Why I Should Write Power Rangers 2012

Not meant as a serious pitch (obviously, since I'm posting it on the Internet rather than sending it to Saban), but just a sort of speculative suggestion a la Christopher Bird's Why I Should Write (blank) series.

If all else were to hold even, Goseiger, Super Sentai's 34th season, would be translated into Power Rangers' 20th season. (It would be the series' 19th year, I believe, but if we're going to arbitrarily define things, it might as well be by Saban's arbitrary definition of what the 19th season is [Power Rangers Samurai].) Thus, it deserves to be something of an "event" year.

Unfortunately, Saban is currently going with the whole "just imitate the guys who wrote it the first time and it'll turn out serviceable" idea. This bothers me because Goseiger was merely an okay season of Super Sentai, but I think it could be used for great Power Rangers.

Specifically, imitating Super Sentai too slavishly would probably create something rather cringe-worthy. The Goseigers call themselves angels, for crying out loud! This could cause a negative reaction from mainstream America, to the point where I could see Saban skipping it in order to avoid a backlash.

So why don't we dodge it in another way, with one of Power Rangers' own old mainstays, "space aliens?" I even have a suggestion that I think would work very well, both calling back to olden days and simultaneously opening up new possibilities: Eltarians.

The problem with using anything from Power Rangers' past is that it's fraught with major expectations, and there wouldn't be a sentai-footage based way of supporting the connection. Here, that's not necessarily a problem. Why? Because it was never truly defined just what makes an Eltarian an Eltarian.

Sure, the primary Eltarian we know of, Zordon, was a head in a tube. This was pretty well defined, but doesn't it strike you as unlikely that this would be what all Eltarians were like? If they were tool-users, they had to have hands at some point.

There are also semi-apocryphal references to the idea that Zordon had once had a more humanlike body, and had been more proactive. Here we have our crucial element: What if these hypothetical "alien rangers" were Eltarians of a similar sort to the pre-livin'-in-a-tube Zordon?

Specifically, like the Goseigers, a team of youths in training who get stranded with only limited guidance on Earth. They're indistinguishable from humans except on occasions wherein they sprout wings in moments showing greater potential or some such. (Granted, associating Eltarians with such imagery has a good chance of becoming rather uncomfortable, but it's not like Eltar doesn't potentially have this problem already, what with having "El" in its name. I can't imagine that was completely unintentional, as Superman has the same "El" in his "real" name.)

This gets around problems associated with those few other probable and known Eltarians-Zordon and the Phantom Ranger-because Zordon had no body and if the Phantom Ranger never showed wings, perhaps it was because he didn't want to risk being widely identified as Eltarian, or maybe he'd lost his powers, or maybe he was just a guest on Eltar who used some of their stuff. (It's not like we ever got a reveal, darnit.)

Power Rangers: Eltarian Guys

So here's my starting pitch:

A group of young Eltarians (possibly six, although I could imagine not being allowed to kill off Green, so I'm going to say five) have been brought by their mentor (at least loosely equivalent to Master Head, and let's call him Zoltar) and his robot assistant (roughly equivalent to Datas, let's call him "Alpha 3000") to Earth in order to observe a world that has been quite important in Eltarian history.

(These individuals would likely have been children during the great war on Eltar from PR:T through PRiS, and would probably have vivid memories of being told that Rangers from Earth had been instrumental in saving them from Dark Specter's forces.)

When they are close to Earth, they get attacked by an enemy force, heavily armed bug aliens, and are thereby stranded on the planet's surface when their ship is downed. (They probably hang out with some humans and thus have domestic antics, but the humans are probably young adults, because really, guys, kid appeal things of this type have been done to death and back.)

It turns out that these bug aliens know the importance of Earth to Eltar as a symbol and stuff like that, and so they have come to destroy it. One of the enemies is a mysterious blue creature that seems to know more than he should about Eltar, and though he is subservient to the leader of the bug alien band, he seems to be whispering in his ear. (This individual is quite obviously based on Bladerun, and if you know anything about Goseiger, you probably can guess vaguely about where this is going. I guess I'll call him Bladerun for convenience.) Using their Eltarian Ranger powers, the youths manage to defeat even the enemy flagship, but Bladerun manages to survive and escape, and somehow a new foe is awakened.

The new foe, Ivan Ooze (derived from Makuin's appearances, because it's too perfect an opportunity to pass up the idea of a creepy purple slime-based ham villain being used as a preexisting and otherwise quite different creepy purple slime-based ham villain) and his ally, some big dumb brute guy, join up with Bladerun, who has now taken on a different shape. Bladerun shows even more mysterious and inexplicable knowledge of Eltar, most troublingly his ability to tap into old powers and weapons from Eltar. Ooze and his partner are suspicious of him, though, and eventually use the Rangers to seemingly defeat him. Eventually, they manage to defeat Ooze, possibly using their repaired ship-which, if this were the case, would be their last new Megazord, not counting combinations. I like the idea of the "Gosei Wonder" being recast as an Eltarian spacecraft, if only because of its vague resemblance in ship mode to the Delta Megaship.

(Probably, Gosei Knight would effectively be repurposed as a Ninjor type-a powerful helper who also teaches them combat techniques, since Alpha 3000 and Zoltar would be unable to do so by conventional means. Perhaps his training would allow them to use their golden power armor.)

Another mysterious new foe appears, however. I might play them as survivors of the Machine Empire (basically a version of the history I came up with for Venjix, as that never was established in RPM), as they match pretty closely in terms of aesthetic and general nature. This foe seems to be using Bladerun as a puppet against the Eltarian Rangers, and this comes to a most troubling head when he somehow manages to negate their powers (albeit temporarily). His treachery results in the destruction of the mecha faction, and he soon after reveals himself as...

Zordon of Eltar! (Did you see it coming? Cue flamewars.)

Somehow, Zordon came back, but he came back wrong. Not because coming back is something that turns you evil, but because all that good that was in the Zordon Wave got used up. Zordon was the goodest of the good, the Big Good of the entire galaxy, but even he couldn't do what he did in "Countdown to Destruction" without ultimately being changed. And now he's as evil as he ever was good.

Now, here's where details get a little fuzzy. Will he be redeemable, or is there no coming back from the dark side?

So what do you think? Good, bad, completely ridiculous? All three?

-Signing off.

Modern Issues

I noted in the previous post that I found the handling of the subject of children with parents in the military rather offensive.

It was actually thoroughly okay until the point where the Red Ranger unleashed his wish fulfillment magic.

Why does this bother me so darned much?

Well, it took me a bit to suss out just why, but...

-It may have made the kid feel better, but it didn't actually change a darned thing. (If the kid's dad had somehow miraculously come back, that actually would have been better, if unrealistically rosy.)

-It's creepy wish fulfillment.

-It's creepy wish fulfillment that's being worked by a near-total stranger, and the visuals are eerily reminiscent of when an antagonist would stealthily hit a protagonist (such as is often seen in Power Rangers) with harmful magic spells.
-When my sister asked if I would be bothered by kids carrying around cardboard cutouts of their distant parents and taking photographs of themselves with the cutouts nearby while on trips, I thought about it, and then said, "No, because that would be the kid's choice." This was sent upon that kid with no warning or permission, and considering that he just had a bad encounter with a monster who tricked him into giving up reasonably valuable possessions over his dad, I'm more inclined to think that he would have freaked the heck out and started screaming.

-It's pandering. I can put up with a lot; you can annoy me, you can bore me (sadly, since this is pretty heavily retreading Shinkenger, that's what's happening here so far), but don't frikkin' pander to me. (Well, you can pander to me about nerdy things, but not emotions. Emotional pandering is worse... for some reason.)

Although I can't be all down on the episode. It was mostly a surprisingly accurate retelling of the appropriate episode of Shinkenger, but they handled a lot of it better than I expected. Also, the Nighlock remarking "Monsters can do anything" was easily the best line in all the episodes I've seen so far.

-Signing off.

It Lives(?)

Boy, it's been a while.

My last post over here was nearly a year ago... Ah, well. I'm going to try to keep it alive this time. Honest.

So there are several subjects I feel the need to address that have happened in the past year, which I obviously haven't talked about.

MMPR 2010

I did talk about this a bit... let's all pretend that it never happened, okay? It was the worst rehashing of an old show I've ever seen, and I watch Transformers and He-Man. I've had some experience here.

(A lot of the "re-version" nonsense was tolerable, but when they started scribbling all over the Green Ranger saga's "To Be Continued" bits, it completely ruined it. It takes a lot to make me say that.)

Goseiger (Super Sentai 2010)

Goseiger wasn't too bad. I think its greatest strength came from its huge and fractious villain cast. I also adored Gosei Blue and Gosei Yellow, and Gosei Black was extremely tolerable. (Forget those "Skyick" dweebs, though.) Gosei Knight was essentially Batman as a giant robot's transforming head, which was pretty cool too. While Warstar wasn't that interesting a faction except for their visual aspect (they were essentially like Toho monsters done up as sentai enemies), Makuin was creepy in a usually good way, "his" relationship with Kinggon was the kind of tight partnership that is refreshing after all the backstabbing you see elsewhere, and that "Matlintis" bunch was exactly what mechanized enemies should have been. "Bladerun's" final appearances were essentially a particularly satisfying icing on the cake.

I'm reasonably hopeful that it has the potential to make a good Power Rangers season.

Saban Reclaiming Power Rangers...

Oh, gosh. I don't even know what I want to say about this.

On the one hand, Disney had clearly had enough of working with the franchise. They wanted an out, and Saban gave them one.

On the other hand, they'd finally gotten a handle on the franchise with RPM, turning a nonsensical comedy sentai into a serious business yet still fun series which was (I'll admit I'm biased) the best Power Rangers ever. That's not knocking other Power Rangers series; if I thought they were all bad, I wouldn't watch Power Rangers. I'm just saying that RPM is better.

And it took at least a year for Saban to really get going last time, guys. I'm not looking forward to this.

...and moving it to Nickelodeon

Hey, guys? I don't have cable. And I'm not likely to get it in the near future. There's still various video sites (except YouTube, which is apparently well-policed at the moment), but this series is going to be a pain for me to keep up with.

Power Rangers Samurai

Having said that, I have managed to watch the first few episodes. That, coupled with various news item type stuff I've read, leads me to the following conclusion:

Power Rangers Samurai is pretty weak.

First off, the adaptation: This is seriously the closest, tightest adaptation of a Super Sentai I know of since Time Force (possibly closer, except for all that stuff about headaches and medicine). That's all well and good, except I already saw Shinkenger. If it can't bring something new to the table, I'm going to have a hard time being interested. This has nothing to do with being a "bad" adaptation, though I'll admit I'm choking on a few of the additions they have made. Time Force was one of the best seasons of the show ever, but its similarity to the sentai was merely a part of its strength; Time Force made positive additions that significantly added to the story. The strongest element in the Time Force story was Ransik, not that sentai stuff, and he had nothing to do with any of the rest of that guff.

My point is that you don't need to be so slavish, and if you think the story could be improved upon, by all means do so.

Second major point: This is the worst storm of puns ever to "grace" Power Rangers. Except maybe in Ninja Storm, but I admit I didn't watch that long enough. This was like an episode of a cartoon I used to watch where there was a guy who tried to work a pun on "bee" into every sentence, except worse because everybody was doing it all the time.

And this is Power Rangers, where bad puns are commonplace.

I'm not sure whether to tell them that's the worst thing ever, or to give them a medal for their effort.

Third major point: Bulk and Spike. What. The. Heck.

There's nothing wrong with bringing back an old character. What is wrong is doing it in a way that makes absolutely no sense.

I have yet to figure out what these sequences, which are the same kind of low humor of the original Bulk and Skull sequences, but with no connection whatsoever with the main characters, are supposed to accomplish.

Hey, wait, Spike is Skull's kid? How old is he supposed to be? 17-18? That means he'd have been born somewhere between season two and four, doesn't it?

Fourth major point: Somewhere, I read that Saban intended to have a light-hearted tone "lacking in its predecessors Jungle Fury and RPM." These were the same series where a fly did announcing on giant robot/monster battles and where one of the villains was essentially just a self-important teenage girl who actually acted something like one (Tenaya 7). Were you guys paying attention?

Fifth major point: The episode where a kid was missing his dad in the army... I don't know whether to be furious at the cheap handling of the subject (making the boy's wish into a momentary vision was awful, and I'm sorry if you disagree with me, but that's how I feel about it) or happy that they covered a real-world problem that children face today.

Sixth point: Joining the ranks of such enemy mooks as Putties, Tengas, Cogs, and, well, the contents of this list, we have... Moogers?

So you decided to call the tentacle-headed, blood-red foot soldiers Moogers?

This is the only portion of the Power Rangers lexicon so far that infuriates me nearly as much as that old Lost Galaxy standby, "Power Up Mode" (although to be fair, it's still a distant second).

Gokaiger (Super Sentai 2011)

So there was a strange bit of information going around that the next Super Sentai team would be based on pirates, of all things.

Then, it turned out the rumor was true. They're pirates.

Then, we learn that they're going to actually be pirates-intellectual property pirates.

And having watched the first few episodes, they are also hilariously literal fictionalized Age of Piracy pirates.

You guys, this is the best Super Sentai idea ever.

And the first few episodes don't disappoint, either.

Finally

So, my conclusion is: 2011 won't really be as good a year for Power Rangers as 2009, but it'll be much better than 2010 (though how it could fail to be better than 2010 ultimately was is pretty much unfathomable).

Hopefully, I'll be able to stay focused on keeping up on this, and maybe get some of my back content going.

Gosei Blue is Batman

It's been pretty inactive here... (Apparently, the badly edited MMPR reruns are not good for this blog. Not that there's been much of a difference...)

This week's Goseiger deserved a mention, though:

Gosei Blue is really, really... Well, I'm going to use a euphemism that my sister and I use, and say he's Batman.

Look it up on YouTube (or whatever it is you particularly do if you choose to watch Sentai), because this was some pretty good stuff.

First Impressions: MMPR 2010

...

What the heck was that?

Not to rag on whoever put this together or anything, but what's up with all the manga-style narration boxes (the "this is the name of this character" ones), the Adam West Batman sound effects, and the... I don't even know what to call those moments where they paused for a second and threw in weird imagery.

(I really don't mean to rag on it; I try to avoid the kneejerk reaction that often comes in response to tiny changes; it's just that this really bugs me. Although I have to admit, I expected they might pull something like it.)

My sister raised an eyebrow and wondered why they apparently thought Shinkenger was too Japanese if they were going to do what they've done, which itself is very Japanese.

Not to complain too much. I don't think I ever saw the second episode more than once, and even with the changes, it was nice to get a more concrete look at it. (I totally forgot about the weird sequence with the space shuttle "time trap" zinging around town.)

Also, I had a kind of funny set of moments; Kimberly says, "NOT!" towards the end of the first episode, which made me mumble something about it being "so '90s." Then, in the second episode, she says of the communicators "This is so '90s!"

An oddly prophetic moment, really.

*crickets chirp*

Man, have I been quiet over here.

One of the problems with keeping this going regularly is that the local ABC station is managed by a bunch of *expletive deleted* jerks who show college football games rather than let Power Rangers air; in fact, I missed a huge chunk of RPM's later episodes.

Which, obviously, ticks me off.

I'm currently working through those episodes on YouTube (cough), but I don't know when I'll have more content here.

The fact that they're planning on rerunning the first season is kind of staggering and weird, and I don't know if I'll be more interested in working on this blog or not then. Here's hoping it will be helpful.

Gee Whiz...

I've been quiet here, haven't I?

Well, consider it a good sign for RPM's quality, if nothing else.

I need to get cracking here. I dunno what I'll do differently...

*lapses into three month silence*

RPM Talkin'

You might notice I put in the "griping" tag there. Guess why?

It's because the release of new episodes of RPM has become chaotic and unpredictable. Come on, guys, what are you trying to do? This is serialized, and it's best to watch them in something resembling consecutive order.

That being said, the series is happily not losing any steam. Since I last posted, two new episodes have aired (sporadically), and they were great.

I don't have much to say about Ghosts, partly because it's been a bit. (It was awesome seeing Dr. K flip out and hug Gem and Gemma, though.)

In Or Out had me worried for a minute. There was just something in its atmosphere that made me think there was something off.

Then I got over it.

It was extremely funny to note that apparently, Tenaya 7 is significantly heavier than the Rangers are. I thought those Ranger suits were supposed to be heavy or something. (In an episode of the Sentai Dekaranger, when a character morphed, the bike he was riding that was rigged to blow up detected the change in his weight. Not that it said how much, or that Sentai is PR canon, but still...)

Also, poor Ziggy. As the comic relief, he sure takes a lot of abuse, doesn't he?

Response

Wow, that round of reruns didn't last long, did it?

Venjix's personality, which really doesn't come out very often, came back in force today. The episode kind of begs the question of why he doesn't personally control all his robots, but then, the series would be a lot less fun.

You get bonus points if you noticed that he hinted at possibly being more than just a computer virus. ("I've waited longer than you can know..." or something like that.) This is the first real sign he may actually be that Venjix.

Also, it cracked me up that the henchtypes actually thought Venjix was dead when the twins aced him. I could see Shifter and Crunch thinking that, but Tenaya? Heh, that ranks with her getting owned by Ziggy in terms of "oops" moments.

Friendly Reminder

(As well as an apology for the lack of consistent updates.)

The RPM rerun season has begun. If you for some reason aren't watching it yet, now (or rather, this upcoming Saturday) is the time to get on the boat.

Edit: Whoops, looks like they're doing the accelerated rerun schedule. If you took my advice earlier because you actually hadn't seen the first few episodes, then you may have missed the first. My bad.

Wow, Where Did The Time Go?

Hmm... YouTube seems to have changed the way it codes the widescreen embeds. I'll have to do something about that.

In the meantime, RPM is still stupid awesome.

Thirteen episodes in, and this is still quintessentially Power Rangers being all that Power Rangers could and should be.

Dr. K talking girl talk (while in fluffy slippers) is priceless.

Also, finally we get some development between Dr. K and the Rangers over the Venjix virus.

Let's look back at my earlier predictions and see how they've fared:

Hypothesis One: The person "Dillon" is trying to save is Tenaya 7; he has no clear memories because Venjix moidered his brain while trying to upgrade both of them into whatever Tenaya 7 is supposed to be.
Sub-Hypothesis: They are siblings.

Well, we know Venjix moidered his brain for sure now, and we even know about how he did it. And I'd say chances are still good for this one.

Hypothesis Two: After Dr. K's big reveal (if you don't know what I'm talking about, you haven't watched the promo trailer, and probably shouldn't be reading this), we learn that the Zords look the way they do because she likes cutesy things.

We do have an explanation for the eyes now, and it's not this. Ah, well. (Her love of cute things seems to be confirmed, on the other hand; like I said, slippers.)

Hypothesis Three: This is actually an alternate reality from MMPR through Jungle Fury.

This is actually looking better now with the big reveal from "Dr. K." It could of course be, though, that they used Machine Empire programming as a base, so... I hesitate to care. Venjix's origins beyond Dr. K creating him aren't relevant.

Hypothesis Four: There may be an actual reason for the choices of "Retrofire" Zords made by Bandai.

No word.

Hypothesis Five: The midseason disconnect will be rough this year.

Well... No word.

Hypothesis Six: Once "Dillon's" current character arc is over, they'll pretty much ignore how awesome he was during it.

Happily, this hasn't happened yet.

Hypothesis Seven: Corinth is small and crowded, so Dr. K made the Zords able to take on those tiny forms and teleport for purposes of avoiding city damage due to Zord stampedes.

Well, I still like the idea, anyway, and it hasn't been disproven. The idea, at least, has also been reinforced by the Croc Carrier destroying Tokyo Tow-uh, I mean, that unidentified building in "Ranger Red."

As an aside, the latest episode of Shinkenger was kinda trippy, but I have this feeling it was a tribute to the older sentai stuff, because the monster of the week sounded like the yellow Goranger (who, by the way, is frikkin' awesome from what I've seen of him).

Well, I think I had something else to say, but I can't think of it and I'm on a tight schedule.

Commentary...

On the last few things which came up, which I haven't yet commented on.

Shinkenger:



So, the next MOTW's power is to summon spandex grunts to do sleeper holds on people? That's kinda stupid awesome.

As for the latest episode of RPM, well, as always, stupid awesome, and the story behind Flynn is touching and moving. (I thought so, anyway.) Seriously, someone who wants to be a superhero literally his whole life (and purely because he genuinely wants to help people) gets to become a Power Ranger? It sounds bad on paper, but it works so well in the episode.

Weird Tokusatsu: Super God Neiger

[All traces of Chojin/Super God Neiger have been wiped from YouTube completely. I can't say why. However, I now know where the Neiger homepage is! Of course, it's in Japanese. That's what Google Translate is for, though.]

I've never embedded a playlist before, but here we go.


That's pretty slick, actually.

Super God Neiger is probably the single weirdest tokusatsu series I've encountered. It does more blatant product placement than the live action Transformers movie. Yes, that's actually possible.

It's also very formulaic, cartoony, and... food-related.

The main character seems to ride a fish motorcycle. There's a fish villain. And there are something like half a dozen different unrelated fish guns.

Fishy.

Okay, that's bad. But the series is basically made of crack, so if you like watching cracky stuff, well, you'll probably enjoy it. (They also chose some very toned actors [and one toned actress], so if that appeals to you, there you go. We never see their faces, though.)

Be warned, though, one of the "grunt" henchmen, the one with the black and purple boxers, keeps losing them. The boxers, I mean.

Yeah.

You Might Wonder...

...why I'm putting up Thai cell phone service commercials.



Because they're funny, that's why.

Bonus: Drink commercial.



No, I'm not completely sure what kind of drink, or even what language it's in. (And I'm not going to clutter up the page with more embedded movies, seeing as how they're all short and pointless, not to mention totally incomprehensible.)

Asian Tokusatsu

Other than Japanese, I mean.

Because of the influence of Japan culturally on the rest of Asia, tokusatsu programs are actually quite common on that side of the Pacific.

China has them. (These particular ones look awesome, and at least semi-distinct from any Japanese ones I know of.)




Thailand has them. (In fact, Thailand has some rather polished stuff, seeing as how there are Thai companies that had partnerships with Japanese companies. I say "had" because one of these companies had a violent legal battle with Tsuburaya productions over the rights to the distribution of Ultraman series in places other than Japan. I haven't kept up with this, so I don't know the current status... Also, note the name of the fist one, Yanman. That is an awesome silly name. And his tail is also funny. On the second, I'll merely mention that my sister really likes the Sportranger costume.)




Korea has them. (Maxman looks kinda cheesy, but at some point I could swear that I read it was from the mid-to-late '90s, in which case it's more impressive than it should be. Erexion has an unfortunate name, but looks nifty.)




I'm sure other countries have their own tokusatsu, but these were the easy ones to find at the moment.

Superheroes In Japan

I'm gonna update more this week, even if it's nonsense content.



Superheroes are apparently really popular in Japan. This extends to virtually all aspects of life, including the above ad, which is both horribly funny and a little disturbing.

Of course, the Japanese definition of "superhero" is rather different from the US definition. In Japan, virtually all "superheroes" are people who can very suddenly change from plainclothes to costume, and who have very wackily defined powers based on different traditions from the US's own superhero tradition.

Of course, the Japanese tradition ultimately is closely related to the US tradition, as anyone who knows what Marvel was doing with Toei in 1978 can attest...


Ahem.

Anyway, superheroes are everywhere in Japan. They tell you to recycle, they hold local plays, they advertise for supermarkets...


Japan is stupid awesome that way.

There's some particular convenience store/food place that sponsors some kind of commercial-length tokusatsu thing, but I think that they deserve their own post, because they're just so cracky.

Since I've Updated So Infrequently...

...might as well react to this.

Boo-yah.

The only thing I don't much like about this is that it'd be hard to convert to Power Rangers (well, relatively speaking, since there are Japanese actors laying in plain sight there). Sad.

Anyway, I barely knew what was going on, but anything where the badguys suddenly get invaded by mutant yellow tribble things, apparently as a result of a guy getting hammered...

...is pretty fun in my book.

I'll try to step up content a little bit here, but no promises.

Hmmm...

Sorry for the... long stretch... between updates here. I've been both sick and tired (not entirely in that order).

RPM is still very, very good.

Shinkenger is still better than Go-onger. (Looks like it's a little too Japanese traditional, culturally speaking, but other than that... And I love that skeleton guy who's been showing up the past few episodes. One of the nicest costumes ever, and that's saying something.)

Also, I've figured out why Dillon stopped being quite so tough after his Ranger debut.

It's because he gets +15 Awesome when fighting the Grinders, and -10 when fighting Tenaya 7.

An actual thing my sister said while the episode was on: "That suit really compliments [Tenaya 7's actress]." Orly? Took you long enough to notice, no offense.

More content soon, knock on wood.

RPM is-Nevermind...

...'Cause if you've been paying attention, you've heard it before.

Y'know, it's not that the Disney seasons have ever been outright bad (well, the tail end of Wild Force was pretty icky, I suppose, and I had trouble watching Ninja Storm), it's just that they've never been super awesome.

By this point, I'm not even sure what to say anymore. Nothing I haven't said before, anyway.

Also, Venjix finally showed a personality. Yay!

Theory Two-Timeline Oddities

(In which Invid explains what a heck is up with the current timeline. )


Part One-Thrax

Thrax presents an interesting conundrum for the long-time Power Rangers fan, such as myself.

First, he's an immensely fun character. As the son of Zedd and Rita, he actually looks like he's related to Zedd and has Rita's vocal and physical mannerisms-a hilarious and well-executed combination.

Second, the episode in which he was involved was a very good nostalgia episode, featuring frequent references to older continuity and proving that the writers haven't completely forgotten the monolithic fifteen year history of the metafranchise.

However, the third point is a rather significant problem: Thrax remarked that he once battled the Sentinel Knight, who was dormant until modern times after the sealing of the Corona Aurora. The sealing of the Corona Aurora was clearly established as happening when all of Earth's continents were still merged as Pangaea (for the record, about 270 million years ago)!

And Thrax can't really be more than the chronological equivalent of a prepubescent child during his Operation Overdrive appearance. Yet he was supposedly sealed for ages in a very familiar sort of space dumpster, and had all the knowledge of a rather sophisticated, elder, experienced Power Rangers type villain.

You've probably already surmised just what my solution to the difficulties this creates is if you've read my other essay. (Thrax is a time traveller.) I just want to add a few notes:

First, Sentinel Knight must get his space dumpsters from the same supply store as Zordon, which might actually have been Zordon's supply store. (More on that at some other time.)

Second, Thrax could only have been born at one of two times in the series: Either during Turbo, where Zedd and Rita mysteriously (and rather conveniently) disappeared until the next season, or after Zedd and Rita were transformed into dancin' fools. (There is also the shorter gap between the beginning of Zeo and when they start showing up again in that season, but it was a rather brief one, so it's less likely. And there is also the outside possibility that Thrax was an illegitimate child that Zedd and Rita had hundreds of millions of years ago, but let's be realistic here.)

So the real question is, would it be "possible" for the "good" Zedd and Rita to have produced a twisted, sicko puppy child like Thrax?

My vote is, probably not. First off, what "decent" parent would name his or her child after a disease?

Second... Er, no second.

Anyway, so probably, Thrax was a child born under great secrecy, and hidden away (possibly in the past) in such a way that he was not affected by the Zordon Bomb. (Upon learning that Rito did not appear in the PRiS finale, my sister suggested that perhaps Rito was sent back with him as a caretaker. In-universe explanations for costume damage-related facts for the win.)

There is one other explanation, that being that, since Rita was selected to be the Empress of Good Magic of Mystic Force, Zedd was left bitter and alone (I sure didn't see him around, although the Master sounded a bit like him), and did a lousy job of raising the kid.

Or it could be that they were just normal sized in the back of the big magical cloudy palace thing, and nobody noticed them because the Empress was so darned big. (cough)

Not terribly likely, though, because of the whole Rita mannerism thing, unless that was actually genetic...


Part Two-The Near Future

SPD supposedly takes place about twenty years after the series itself airs. RPM, it appears, also takes place after it airs (at least four years later, depending on how one wants to interpret it).

The events of RPM (the extermination of humanity except for a handful who escape to shelters such as Corinth) kind of make things... iffy for SPD. RPM has to take place sometime before SPD because if the Space Patrol Delta organization exists, it's pretty much impossible for Venjix to pose a serious threat. (Venjix: "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave-wait, where did you get that giant cannon-shaped Megazord, Dave?") And if it takes place before, well... SPD's existence is threatened for a variety of reasons, most notably the fact that SPD's normal-sized populations couldn't exist after a catastrophe of that magnitude.

There's a related problem-Terra Venture. If you remember, in Lost Galaxy Earth had the technology and resources to build a huge space platform capable of long-distance space travel. How come this stuff isn't still around after two or three more seasons?

Well, let's start with Terra Venture. We don't know what happened to the Dark Fortress after PRiS. Let's presume, since it, like Terra Venture, is frakkin' huge, it was heavily salvaged for purposes of building Terra Venture, and its superstructure, which has vague similarities, was used as the core of Terra Venture's superstructure. (However, it should be noted that Terra Venture was way bigger than the Fortress-they probably bankrupted a few dozen countries building the darned thing. It is also possible that Terra Venture was in fact older, and had been salvaged from something else... I think the writers kinda forgot where they were sometimes. Look here for a bit more info on Terra Venture's... oddities. One intimation is that they actually lifted substantial portions of land from somewhere to use as the ground...)

Anyway, I would suppose that the disappearance of this various advanced technology over time (the post Lightspeed Rescue/Time Force era-these two seasons contrasted with later ones have a lot of disparity) may simply be related to economics. In effect, the companies that can make this sophisticated technology vanished in the intermediate time period because it's darned expensive to make it, and any returns thereof may be the result of their tech passing on to other companies. This is actually supported a bit by the fact that there are apparently warehouses out there which have old Power Rangers tech in them, and for that matter the Angel Grove junkyard must be a treasure trove, since it probably has Machine Empire monster and cog bits in it, and definitely has Zord parts (!) recycled by Billy at some point.

And this tech is apparently only useful for fighting invaders, so it can't be that profitable. Uh huh. Yep, perfectly logical.

So the big question that remains, then, is that of the population. But I think this one also solves itself, at least to some degree.

To wit: "Earth isn't the only place where humans live."

Earth may have been extensively repopulated by the "space colonies," including but not necessarily limited to KO-35 and Mirinoi/Terra Venture. (My sister remarks that "the guys in SPD were kinda weird," but I'm not sure that's valid evidence...) This theory would also explain why, a mere twenty or so years into the future, the population of Earth has such a high proportion of aliens-they were the space humans' neighbors, and followed them. (I mean they were figuratively neighbors. Trade partners, things like that. Not neighbors in the sense of that one guy from the Super Sentai GoGo V/Timeranger crossover movie, who looked just like Vexicon/Blaster Mad and claimed to be his identical neighbor [because there were a number of recycled costumes claiming to be relatives of the originals].) This idea is certainly not hurt any by the fact that KO-35, at least, was mentioned in an episode of SPD as the planet where an alien criminal had been previously imprisoned.

Obviously, this particular theory will either look better over time, or a lot worse.

It should also be noted that, counting this year, the year SPD aired, and the year Lost Galaxy aired, there have been three different years now since Power Rangers started where there isn't an existing Power Rangers team on Earth for the year (based on the assertion made many times that each series airs during the year it "occurs").