Power Rangers Reflections – Page 2

Power Rangers Reflections Redux #15 – Dimensions In Danger (Bite-Sized)

Yeah, so I wanted to have this up last Friday, but you know… shit happens. Here it is now… with your regularly scheduled bi-weekly offering going up in a couple days.

So, thanks to a short-lived upload onto the Youtubes, I was able to watch the Super Ninja Storm episode that doubled as a 25th Anniversary celebration of Power Rangers. Naturally, I have some minor thoughts on this episode and decided to make them into an entry into this Reflections episode.

Because I have no means of watching the episode until it possible lands on the Netflix next year, I opted to go with a “bite-sized edition” of PRRR, which means I’m going to forgo a long-form synopsis and just go with five points that came to mind when watching this episode. It’s entirely possible that I may be misremembering some points and if that’s the case, I’ll go back to this one somewhere down the line, but for now… this is what I got out of it.

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Power Rangers Reflections Redux #14 – Goldar’s Vice Versa

First time I bore witness to the replacement rangers was this episode; during the time when the local CBS station aired Season 2 episodes Sunday Mornings… of course, they would skip over loads of episodes that would take place between the ones they DID air. As a result, one minute, I was watching the White Ranger suddenly made leader of the team, and the next week, half the team has been replaced with characters that I ultimately did not care for because I only knew them for… one episode total. It was a detriment to not having Fox locally and not the show’s fault. Eventually, we got Fox, which meant I was able to catch some (but not all) of the episodes I messed.

Goldar’s Vice Versa was the first episode I saw that featured the replacement Rangers back in the Sunday runs. Despite the fact that I last saw them as allies who somehow knew the Rangers’ ID and missed out on the subsequent episodes that swapped the Rangers, I wasn’t really surprised by this. It was pretty clear that these three teens were groomed to be the new Rangers based on their wider presence and less emphasis placed on the other half of the Ranger team whose actors had already left by this point. That and my recollection of an interview I saw prior where Jason Frank mentioned a casting call for new Rangers sort of prepared me for the changeover.

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Power Rangers Reflections Redux #13 – The Fifth Crystal

Sad truth: this was done ages ago and I put it off for a short while with the intention of getting back to it and giving it a final polish before publication. Turns out to be months later. Oh well. Better late than never, I suppose.

So today’s episode in question is from Lightspeed Rescue and this is a somewhat random choice in episode, because I honestly don’t recall much of my initial impressions regarding this particular episode, so in terms of past reflections, I’m afraid I’ve got very little to offer in that regard. Still, at least there is some attempt at varying this on-and-off subseries of write-ups beyond the MMPR comfort zone.

Note: this episode is dedicated in memory of Bob Mahanan, the voice actor of Zordon who passed away around that time.

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Power Rangers Reflections Redux #12 – Cyborg Rangers

Power Rangers: Lightspeed Rescue is a series that, for a period of time that I can recall, not a whole lot of people like to hold in high regard and at one point in time, I was one of those folks. It wasn’t that it was a bad season, but rather a season that I lacked any real interest in and only followed because it was Power Rangers. I never really cared for the more militaristic nature of the show or the fact that it was something of a departure from what came before; a team of people with other jobs drafted into this Ranger team as a superpowered emergency force, equipped with weapons and tech designed by normal humans rather than enchanted items devised by alien sorcerers. I didn’t downright hate Lightspeed, but it was never something high on my list of memorable PR seasons.

As years progressed and lesser incarnations came about, PRLR had started to grow on me somewhat. While the overall story isn’t all that great, there were some decent ideas in there that I kinda dug. Having a Ranger team as public servants and with a public face is a nice concept that would get revisited in SPD (not so much Time Force) and the team of Rangers had eventually grown on me somewhat since they acted more like young adults rather than adult actors trying to be teenagers. The series’ most notable contribution would be the Titanium Ranger, the first home-grown Power Ranger that isn’t a carryover from a pre-existing Super Sentai show. And while he didn’t have much of a role in the series (a missed opportunity if there ever was one), I thought it was a pretty cool add on.

Lightspeed Rescue has a number of episodes that might be worth revisiting in some form or another, but today, I want to look at Cyborg Rangers, the 7th episode in the series. Part of the reason stemmed from a viewing of Once A Ranger, which almost reminded me of this episode. Another reason was the need to go away from MMPR for a while.

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Power Rangers Reflections Redux #11 – Carlos On Call

A repeat of sorts…

Hey, kids. Guess what? It’s time for another Power Rangers Retrospective!

So, in order to deviate from the norm, today’s subject matter will NOT be an episode of Mighty Morphin, but rather an episode of Power Rangers In Space, the season which was supposed to be a grand space epic where the Rangers set out on looking for Zordon… but spend most of their time on Earth. Anyway, today’s episode is Carlos on Call, the overall 32nd episode of PRiS.

Fun fact about this episode; this is actually the second episode in the Psycho Ranger saga that would take up a good chunk of In Space (6 episodes along with a couple teases and a final episode that retroactively sets up a future episode the following year) and yet in the VHS release of Power Rangers In Space that supposedly edits the initial Psycho Ranger Saga into one movie, THIS episode was omitted entirely.

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Power Rangers Reflections Redux #10 – The Ninja Encounter

So we’re dipping back into reposts for the next couple entries before the eventual new entry comes along. This is being done to not only keep up with entries, but also I want to get all the “old stuff” out of the day before we eventually start going into new material. We’ve got a couple big episodes down the pipe line to touch on and I rather have the wiggle room to get those looking nice before posting.

In any event, here’s a repost on the 3-part Ninja Encounter episode that introduced the world to the first set of replacement Power Rangers. It’s a rather long ramble that will cover all three parts, but don’t expect it to dig into great detail, as I’ll be passing over certain bits in the episode, including a sizable chunk in the middle for reasons I shall explain.

The second season of MMPR was notable because it had a ton of multi-parters. The season premiere episode was a 3-parter, the Green Ranger’s last hurrah was a 2-parter, the Wedding was a 3-parter. Even episodes that were irrelevant and pointless in the grand scheme of things were 2-parters… like Storybook Rangers or the one where the Rangers were turned into kids.

Today’s multipart extravaganza is not an insignificant storyline, but rather a pretty heavy storyline. It’s the one that introduced the world to three would-be nobodies who were brought in because half the Ranger cast held up for more money and were unceremoniously released, not even getting the benefit of best wishes on their future endeavors… wait, was I saying a whole lot?

A bit of backstory here; at some point during production of the second season, the Ranger trio of Austin St. John, Thuy Trang, and Walter Jones had left MMPR due to monetary conflicts… or some kind of conflict. In any case, half the Power Rangers had gone AWOL and the result was a series of episodes that would place more focus on the other half of the cast who stuck around, while the other half would be portrayed as either recycled footage, body doubles, bad ADR dubbers, or just ignored altogether. I think it was around the time the Green Ranger left that we started getting bad dub jobs for the guys who left and by the time we got to the obligatory Halloween episode (Zedd’s Monster Mash or something), the other three was getting less focus and more focus was placed on Tommy, Kimberly, and Billy… because they were still around.

Which brings us to the Ninja Encounter, a three-parter that really should have been less than that.

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Power Rangers Reflection Redux #09 – Lost And Found In Translation

This episode is an interesting “concept” episode and probably the closest thing we’d be getting to something resembling a crossover between Power Rangers and its original Super Sentai source material. At the time of airing, there had been quite a bit of controversy surrounding it due to the way it presented the original material here. Some didn’t mind it, others were outraged, and the rest either didn’t know the difference between one or the other or they simply didn’t care.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t recall my reactions to this episode back in the day. It’s never been mentioned or eluded to in any of the commentaries or the old blog. I know I watched it and I’d imagine an opportunity to see any semblance of seemingly unaltered Abaranger without going through unofficial channels… but nonetheless, my initial impressions from fourteen-ish years ago are largely forgotten.

So, I’m going into this with something of a clean slate of sorts. And yes, it’ll be fairly brief for the moment.

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Power Rangers Reflections Redux #08 – Once A Ranger

I wanted to hold off the repost of Once A Ranger until we got our 25th anniversary episode… that I’d never get to see until it hits Netflix next year… and that last bit is why I’m getting it out of the way now. Eventually, the plan is to cover the other anniversary specials – both Forever Red and the Legendary Farce – but for now, I present you with this rehashed (and slightly re-edited) repost of one of the more horrible episodes of Power Rangers and it’s only fitting it’s from an otherwise horrible season of Power Rangers.

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Power Rangers Reflections Redux #07 – Shell Shocked

Yeah, like you thought I’d go through life never talking about this.

The fourth episode of Power Rangers In Space featured the one and only official crossover story between the Power Rangers in any form and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in any form. And to say it was a disappointment would be stating the obvious. It’s been a while since I’ve seen this episode, so let’s give it a look and we can move on to better things… maybe.

The reason this crossover was possible is because during this time, Saban was putting out a live-action Ninja Turtles series called The Next Mutation, which had the Turtles fighting off not perennial villain Shredder or any of the familiar menagerie, but a monster called Dragonlord and his band of putties or grunts or whatever. And on top of that, we have a fifth (female) Turtle named Venus, who knows magic and stuff. Said female Turtle is said to be a controversial addition and I’ll spare my thoughts on both the Turtle and the show for another time.

But the point is that when people like to visualize this particular crossover combination, they usually visualize the original Mighty Morphin team going up against the classic quintet Turtles incarnation (of which there are many, so take your pick.) What you’re getting here is not the “colossal” event that it might’ve been or could’ve been; it’s just a crossover between two shows that happened to be on the air at the time… and it’s just another episode of Power Rangers overall, as there was no attempt to do a similar crossover on the Next Mutation show.

Of course, that would’ve been problematic to pull off since Next Mutation had a somewhat smaller budget compared to PRIS and also, both shows were filmed in different locations. It also explains why the Turtles here have different sounding voices and personalities in comparison to their show of origin. But I’m jumping ahead here… also, two paragraphs share the same first word… let’s break that pattern now.

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