidly long and roundabout way of storytelling and event-setting. Jason and the Green Ranger have a bit of a staredown, and Jason yells how disappointed he is that this random dude that "wears a costume like us" is evil. Ooookay? Like, I know the Green Ranger becomes good later, I really do, but I really don't follow the logic of this bit on Jason's part. And then... we basically have a repeat of the Goldar/Jason fight, where the vastly powerful enemy keeps knocking Jason down onto the fog-machine floor and he just has to keep dodging and weaving and shit-talking. It's really boring. Like, shit, as my commentary on the second part of this arc would show, I don't care for padding as long as it's vaguely entertaining, but this isn't even that. Hell, I can't even make fun of it, it's just utterly banal and boring.
This scene is intercut with a random bit of Finster, Squatt and Baboo waxing lyrical about how scary Scorpina is, but she's literally been off-screen since that random rock scene at the beginning of the episode. This episode's kind of a clusterfuck of editing and scene-selecting choices, huh? It's just Jason being beaten down by a bad guy in the Dark Dimension, while Alpha and Billy try to fix the random space-machines, and finally, around three-fourths of the way through the episode, they teleport Jason before the Green Ranger skewers him, rendering the entire episode's main plot as an utterly bland and pointless sequence of repetition essentially pointless. We don't even get a good fight out of it.
And then we get a scene of the Rangers talking and obviously mentioning but not realizing that they keep bringing up random events where Tommy is behaving suspiciously. And we get interrupted by Scorpina attacking Angel Grove. Hey, this is one of those "let's just stall until we get a huge toku fight in the last two minutes" episodes, right? At least we'll get a cool scene of Scorpina, the villain they sort of built up throughout the episode, being a badass threat, right?
No. We get a Putty fight, Scorpina and the Power Rangers exchange a couple of blows... and then we cut to the moon where Goldar claims that Scorpina is outnumbered and mut retreat. And we immediately cut to Rita being fanned by the two stooges, while Goldar and Scorpina enter the base, with Scorpina angrily arguing with Goldar about how he pulled her out of the action. This is pointless, and honestly, just pretty poor editing. And then we get a pretty long scene of each of Rita's minions offering to go and murder those dang Power Rangers, before Rita decides to send Goldar (rendering the aforementioned Scorpina action scene even more pointless). Rita at least gives us a pretty cool twist, though, noting that she's going to cause a solar eclipse, depriving the Megazord from its solar power energy.
Wait, what? That's... that's a detail that, like Jason and Tommy's work-out date, or the Sword of Darkness, or the Green Ranger powers, or Scorpina, that the show has never mentioned before. And it's something that we don't get any specifics of, so we don't know why Rita hasn't done it earlier. Y'know, the flaws of this show is arguably part of what makes it so entertaining, but when you get an episode that's as bland as this one, the shitty plot developments and random ass-pulls get even more pronounced.
Part 3 of 5 ends with Rita sending Goldar to Angel Grove to become giant and smash buildings, and the Power Rangers are like 'oh no' even though they beat up Goldar in a biweekly basis.
And... yeah, as you can tell, part 3 sucks. It really does suck. I did not enjoy watching this episode at all, and everything that goes on here really felt superfluous or poorly edited. A lot of the scenes themselves would've worked better if they were shorter or better integrated into the other episodes -- Goldar and Jason's 1v1 would've worked better if it happened and ended alongside the "Power Rangers fight without their leader" climax of Part 2, while they really should've saved Scorpina's debut until Part 4, when they actually do something with her, instead of introducing her, but keeping her off-screen throughout almost the entire episode then sort of blueballing us when she even tries to do anything. Boo.
Again, a properly written five-parter would've had part 1 really establish and hammer home Tommy as a proper character, properly establishing him as a person that the Power Rangers are emotionally invested in, instead of brainwashing him into a robot like 3 minutes in, which would make his evil-OOC behaviours more striking. Shuffle a couple of scenes around, wipe out basically 90% of part 3, have Scorpina debut in part 4, and we'd have a far more satisfying arc. Instead we get this.
Episode 20: Part 4: Eclipsing Megazord
At least part 4 and 5 are back with... well, the storytelling's still all over the place, but we get good action scenes and we're back with typical Power Rangers zaniness. But then their Power Morphers sort of explode on their faces when they try to morph, in what is undoubtedly a scene that would make a far better cliffhanger for part 3. We don't really get much of an explanation beyond Alpha talking about some 'interdimensional power surge', but really, it's just an excuse to pad the episode out, and I really wished that if they had wanted to do this, they had slipped it into the pretty shitty 'let's fix a computer' scenes in part 3, instead of literally making it an asspull. (Also, Finster and Rita take this point to do a recap of their evil plan for anyone who's tuning in) And then Billy fixes the problem. No, really. That whole 'power morphers are not working' thing lasted for all of three or four minutes.
And then the Power Rangers show up at some harbour to... fight Scorpina and her putties. Which, again, makes me wonder why we even have the pointless "Scorpina retreats!" scene at the end of Part 3. Just slap the two action scenes together here, really. Giant Goldar also shows up, and... and the Power Rangers for some reason refrain from summoning the Megazord for no goddamn reason. The audience knows that Rita's planning to sabotage the Megazord, but the Rangers have no reason to believe so, which makes this bit feel kinda dumb.
What's not dumb, though, is the pretty neat scene of the Youth Center being fucked up by the giant monster destruction, something that I really do appreciate being shown. It's a trope that I do like when a civilian scene we've seen a lot of times becomes ground zero for the superhero/supervillain battles. Bulk and Skull do a bit of a gag with Bulk wanting to finish his ice cream, but a falling girder (!!!) freaks them out that they run out and steal a bus to drive out of town. I shit you not, they quite literally clamber onto a bus, and explicitly steal the damn thing.
Unfortunately, they do this just as Rita arrives on her moon-witch bike and trade hammy barbs with the Power Rangers, and Rita orders Goldar to take a hostage. What a coincidence, then, that the hostage Goldar takes is the bus with Bulk and Skull inside. They do a decent job at cutting back and forth to Bulk and Skull being tossed around in the bus (while strategically not showing any windows) and Sentai footage of Goldar playing with a tiny bus prop. In perhaps the comedic highlight of the five-parter, apparenly Goldar knows Bulk and Skull by name. This is genuinely funny.
Rita, Goldar and Scorpina, sort of move the fight to the beach, holding the bus hostage... although at some point during the off-screen scene change, Goldar apparently set the bus down and it's a bunch of Putties that are about to push the bus down a ravine. This leads to Bulk yelling "I want my mommy!" and Skull yelling "Yeah, I want your mommy!" and Bulk giving Skull the dirtiest look ever. Oh my god that's funny.
Meanwhile, as Alpha finally brings Zordon online in the most stretched-out B-plot ever, the Green Ranger teleports back in to finish the job of destroying the Command Center or something, but presumably Rita ran out of space robot CD's, and Tommy just, uh, tugs on a random chunk of metal-plastic on Alpha's butt. Zordon and Tommy have an exchange that... that is actually decently delivered, but the actual lines and discussion was literally the most generic "I am evil rah rah" "good will always triumph you fool" lines ever. I dunno, Tommy, try using your space eye-beams to blow up the computers, that worked last time. Instead, he spends time actually trying to operate the computers to banish Zordon to another dimension, only for Alpha Five to wake up because he's got backup power systems after the last fight, and he activates a forcefield to trap the Green Ranger. That's right, Alpha Five somehow manages to fool and blindside this unstoppable threat! It's moot because Rita teleports the Green Ranger away aroud a minute later, but that's actually kinda neat.
The Power Rangers summon the Megazord to save the bus, which ends up with the giant Goldar attacking the Megazord.... just as Rita activates the eclipse ritual, weakening the Megazord. Goldar's honestly kind of a pushover when he's not beating up on unmorphed teenagers or empty buildings, though, and the Megazord beats him... so Rita makes Scorpina into a giant scorpion kaiju to help Goldar out, which is awesome. The monsters win until the Power Rangers remember to summon the godly magic giant sword from the sky. The action scene here is pretty great, and we reach a peak of ridiculousness when Rita teleports the Green Ranger in, and makes him grow big, leading to the very surreal scene of the Green Ranger suit clobbering the Megazord.
Y'know, that almost makes up for the shittiness of Part 3. Almost. It's a pretty awesome (and admittedly ridiculous, but also awesome) scene, leading to the Power Rangers being knocked out of the Megazord so hard they de-transform, and the Megazord... falls into a random giant crevice of lava that opens up in the groud, and fucking explodes. See, now that's a cliffhanger! We even get this elaborate scene showing each of the five individual Zords sinking deep into magma, which is unnecessary, but actually pretty cool. The villains have three powerful villains, the Power Rangers are minus their giant robots, and Zordon's gone (again). Jason gives him a pretty neat leader speech, but they get shocked when Alpha reveals that he's been scanning the Green Ranger and figured out what he looks like under the mask. It's all coming to a climax, right?
And then the Power Rangers show up at some harbour to... fight Scorpina and her putties. Which, again, makes me wonder why we even have the pointless "Scorpina retreats!" scene at the end of Part 3. Just slap the two action scenes together here, really. Giant Goldar also shows up, and... and the Power Rangers for some reason refrain from summoning the Megazord for no goddamn reason. The audience knows that Rita's planning to sabotage the Megazord, but the Rangers have no reason to believe so, which makes this bit feel kinda dumb.
What's not dumb, though, is the pretty neat scene of the Youth Center being fucked up by the giant monster destruction, something that I really do appreciate being shown. It's a trope that I do like when a civilian scene we've seen a lot of times becomes ground zero for the superhero/supervillain battles. Bulk and Skull do a bit of a gag with Bulk wanting to finish his ice cream, but a falling girder (!!!) freaks them out that they run out and steal a bus to drive out of town. I shit you not, they quite literally clamber onto a bus, and explicitly steal the damn thing.
Unfortunately, they do this just as Rita arrives on her moon-witch bike and trade hammy barbs with the Power Rangers, and Rita orders Goldar to take a hostage. What a coincidence, then, that the hostage Goldar takes is the bus with Bulk and Skull inside. They do a decent job at cutting back and forth to Bulk and Skull being tossed around in the bus (while strategically not showing any windows) and Sentai footage of Goldar playing with a tiny bus prop. In perhaps the comedic highlight of the five-parter, apparenly Goldar knows Bulk and Skull by name. This is genuinely funny.
Rita, Goldar and Scorpina, sort of move the fight to the beach, holding the bus hostage... although at some point during the off-screen scene change, Goldar apparently set the bus down and it's a bunch of Putties that are about to push the bus down a ravine. This leads to Bulk yelling "I want my mommy!" and Skull yelling "Yeah, I want your mommy!" and Bulk giving Skull the dirtiest look ever. Oh my god that's funny.
Meanwhile, as Alpha finally brings Zordon online in the most stretched-out B-plot ever, the Green Ranger teleports back in to finish the job of destroying the Command Center or something, but presumably Rita ran out of space robot CD's, and Tommy just, uh, tugs on a random chunk of metal-plastic on Alpha's butt. Zordon and Tommy have an exchange that... that is actually decently delivered, but the actual lines and discussion was literally the most generic "I am evil rah rah" "good will always triumph you fool" lines ever. I dunno, Tommy, try using your space eye-beams to blow up the computers, that worked last time. Instead, he spends time actually trying to operate the computers to banish Zordon to another dimension, only for Alpha Five to wake up because he's got backup power systems after the last fight, and he activates a forcefield to trap the Green Ranger. That's right, Alpha Five somehow manages to fool and blindside this unstoppable threat! It's moot because Rita teleports the Green Ranger away aroud a minute later, but that's actually kinda neat.
The Power Rangers summon the Megazord to save the bus, which ends up with the giant Goldar attacking the Megazord.... just as Rita activates the eclipse ritual, weakening the Megazord. Goldar's honestly kind of a pushover when he's not beating up on unmorphed teenagers or empty buildings, though, and the Megazord beats him... so Rita makes Scorpina into a giant scorpion kaiju to help Goldar out, which is awesome. The monsters win until the Power Rangers remember to summon the godly magic giant sword from the sky. The action scene here is pretty great, and we reach a peak of ridiculousness when Rita teleports the Green Ranger in, and makes him grow big, leading to the very surreal scene of the Green Ranger suit clobbering the Megazord.Y'know, that almost makes up for the shittiness of Part 3. Almost. It's a pretty awesome (and admittedly ridiculous, but also awesome) scene, leading to the Power Rangers being knocked out of the Megazord so hard they de-transform, and the Megazord... falls into a random giant crevice of lava that opens up in the groud, and fucking explodes. See, now that's a cliffhanger! We even get this elaborate scene showing each of the five individual Zords sinking deep into magma, which is unnecessary, but actually pretty cool. The villains have three powerful villains, the Power Rangers are minus their giant robots, and Zordon's gone (again). Jason gives him a pretty neat leader speech, but they get shocked when Alpha reveals that he's been scanning the Green Ranger and figured out what he looks like under the mask. It's all coming to a climax, right?
Episode 21: Part 5: Breaking the Spell
Well, not exactly. Maybe it's because that this is the first time that I'm watching this show so I'm a lot less forgiving, maybe because it's admittedly an arc that everyone hypes up as the best thing ever, and maybe it's because the story for the five-parter being a bit more serious makes me instinctively a bit more critical as well. But while it doesn't quite reach the sheer terribleness of Part 3, Part 5 does sort of drop the ball near the end. Its first half is pretty cool, though.
The Power Rangers first angst a bit about how they don't believe that Tommy is the Green Ranger, a moment that I alluded to before, and basically note that this whole sequence feels particularly silly since no one has had much of an interaction with the real Tommy -- both Kim and Jason had, like, a single short conversation respectively. He's quite literally just some guy Jason fought in a karate tournament! And I'm not even sure why Alpha Five quickly jumps to the conclusion that Rita put Tommy under a spell... and honestly, after all of the (none too subtle) ways that the narrative shoves clues into our heroes' faces, I kinda wished that they either figured it out on their own. I dunno. This just feels rushed.
Anyway, we sort of cut back and forth to obvious-recap scenes of the Power Rangers and Alpha panicking about how fucked they are, to the Moon Crew (sans Tommy) partying on the moon as Rita is about to launch the rest of her plan. Where's Tommy, you might ask? Why, the Youth Center, of course, and Kim has this kind of underwhelming confrontation where they both basically reveal to each other that they know about each other's superheroing activities... and then after Tommy says some mean words he kind of leaves.
It's kind of a rut, so thank goodness Rita shows up to launch a lightning bolt into the ocean to summon Mecha-Godzilla Dragonzord, who rises out of boiling seawater and begin to smash random buildings and chomp down on factory smokestacks. I'm genuinely impressed by how neat this chunky dinosaur robot looks, and also baffled at why the fuck Rita hasn't been doing this before. Between Scorpina, the Dragonzord, the solar eclipse plan, brainwashing spells and the Green Ranger medal, there's a lot of shit that Rita pulls out of her ass for this five parter.
And as the Dragonzord rampages and the Power Rangers exchange genuinely repetitive dialogue about how "Tommy is the Green Ranger" that feels particularly and gratingly obvious. Also, Tommy's using a dagger that also doubles as a flute to control the Dragonzord, which really shouldn't surprise me. I watch a lot of the Kamen Rider shows and there are more ridiculous gadgets out there, but man, the fact that Tommy's using a dagger as a flute to control a giant dragon-dinosaur robot that rises up frm the depths of the ocean to shoot motherfucking missiles out of its fat tube fingers is just kind of the sort of silliness I love Tokusatsu shows for.
And then... in perhaps the shittiest bit of deus ex machina, Alpha Five finally finishes properly reconnecting with Zordon from whatever alternate dimension or time warp or space dial-up or morphine grid whatever the explanation was for what Tommy did to get Zordon out of comission. Okay, fine, Zordon gets repaired to help give the Rangers some help. What we don't get an explanation for, though, is how the fuck Zordon manages to cause and earthquake, and then re-summon the Zords from where they are destroyed. Not even a random shoehorned sci-fi explanation? Really? It's really random.
Granted, the fight between the Megazord and the Dragonzord is pretty neat! We first have dino-on-dino action as the Tyrannosaurus Zord and the Dragonzord fight each other for a bit. There's some inherent ridiculousness in the choreography, of course, since these are upright theropodal dinosaurs and seeing the T--rex launch itself up with its tail is never going to not be silly. It's also kinda neat. As they throw each other through mountains and yell at Tommy to stop being evil, the Megazord forms, and it's able to lift the Dragonzord above its head and smash him through a mountain.
It's a cool scene, even if it doesn't really do a pretty good job at selling the Dragonzord's threat level in the same way that it did the Green Ranger or Scorpina. Honestly, since the Dragonzord was introduced around five minuts before it's destroyed, I definitely appreciate them ending the arc on the Tommy-vs-Jason fight. It's still not as epic as it could've been, since, again, Tommy spends nearly the entire saga brainwashed, and the emotional stakes isn't quite as great, but they did at least attempt to build up the rivalry between Tommy and Jason.
The one-on-one fight in the quarry is pretty neat, first going just with their swords, and then they both pull their side-weapons and we get a bunch of neat 90's effects blowing up here and there. After the terrible Goldar/Jason sequence this was kind of a godsend. Granted, the resolution is rather anticlimactic with the destruction of the Doomy-Doom-Doom Sword of Darkness immediately releasing Tommy from the grasp of evil, but it's kinda decent, I guess, and the fact that Tommy's out for blood while Jason's priority is to save Tommy instead of defeating him is a neat, if simple, little superhero dilemma.
And... and we don't even get them teaming up to fight Goldar and Scorpina or anything. This is literally where the conflict ends, Tommy gets recruited into the Power Rangers, Zordon talks shit about some never-before-mentioned prophecy bout a sixth ranger, and pad out time by showing off Dragonzord: Fighting Mode and have the Dragonzord combine with the Mastodon, Saber-toothed Tiger and Triceratops Zords. Again, something that would've been far, far more effective if it debuted fighting something or doing anything other than quite literally standing there for a toy advert. Y'know, I always feel like punching people who dismiss merchandise-driven shows as "glorified toy advertisements", but when you literally insert a scene like this that takes up a chunk of the episode without adding anything to the narrative other than showing off some stock footage and an additional form... yeah.
And... yeah, that's about it. Ultimately, there were a lot of decent moments, and there's enough to Tommy (even if he's evil all the time) that I can see why kids in the '90's are so taken in with how cool and mysterious and badass he was. Most of the entertainment factor really comes from the first two parts, though, where even with the asspull information dumps, those two episodes still did a decent job of building up the conflict. Part 3 was terrible, and while Part 4 and 5 had great action scenes, the sequencing of events are still kinda suspect and really leaves me wanting for more. I don't deny the ambition of the five-parter, especially for a show with such a shoestring budget like MMPR. It sure is entertaining for sure, but I really felt like it could've been better.
The Power Rangers first angst a bit about how they don't believe that Tommy is the Green Ranger, a moment that I alluded to before, and basically note that this whole sequence feels particularly silly since no one has had much of an interaction with the real Tommy -- both Kim and Jason had, like, a single short conversation respectively. He's quite literally just some guy Jason fought in a karate tournament! And I'm not even sure why Alpha Five quickly jumps to the conclusion that Rita put Tommy under a spell... and honestly, after all of the (none too subtle) ways that the narrative shoves clues into our heroes' faces, I kinda wished that they either figured it out on their own. I dunno. This just feels rushed.Anyway, we sort of cut back and forth to obvious-recap scenes of the Power Rangers and Alpha panicking about how fucked they are, to the Moon Crew (sans Tommy) partying on the moon as Rita is about to launch the rest of her plan. Where's Tommy, you might ask? Why, the Youth Center, of course, and Kim has this kind of underwhelming confrontation where they both basically reveal to each other that they know about each other's superheroing activities... and then after Tommy says some mean words he kind of leaves.
It's kind of a rut, so thank goodness Rita shows up to launch a lightning bolt into the ocean to summon And as the Dragonzord rampages and the Power Rangers exchange genuinely repetitive dialogue about how "Tommy is the Green Ranger" that feels particularly and gratingly obvious. Also, Tommy's using a dagger that also doubles as a flute to control the Dragonzord, which really shouldn't surprise me. I watch a lot of the Kamen Rider shows and there are more ridiculous gadgets out there, but man, the fact that Tommy's using a dagger as a flute to control a giant dragon-dinosaur robot that rises up frm the depths of the ocean to shoot motherfucking missiles out of its fat tube fingers is just kind of the sort of silliness I love Tokusatsu shows for.
And then... in perhaps the shittiest bit of deus ex machina, Alpha Five finally finishes properly reconnecting with Zordon from whatever alternate dimension or time warp or space dial-up or morphine grid whatever the explanation was for what Tommy did to get Zordon out of comission. Okay, fine, Zordon gets repaired to help give the Rangers some help. What we don't get an explanation for, though, is how the fuck Zordon manages to cause and earthquake, and then re-summon the Zords from where they are destroyed. Not even a random shoehorned sci-fi explanation? Really? It's really random.
Granted, the fight between the Megazord and the Dragonzord is pretty neat! We first have dino-on-dino action as the Tyrannosaurus Zord and the Dragonzord fight each other for a bit. There's some inherent ridiculousness in the choreography, of course, since these are upright theropodal dinosaurs and seeing the T--rex launch itself up with its tail is never going to not be silly. It's also kinda neat. As they throw each other through mountains and yell at Tommy to stop being evil, the Megazord forms, and it's able to lift the Dragonzord above its head and smash him through a mountain.It's a cool scene, even if it doesn't really do a pretty good job at selling the Dragonzord's threat level in the same way that it did the Green Ranger or Scorpina. Honestly, since the Dragonzord was introduced around five minuts before it's destroyed, I definitely appreciate them ending the arc on the Tommy-vs-Jason fight. It's still not as epic as it could've been, since, again, Tommy spends nearly the entire saga brainwashed, and the emotional stakes isn't quite as great, but they did at least attempt to build up the rivalry between Tommy and Jason.
The one-on-one fight in the quarry is pretty neat, first going just with their swords, and then they both pull their side-weapons and we get a bunch of neat 90's effects blowing up here and there. After the terrible Goldar/Jason sequence this was kind of a godsend. Granted, the resolution is rather anticlimactic with the destruction of the Doomy-Doom-Doom Sword of Darkness immediately releasing Tommy from the grasp of evil, but it's kinda decent, I guess, and the fact that Tommy's out for blood while Jason's priority is to save Tommy instead of defeating him is a neat, if simple, little superhero dilemma.And... and we don't even get them teaming up to fight Goldar and Scorpina or anything. This is literally where the conflict ends, Tommy gets recruited into the Power Rangers, Zordon talks shit about some never-before-mentioned prophecy bout a sixth ranger, and pad out time by showing off Dragonzord: Fighting Mode and have the Dragonzord combine with the Mastodon, Saber-toothed Tiger and Triceratops Zords. Again, something that would've been far, far more effective if it debuted fighting something or doing anything other than quite literally standing there for a toy advert. Y'know, I always feel like punching people who dismiss merchandise-driven shows as "glorified toy advertisements", but when you literally insert a scene like this that takes up a chunk of the episode without adding anything to the narrative other than showing off some stock footage and an additional form... yeah.
And... yeah, that's about it. Ultimately, there were a lot of decent moments, and there's enough to Tommy (even if he's evil all the time) that I can see why kids in the '90's are so taken in with how cool and mysterious and badass he was. Most of the entertainment factor really comes from the first two parts, though, where even with the asspull information dumps, those two episodes still did a decent job of building up the conflict. Part 3 was terrible, and while Part 4 and 5 had great action scenes, the sequencing of events are still kinda suspect and really leaves me wanting for more. I don't deny the ambition of the five-parter, especially for a show with such a shoestring budget like MMPR. It sure is entertaining for sure, but I really felt like it could've been better.
Random Notes:
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| US Rita |
- The 2017 live-action movie reboot for Power Rangers has Rita Repulsa be a former Green Ranger who betrayed her generation of rangers. I'm not sure if that's the case for MMPR's Rita, though it'd certainly explain why she has the Green Ranger power-morpher... and frankly, tell us everything else about the Green Ranger in general.
- Also, presumably, Scorpina was also sealed on Earth in some way? Rita is very vague on how Scorpina shows up, and she clearly is someone that the rest of the Moon Crew is familiar with.
- Speaking of Rita, apparently by this point in the shooting they managed to have access to her costume (if not her actress), and there were a couple of shots and scenes where Rita's face is obviously shadowed so you could tell that she didn't suddenly swap actors. It doesn't happen enough to be distracting, honestly.
- Also, speaking of US/Japanese footage, the US footage of the Green Ranger suit is rendered painfully obvious by the fact that they replaced the metallic-looking diamond chest armour with a pretty cheap-looking floppy thing for the US suit. That was a bit distracting.
- Throughout the five episodes, there's actually a pretty constant dubbing choice to have Goldar, Squatt and Baboo be the only ones excited about the Green Ranger. Finster is not, and there's a bit in part 4 or 5 where he actually ends up giving Rita some sass, grumbling about how Rita is totally going to use the Green Ranger to destroy the world, right, and not one of his finely-crafted clay monsters. God bless you, Finster.
- The Sword of Darkness is apparently taken frm a now-decimated planet by the Nasty Knight, shown to us once more with footage of the Nasty Knight fighting what I assume is an un-morphed Zyuranger cast member. I do enjoy this.
- It's nitpicking in a five-parter that is already kind of filled to the brim with insane plot points, but it really bugs me that Rita has the ability to teleport Tommy to either the Moon or her crystal ball for brainwashing, but she has to get Tommy to do to Jason. Like, a simple line of 'being a Power Ranger makes them immune to Rita's dark magic' or something would've worked, surely?
- I don't remember it on the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure that they've had trouble forming the Megazord because one or two of the Rangers are missing. Sure, they mostly crowd around the Tyrannosaurus Zord's pilot room, but it is kind of bizarre that in part 2 they just summon the Megazord no problem while Jason's stuck in Goldar's torture room.
- Presumably there's something in the original Zyurangers footage of Scorpina fighting the Rangers that probably made it unsuitable for the MMPR storyline, but at that point why not cut out the fight entirely, or move the footage into the part 4 fight? I just really don't understand.
- In the original Zyurangers storyline, Goldar and Scorpina's couterparts, Grifforzor and Lamy, are actually a married couple -- and Grifforzor acts like an overprotective boyfriend. Taking the MMPR dialogue and how they're set up, Goldar's dialogue end up coming off as kind of a somewhat-condescending dick to Scorpina.
- In Part 3, after the completely Green/Red non-fight in the Dark Dimension, apparently Rita just keeps Tommy there so he can do spin-kicks in a fog machine room. Considering how much I find it bizarre that Rita otherwise lets Tommy go around doing his daily routine, this scene was particularly funny to me.
- A particularly bad piece of padding in Part 4 is when the Rangers have a discussion on where the bus is, when there really wasn't any in-universe reason for them not to see the bus about to be sent careening down a cliff.
- Rita is clearly drinking wine, but since kiddies can't ever see the evils of alcohol on Saturday morning programming, Baboo notes that it's "cranberry and oyster juice". Because of course we have to work in a gross-out joke there somewhere.
- Seeing how clunky the suit actor (particularly on the US side) for Goldar was, and just how surprisingly nimble the Green vs Red Ranger fight is, I now understand why so many Kamen Rider series end up casting other Kamen Riders as the enemy instead of a monster.
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