So. Promised post about the RangerCast interview with Greg Aronowitz. He revealed a LOT of interesting stuff about S.P.D.
The interview itself can be found at RangerCast's website:
Part 1 &
Part 2 I was summarizing and reorganizing the notes I took while listening so I could add all these new revelations to
RangerWiki and decided to share them here as well for my f-list's interest, even though I know most of this stuff will only be of interest to me. XD
On Sky:
-The ever-popular "Sky is Wes' son" theory was officially shot down. Greg said that S.P.D. was always meant to be its own separate set of Rangers, therefore Sky is simply the son of the first S.P.D. Red, not any previously-appearing Ranger.
-The interactions between Sky and Cruger were some of Greg's favorite scenes, because he said Chris was able to play it so straight and naturally, it allowed Cruger to seem more real to the audience and not just a man in a dog suit.
On Cruger:
-Cruger's head alone weighed twenty pounds, had 50 servos inside for movement, and took 6 people to operate. The crew who worked with it was reluctant to let it go afterward.
-The Japanese crew really liked the American Doggie and considered taking him back and using him somehow, along with the Battlizer (which did, of course, appear in Magiranger vs. Dekaranger).
-The reason for the drastic difference between the Japanese and American Doggies was that Greg felt Japan's Doggie was a good idea, executed poorly. He still wanted the dog as a mentor figure, as he loves dogs, but wanted to make him seem more alive and relatable.
-The reason Doggie was sometimes so tough on the Rangers was due to the fact that he'd lost so much- he knew what was out there and wanted the Rangers to be prepared for what was in store for them, so they wouldn't have to lose their planet and loved ones like he did. He also didn't want to give them everything they needed from the start, which is why he was big on letting them figure things out for themselves.
-The war was a very personal battle for Doggie. He would give anything to best Gruumm- the difference between them, however is Gruumm is obsessive and not careful, whereas Doggie is deliberate, patient, calculating, and able to control his impulses and ready the team for what was coming instead of going for the throat.
On Jack & Z:
-Cruger didn't want Jack and Z to be on the street, but he still didn't want to interfere in their lives, either- he wanted to let them choose their own path. He was very big on letting them figure things out for themselves, as said above. His plan was to let them all the Rangers develop in their own way to get the heart and commitment they needed to be on the right path.
-Cruger was fucked-up by what Gruumm did to him, and he didn't want to coddle the Rangers by giving them everything they needed from the start. He wasn't deliberately cruel to Jack and Z, he left them there to toughen them. He boiled it down to those 5 people to save the universe. What made Jack and Z special was they stole because they thought it was the right thing to do. Everyone else had their eyes on the future, whereas Jack and Z lived in the now and tried to make a difference NOW.
On B-Squad:
-B-Squad were always the benchwarmers and basically lived in A-Squad's shadow.
-The B-Squad's genetic powers didn't really give them a leg up- Greg said it was their choices, their determination and heart that made them who they were and got them as far as they had gotten.
-He'd love to do an S.P.D. movie; it would take place post-series and have the B-Squad in charge. Some new threat would show up, they'd bring Jack back to the team, and it would be about friendship for life.
-Syd had priviliege, but she still had inner strength. Part of the reason she was characterized as spoiled was to have a diverse mix of personalities on the team. She had anything she wanted, but she wanted to be able to earn her place in life, not have it handed to her.
-One of his favorite lines in the series was cut for time: in "Endings", when the Rangers captives of Gruumm, and they feel like they've come so far and failed, and Syd was going to say "And to make it worse, I broke a nail!". It would sum up her entire character- it's not that she didn't care, but her perfection being spoiled set off her balance and her world. She was all about the small details.
-Bridge missed a lot of small details except when investigating- "the picture was so big, only he could see it". Greg called him "Bridge To Nowhere".
On Gruumm, Omni & "Endings":
-"Endings" was a means to an end and envisioned because they didn't know how Dekaranger was going to wrap while writing. It was made to tie everything together. Omni was a part of the plan from the beginning, and Gruumm was always answering to a higher power. It was meant to be a parallel to the Rangers- they had to answer to someone, too- and to add layers to the villain. Omni was also always envisioned as a giant brain who wanted to build himself a body.
-Gruumm's obsession with raiding resources was all due to Omni. Earth had the most resources and was the final step in making his body. Mid-season, the design for Omni was make up and started being built. The Dekaranger ending storyline was almost impossible to straight adapt because they had no main villain, just Abrella/Broodwing. His story ended, and was too loose, unable to provide closure for S.P.D.'s story. Hence the original Zord footage, which was done by importing the Zord suit from Japan and doing it green-screen.
-Gruumm was always Omni's puppet. It was going on a very long time, even before Gruumm's conquest of Sirius- a very, very long time before the series began. He also has weaknesses, which Omni took advantage of, "as long as time can remember".
-All Troobians are robots, and all robots come from Broodwing, who is a free agent. "Troobian" is a military caste, rather than a planet or a land. Anybody that Gruumm conscripts is considered a Troobian.
On Isinia:
-Greg is a "romantic at heart", and the idea of Isinia grew from that.
-Kat and Doggie loved each other, but could never do anything about it because of Isinia. Kat loved him so much, she knew she could never do anything about her feelings. Isinia wasn't originally going to be brought back, but it felt weird to NOT bring her back, as she'd been brought up so many times.
-He went on Christmas vacation and asked the others on the crew if he made Isinia on his own budget, if they would put it in, and he did- he created her over two weeks, with his own money. So Isinia was kind of an on-the-fly addition, and didn't have time to be fit into the show's storyline very well. Greg gave it his best shot, but it fell flat anyway.
On Misc. Characters:
-R.I.C. reminded Greg of his dog Action, who had passed away shortly before the series began production. Sgt. Silverback's robot dog was named C.U.T.T. and his appearance was inspired by his English bulldog, Cut.
-Making Charlie (A-Squad's Red) into a girl was one of his most difficult decisions, because they feared it would upset the Japanese Sentai crew and destroy their relationship with the PR crew.
-With regard to the Zord fight with A-Squad, his only other choice was to go with a street fight instead of a Zord battle, and that had already happened. It was A-Squad's actual previous Zord, S.P.D. issue, not just a robot from Broodwing. They brought it with them when they went off-world.
-Greg called A-Squad Blue "Warf"/The Warrus while sculpting him. He thought it would be cool to have an alien as a Ranger.
On the DT Teamups:
-What they wanted to do with the Dino Thunder teamup episodes was establish that the Dino Thunder Rangers had made the first contact with Doggie when he came to earth to establish S.P.D. His technology would combine with theirs to become the Ranger Academy to train people to be Rangers.
-Writing the teamups were the only time it got nasty with the production team with regards of what should happen.
-There weren't even doing to be teamups with S.P.D. at first; Greg didn't really like it because they had to find a way to make it work with two teams in different decades and had to use time travel. Sam coming from the future made more sense to him than the DT cast being brought from the past, where everything was established.
-He envisioned the DT team being cloned, memories and all, and brought to the future so as not to have the potential to upset the past, but everyone else on the production team nixed the idea because they felt it would confuse/scare kids and make them believe it wasn't really the Rangers.
-He felt the teamups were too boring, but they were done because others wanted him to do it.
On Sam:
-Young Sam and Omega Sam never interacted in order to avoid a paradox. Future Sam felt like he was a last-ditch effort to save the Earth and was concerned the entire time that he was killing the future, and tried not to interfere way too much, which is why he hung back a lot.
-Sam and Nova did go back to a better future. The wormhole that brought them back in time made the changes they made in the past follow through across time.
-Sam is a key component in saving the world because of Z. If she hadn't insisted on reaching out to him and giving him a place to belong, he never would have joined S.P.D. and become a Ranger.
On S.P.D. in general:
-Dekaranger's footage and Executive Meddling from BOTH Toei and Disney influenced why S.P.D. was set in the future- they settled on 2025 so it was a reachable future and they didn't have to deal with the problem of interfering with Time Force.
-The reason for the whole Ranger Academy concept was because Greg disliked the tendency of previous seasons to drop powers into the Rangers' laps- i.e. have them be ordinary teenagers one minute, then suddenly extraordinary fighters the next. He wanted to instill the lesson that you can be anything you want to be- but you have to work for it and not expect it to fall into your lap.
-S.P.D. was made to cultivate the best officers, not just Rangers, and was a symbol of humans and aliens coming together and working together.
-Greg's influence was a large part of the sci-fi-esque feel of S.P.D. and why it doesn't seem to fit into the rest of the PR universe as tightly as some fans think it should- in fact, he says it's in a separate part of the PR universe, not as close as the other series. He loved the designs, costumes, and weapons, calling them "so modern and so relative to our time", and decided to remove some of the more surreal elements from Dekaranger when adapting it.
-He drew inspiration from some of his favorite childhood shows to leave his own touch on it- he wanted to show the audience something they hadn't seen before and said it was tough to strike a balance between having it fit into the PR universe and do something every fan would enjoy while making it his own.
-Greg didn't like episodes to be so grounded in Sentai and just wanted to use the footage, then tell his own story, hence why the episodes he writes and directs tend to have much less Dekaranger influence. He also wanted the Ranger actors themselves to be seen in the suits more often than they were, so that kids could make the connection and see the Rangers as people, not just suits.
-Greg believes that previous series tended to be very black-and-white with regard to who was good and who was evil, and wanted S.P.D. to have more shades of gray, hence the cosmopolitan alien-and-human society.
-S.P.D. is a slice-of-life kind of series. He tried to be as open-ended as possible.
-There is martial law in the universe, and S.P.D. tries to keep order as best they can.
-The S.W.A.T. episodes were about teamwork & having faith in other people instead of always relying on oneself.
-Lots of monster suits from old PR series were saved from being destroyed to be used in S.P.D., but they were only allowed to take parts of many of them- a lot were rotted/decaying and unable to be used. 30 aliens were cobbled together from these parts.
-Half the extras budget was used in the premiere to show the diversity of alien life. Many, many people on the cast and crew have cameos as aliens.
-A lot of the suits and props from S.P.D. are stored in the Disney archives, including Cruger, Gruumm, R.I.C. and C.U.T.T.
Misc:
-Part of the reason Monica May was cast as Jun'hee in Greg's movie Battle Planet was because she really wanted to dress up like an alien and make a cameo as one during S.P.D., but due to shooting restraints from her playing Z, she was never available.
-Greg had pitched Mystic Force before leaving PR and wanted it to be more in the style of Lord of the Rings than, as he said, "Harry Potter meets I Dream of Jeannie". He'd even location-scouted and had an idea for an opening quest for the Rangers to gain their powers. He wanted it to be more mystical and heavier on design and makeup. The original Japanese pitch was "HP meets LoTR".
-Koichi Sakamoto would shoot a lot of connecting fight sequences that substituted for Sentai footage in several cases because it was better-suited.
-Greg wanted to do with S.P.D. what felt right for him, and something he would enjoy watching- he didn't want to make a show he would not tune in to watch himself.
-Greg considers the S.P.D. cast to be his good-luck charms, which is why so many of them (especially Chris, Monica, and Kelson Henderson [Boom]) appear in his post-S.P.D. projects. Matt Austin is going to be starring in his next Web series, which will come after Alien Ninja. SQUEEEEEE.