PRRPM #1: The Road To Corinth
Hey, it's been a while. A bit late with this, and can't promise any better - life doesn't always leave time for it. Also working on a 'real' entry, but will get to that later.
May as well start from the beginning: the opening. We haven't had an opening theme I could really, really love since DT, but I might just be being picky. Scenes used are just okay. We get full names for everyone, for the first time since Lightspeed, which is the only other time.
The last name we see isn't with a character, or given an "as" part; just "and Olivia Tennet." That's common with a lot of shows, but for PR, it's a first.
However, one thing makes this perhaps the sweetest PR opening of all time:
The name Bruce Kalish is nowhere to be found.
I hardly dared hope, but it's true! [Tears roll down cheeks] Mr "who needs things to make sense, we've got slow-mo and explosions!" has left! The! Building!
Of course, they gave him another show, and from what I've heard (seeing his name on it quickly put to death any desire I had to watch it) it's got none of the things inflicted upon PR when he came along. Which means he can do better, he just chose not to.
I didn't want to watch Aaron Stone when I thought it'd suck because he was working on it. Now that I know that what he did to my favorite show wasn't underestimating younger audiences, wasn't not understanding that explosions aren't enough to make a good show, but simply screwing this show, to the point that only by a some miracle will there ever be another season (man, I still can't bring myself to read that article all the way through), and he's actually trying now that he has one he likes better...
...yeah. I got no intentions of rewarding him for causing the current state of things by watching a single frame of his new show. Anytime you feel tempted to, kick yourself, and then go buy an RPM action figure, 'cause hey, every little bit helps, right?
(No, really. Can't hurt, anyway. And did you know that you can actually combine their weapons? I don't mean the larger toys of the weapons themselves, either. Each Ranger comes with little gray un-painted but otherwise accurate weapons, as always. Get all five Rangers, and their weapons can combine to make the team weapon. I'm not sure if the Rangers themselves are articulated enough to wield the team weapon as in show, but there's only one way to find out! And there's little pegs on the Rangers' belts so you can "holster" the guns. Also, smaller accessories whose function I can't tell as of episode one.)
(Oh, if you wanna just skip to the episode proper, scroll down to the bolded sentence.)
And who knows, Aaron Stone might just have a good first few episodes. The first two episodes of SPD blew me away. I'd thought it was going to be the best season ever. Boy, was I wrong. And if you'd told me that it would be the best of the next five...
...okay, can't say that. MF's universe wasn't as exciting as SPD's, but it did less wrong. Like I've said about it many times, most shows follow the Homer Simpson Rule: "The number one rule of television is that everything goes back to normal at the end." The beauty of Mystic Force was that it didn't get the memo, and there's nothing like a show where the last three minutes of every episode are often the best. Sorry, Homer: Vida's still a vampire! Leelee is Necrolai's daughter!
However, it loses major points for not following up on many of the interesting things it started, and for letting Nick overtake everything. Still, most episodes were fun to watch and didn't make me say "what kind of morons does Kalish take us for?! I know this is a kids' show, but when I was six, I wasn't that stupid."
However... SPD done properly would've been better than MMPR, PRiS, and PRTF put together. MF done perfectly would be... pretty cool, but not quite that.
(As for the others... Overdrive I liked at first, but Kalish tendencies resurfaced at the midway point with a vengeance. Still gets points for not solving Mack's identity crisis and daddy issues in one episode, and have him actually try to do himself in later on. However, while writer bravery is nice, it doesn't cure all. Jungle Fury, on the other hand... so much was recycled from other recent seasons that the first episodes made me say "isn't it too early in the year for a clip show?" Theo, the one with the most potential, got the worst of it, suffering the 'act nuts for half an hour instead of characterization' treatment most of his focal episodes, turning into someone who couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time without destroying everything, or quitting because he got hit once. Other than RJ and Camille, JF was nothing special. Now, Camille was the coolest thing I'd seen in a long time, and she was what I kept watching for.)
When it comes to PR's future, I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for a renewal, though. Space was going to be the end, but it was good enough to pull the show out of the mire of Turbo and make it a mainstay for years. If this season stays as good as the first two episodes, they'd be idiots not to keep it, and if they are, someone else might not be, just as Fox dumping it wasn't the end.
And if not... just check your TV listings. Battlestar Galactica, Knight Rider, Transformers, and Doctor Who, anyone? (Seriously, is it still 1985, or what?)
(Speaking of Transformers, even Simon Furman, who is to TF what Chris Claremont is to X-Men, thought Transformers was over, and made a statement saying as much, when the Generation 2 comic ended. In other words, he thought it was over - FINISHED! But it never ends.)
And I'd totally bet against Digimon ever coming back, and when I heard about a new series called Digimon Savers (If you don't know Digimon, then (a) not watching Digimon may be hazardous to your health, and (b) Savers is what Data Squad was called in Japan.) I'd thought "Come on. The name is Savers?! If you're going to make crap up, at least try to be convincing." Then Data Squad came out, and eating my words never tasted so good. (Here's hoping for a season six someday... and, more importantly, a season seven, because even-numbered Digimon seasons are like odd-numbered Star Trek movies.)
(Just for the record, the main reason for disbelief in its return was the fandom's rumor mill. You hear someone going on about how their uncle's grandma's dog walker who works at [name of company somehow involved in show but often not the one that actually produces it] knows about the new season and [your favorite past character here] is coming back and it stars the children of [most popular pairing at the time here] and their names are [all American names here; poster doesn't even know it's a dubbed anime!] every ten minutes for long enough, and the eye-rolling becomes a reflex. When I'd first heard about a new season, I'd thought "it's been all this time since Frontier ended, and they're still at it?" and I didn't even bother looking into it. Imagine my surprise when I saw it advertised on Toon Disney... as the season was already underway in the US.)
And not only do old favorites return a lot these days, so can old not-so-favorites: I've never heard anyone say a good word about Masked Rider, ever, but the failure of the last attempt to bring the Kamen Rider series to the US doesn't mean we don't get Kamen Rider Dragon Knight.
I'd hope, though, that if PR did have to take a powder for a while, it'd return with the same name. Even though it'd still be Americanized Sentai, it wouldn't be quite the same if it was called Super Task Force, made by entirely different people, and played by different rules. It'd be better than nothing, but I want my Rangers. And I want that 20th anniversary teamup, and to see what Koichi and Jackie do for episode #1000. (Get Amit Bhaumik back, in both cases, I'd hope.)
Point is, it's not over until it's over, and sometimes not even then. Half the shows we watch, this one included, are living proof.
Anyway, on to the main event.
From the beginning, you can tell this series is gonna stand out from the others. The villains have already taken over the world and the Rangers are fighting with a resistance? I'm torn between "awesome!" and "They stole my idea."
You see, there's this sentai series with animal theme, Red being a bird. Two seasons later, there's a sentai series with a bird theme, Red looking just like the guy from two seasons ago, except for a V-shaped line (much like the ones on RPM suits.) So I'd thought, what if the animal-themed Rangers went through business as usual, leading up to their Big Grand Final Battle... which they lose. The last scene is as they're all dragged away to their apparent doom by the main villain... except Red, who can only watch helplessly. The season finale closes with the bad guys starting to level the city, with no one capable of stopping them. See you next year! :D
Next season, the world looks like... well, basically, this. Four new Rangers-to-be, barely struggling to survive, don't recognize the resistance leader who recruits them, but we do... and the former Red doesn't tell them that there was a team before them who didn't do so well, only that he's more familiar with the enemy than most, and has a plan. And so it begins, again. (Whatever came between Liveman and Jetman could be the season after them. No reason to waste perfectly good footage.)
Old Rangers would survive and eventually be rescued, of course... how else do you get a teamup episode?
Anyway, seriously onto actual episode now. We start with a longer version of the opening narration, much like MMPR. It describes how the world was taken over by a sentient computer virus called... Venjix.
Does the new producer just not know the name, or did General Venjix just download himself to a computer somewhere, and make his dream of resurrecting the Machine Empire a reality in a different way than he'd originally planned? The villains reminded me of the Zeo ones from the first time I watched Go-onger. Two of his lieutenants weren't destroyed outright, so maybe they got upgraded to become the ones we see.
The ticker on the bottom of the screen for the 'news footage' looks all wrong. Each word, not each point, is separated, so it's less "evil computer virus ravages world... Kalish is a douchebag... rain in Spain doesn't fall mainly on plain after all..." and more... like... this... with.. whole... sentence... stretched... over... miles. (And since when do they use ellipsis for that anyway?)
Venjix looks a lot like HAL-9000. Only Power Rangers would dare try this without it being tongue-in-cheek. And make it work. Or does it only work 'cause we're all used to Power Rangers' brand of cheese?
(Tommy: "Your brand of cheese will never win!" Venjix: [Switches brands] Tommy: "Nooooooo!")
We also get to see a lot of villains wrecking town, something that never woulda flown a while back.
No sign of Kelson Henderson, which is too bad. He's a great actor, but gets such lame roles, so he probably won't be remembered too fondly by PR fandom. Phineas isn't enough to erase Norg, Flit, and (the unappreciated, IMO) Boom. But James Gaylyn (Zeltrax!) is the colonel!
Soldier: [Gives depressing report] "What should I do, sir?"
Colonel Truman: "Go shoot at something."
Soldier: "Yes sir."
He has this 'done this way too long' feel to him. No emotion until the bus drives up, with refugees aboard. The driver's got a Scottish accent! Awesome! We've seriously never heard one in PR (unless it's a minor guest sorta thing.)
The driver, Flynn, astonishes the Colonel by getting through the army of grunts in relatively few pieces with his mad driving skills. I wonder if this is to establish him as the awesome stunt driver type who's going to zig and zag his Zord around and stuff.
More than just driving skils. He tosses a partially-dismantled grunt out of the door when he first drives up.
As the last of the refugees escape into the city as the enemy planes make bombing runs (and more generic shooting that everyone does not escape), we get mention of Truman's son, who was apparently in the company the soldier's bad news was about. Truman must reluctantly close the city's shield anyway, and the voice we hear is that we'll later associate with "Dr. K." Thing is, as we see hands pushing buttons, we hear it non-digitized... and it still sounds female, though Dr. K is referred to as 'he.'
And only now do we meet the next two Rangers: at the last second, a pair who turns out to be Summer and Scott barely make it under the gate on a motorcycle. Summer takes of her helmet and does this slow-mo head-toss, her hair fanning out. Because she's worth it. She reminds me of Ronny, very much, which is definitely a good thing.
Doesn't work nearly as well for Scott.
Scott talks to his father, who talks to him as if he's just another soldier. He's Eagle 2, and someone else is Eagle 1 - and is apparently no longer with us. Judging by Truman's reaction, it was someone important. Scott's brother, maybe?
Definitely his brother. Watching it again, a soldier (same one from before?) mentions his sons, plural.
Here's where Power Rangers' death euphemisms come into play. "Destroyed" needs no explanation. "Down" under apparently fatal circumstances usually means he's just around the corner. "Disappeared" will be used just like "destroyed," sounding for all the world like just another way around saying "dead," but the person will always turn up again at the dramatically appropriate time. This also carries to other Saban shows (Spider-Man, for example.) "Gone," the person's mistaken half the time, but not the other half. If you 'were lost,' on the other hand, you are toast. You're beyond toast. On the deadness scale of one to ten, ten being... uh... really, really dead... 'lost' puts you at about a 13.
Seriously. Badly wounded, chained up in a box that's tossed into molten lava, and 'disappeared' in the explosion that destroyed the whole solar system twelve seconds later? See you episode 25-ish, with an explanation that's surprisingly plausible. 'Lost' in the fateful banana ice cream incident? Hope you made out your will.
Anyway, in the case of "Eagle 1 is down. He's gone, sir," 'Gone' puts him at a 5, and 'Down' pulls it back to a 3.
So, is Eagle 1 going to be the sixth Ranger, a bad guy, or a bad guy who becomes the sixth Ranger?
Soldier: "What if people are still out there, sir?"
Truman: "Then heaven help them - because we can't."
And with that, we go to a black screen with "Power Rangers RPM" written in rather non-fancy letters. Dude.
This is definitely not gonna be your average season. I think they put that title card there just to remind you that yes, this is still Power Rangers.
And we skip ahead another year. The desert area never gets old. A little camera-tilting makes it even more versatile.
The guy we'll come to know as Dillon is driving along, and wearing a gas mask. We did see a lot of brown fog before - it seems that the machines have made the atmosphere more to their liking. Another Zeo flashback: Mondo tried to do this to the water once. Grunt oil makes water that will kill you on the spot... or make very good coffee, according to Lt. Stone. However, this place isn't toxic according to Dillon's scanner, the better to show the actor's face earlier.
Is the song that's playing on the radio at the beginning a real one?
Dillon pours the last of his water on a lone flower. Aww.
Best grunt fight ever: when the Grinders come and attack, the scene is just the flower, and shadows move and we hear the sounds along with the music (grunt fight songs! I keep hoping we'll get 'em back, but it never happens.) The part with the grunt legs... genius.
Dillon ponders his pocketwatch/music box. Uh-oh.
Seriously uh-oh. A guy who (it turns out) doesn't remember where he came from, whose only keepsake is a pocketwatch? It's official: we're all doomed. Don't open it... no, no good reason to open it...
Does it work as a music box, or is that just BGM?
Enter Ziggy. He tries to mug him, but he's not very good at it when Dillon doesn't let him finish his spiel. Dillon's worked out that his 'gun' is a car part.
Turns out Ziggy knows the way to Corinth, and talks Dillon into taking him with him, and this is when he explains about his origin (or lack thereof.)
Ziggy: "No one's ever run the barricade during daylight! No one!"
Dillon: "Well, I'm about as close to no one as you're ever going to meet."
Grinders have motorcycles. Please please please tell me we'll see them again... like we didn't see Lily's again.
Dillon likes lollipops! I knew I was going to like him.
Turns out that sticking it to a homemade bomb somehow makes it go. Scratch a few Grinders.
So of course that's when the giant freakin' cannons appear.
This makes me wonder something: you're an evil computer program. You already rule the world. There's one human colony left that isn't much of a threat to you. Why do you care this much about preventing the last few stragglers from getting to it? If they need humans for something, they've gotten most of them by now, haven't they?
If you're an evil robot and finally take over the world and give those yucky organics the boot... what do you do with it?
I always wondered that. What if Skynet in the Terminator series ever finishes off the humans? What then? We've seen nothing of Skynet in movies or show unrelated to its human-bashing efforts. What does Skynet do in the areas where there are none left?
When Truman and company detect the car, the diagram on the screen makes it look like they could just as easily go around the cannon towers. Maybe only the ones that are active are shown.
And that establishment shot... the tower! The tower is in the clouds and the rest of the city is miles below. Is it hovering in the air? It seems held up by a very thin something-or-other... maybe that's not its support, but an antenna, so high it's gotta point down.
Truman finds something's not right about one of their life signs.
Venjix's headquarters are much less awesome-looking. His minions even less so. You got a yellow guy and a red-and-white guy, with the same Zeo-meets-Turbo design you'll get used to this year. Watching it, I forget which is which often, but I'll try and keep 'em straight for this. Venjix himself is still a HAL-like red 'eye' on the wall.
The bombs are called thermic charges. I guess they don't wanna say "thermal detonator" and get sued.
Dillon only gives his name now. At first, he'd said he didn't have one. Did he just make up the name Dillon now?
Ziggy drops the last bomb, as it's beeping faster and faster. Eventually, Dillon propels it out while swerving... apparently without anyone sticking a lollipop to it. It manages to kablooify a cannon tower nicely anyway.
Rather than, y'know, have the other cannons fire, Venjix has an arcade claw thingy pull out a "generation five attack bot." Now this guy looks very much like you took a Turbo monster and made him metal.
They get into town at last, Grinders right behind, and three uniformed people come up, which flashbacks show to be Flynn, Summer, and Scott.
The morph command is "RPM! Get in gear!" Which is pretty much the entire theme song as well, so it's not much of a surprise. And it looks like this team won't be hiding their identities, because they do come up unmorphed and don't hesitate to transform in front of Dillon and Ziggy.
The morph scene goes for 'elegant simplicity' as compared to last year's. I think I like it, though it's hard to really tell since it's a three-way.
Woah. Scott being Red means Dillon isn't. You mean the guy who comes in out of nowhere isn't instantly handed the red suit? Definitely a brand new day.
(I know, that started pre-Kalish. But it was Kalish who ran it into the ground. Wes got the red suit because as Alex's ancestor, only he could wear it, and Jen was still in charge, even chewing him out for not following orders once. Cole was given the red suit with the usual authority because the Lion Zord's chosen Ranger is always the leader. Casey got the red suit... because it's just habit by now. This year, one more sign of a head writer who cares is that not every habit is kept.)
The weapons show the racing theme that was big in sentai but doesn't really work for RPM. The guns look like gas pump handles.
Well, there's a little. You can hear engines rev and tires screech when the Rangers move fast. The bands on the wrists and ankles spin like tires!
The fight is mostly good ole grunt-kicking. Still less full-on hitting than pre-Kalish, or even Kalish's first couple days on the job, if you're to watch for it and count, but... JF fights looked like they were playing pat-a-cakes. (Not sure how you spell that.) That is definitely over.
Some slow-mo, but it's used as opposed to abused. I'm not surprised to not see things instantly revert to pre-Kalish status: after all, this is a new producer whose introduction to the series was Kalish stuff. He's got Disney's tighter-than-Fox-Kids censor rules in his ears... and not the fact that it should look like Time Force.
That's what I was worried about, actually: someone who doesn't know what a good PR fight looks like is told by the network folks just how defanged they want it, and all battles would get solved by playing Parcheesi or something. That fear is gone, 'cause for the first time in a while, I'm seeing a fight and not silly dancing and arm-waving, all slowed down to the point of being excruciating.
And that monster? Where's he in all this?
Going after Dillon and Ziggy, of course. Fortunately, Summer saves their butts, driving the monster away. As the Rangers go after him, bringing out their personal weapons, Dillon asks Ziggy... "What's a Power Ranger?" Ziggy looks at him like he's lost it.
I always wonder which team is referred to when someone refers to Rangers in general and not the team at hand. And the fact that Ziggy expects Dillon to know what a Ranger is even without having had an opportunity to meet Corinth's Rangers... you gotta wonder what happened to the other teams.
(There's an obvious, depressing answer that makes that 20th anniversary teamup highly unlikely even in the event of renewal... but they wouldn't do that. Would they?)
May as well start from the beginning: the opening. We haven't had an opening theme I could really, really love since DT, but I might just be being picky. Scenes used are just okay. We get full names for everyone, for the first time since Lightspeed, which is the only other time.
The last name we see isn't with a character, or given an "as" part; just "and Olivia Tennet." That's common with a lot of shows, but for PR, it's a first.
However, one thing makes this perhaps the sweetest PR opening of all time:
The name Bruce Kalish is nowhere to be found.
I hardly dared hope, but it's true! [Tears roll down cheeks] Mr "who needs things to make sense, we've got slow-mo and explosions!" has left! The! Building!
Of course, they gave him another show, and from what I've heard (seeing his name on it quickly put to death any desire I had to watch it) it's got none of the things inflicted upon PR when he came along. Which means he can do better, he just chose not to.
I didn't want to watch Aaron Stone when I thought it'd suck because he was working on it. Now that I know that what he did to my favorite show wasn't underestimating younger audiences, wasn't not understanding that explosions aren't enough to make a good show, but simply screwing this show, to the point that only by a some miracle will there ever be another season (man, I still can't bring myself to read that article all the way through), and he's actually trying now that he has one he likes better...
...yeah. I got no intentions of rewarding him for causing the current state of things by watching a single frame of his new show. Anytime you feel tempted to, kick yourself, and then go buy an RPM action figure, 'cause hey, every little bit helps, right?
(No, really. Can't hurt, anyway. And did you know that you can actually combine their weapons? I don't mean the larger toys of the weapons themselves, either. Each Ranger comes with little gray un-painted but otherwise accurate weapons, as always. Get all five Rangers, and their weapons can combine to make the team weapon. I'm not sure if the Rangers themselves are articulated enough to wield the team weapon as in show, but there's only one way to find out! And there's little pegs on the Rangers' belts so you can "holster" the guns. Also, smaller accessories whose function I can't tell as of episode one.)
(Oh, if you wanna just skip to the episode proper, scroll down to the bolded sentence.)
And who knows, Aaron Stone might just have a good first few episodes. The first two episodes of SPD blew me away. I'd thought it was going to be the best season ever. Boy, was I wrong. And if you'd told me that it would be the best of the next five...
...okay, can't say that. MF's universe wasn't as exciting as SPD's, but it did less wrong. Like I've said about it many times, most shows follow the Homer Simpson Rule: "The number one rule of television is that everything goes back to normal at the end." The beauty of Mystic Force was that it didn't get the memo, and there's nothing like a show where the last three minutes of every episode are often the best. Sorry, Homer: Vida's still a vampire! Leelee is Necrolai's daughter!
However, it loses major points for not following up on many of the interesting things it started, and for letting Nick overtake everything. Still, most episodes were fun to watch and didn't make me say "what kind of morons does Kalish take us for?! I know this is a kids' show, but when I was six, I wasn't that stupid."
However... SPD done properly would've been better than MMPR, PRiS, and PRTF put together. MF done perfectly would be... pretty cool, but not quite that.
(As for the others... Overdrive I liked at first, but Kalish tendencies resurfaced at the midway point with a vengeance. Still gets points for not solving Mack's identity crisis and daddy issues in one episode, and have him actually try to do himself in later on. However, while writer bravery is nice, it doesn't cure all. Jungle Fury, on the other hand... so much was recycled from other recent seasons that the first episodes made me say "isn't it too early in the year for a clip show?" Theo, the one with the most potential, got the worst of it, suffering the 'act nuts for half an hour instead of characterization' treatment most of his focal episodes, turning into someone who couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time without destroying everything, or quitting because he got hit once. Other than RJ and Camille, JF was nothing special. Now, Camille was the coolest thing I'd seen in a long time, and she was what I kept watching for.)
When it comes to PR's future, I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for a renewal, though. Space was going to be the end, but it was good enough to pull the show out of the mire of Turbo and make it a mainstay for years. If this season stays as good as the first two episodes, they'd be idiots not to keep it, and if they are, someone else might not be, just as Fox dumping it wasn't the end.
And if not... just check your TV listings. Battlestar Galactica, Knight Rider, Transformers, and Doctor Who, anyone? (Seriously, is it still 1985, or what?)
(Speaking of Transformers, even Simon Furman, who is to TF what Chris Claremont is to X-Men, thought Transformers was over, and made a statement saying as much, when the Generation 2 comic ended. In other words, he thought it was over - FINISHED! But it never ends.)
And I'd totally bet against Digimon ever coming back, and when I heard about a new series called Digimon Savers (If you don't know Digimon, then (a) not watching Digimon may be hazardous to your health, and (b) Savers is what Data Squad was called in Japan.) I'd thought "Come on. The name is Savers?! If you're going to make crap up, at least try to be convincing." Then Data Squad came out, and eating my words never tasted so good. (Here's hoping for a season six someday... and, more importantly, a season seven, because even-numbered Digimon seasons are like odd-numbered Star Trek movies.)
(Just for the record, the main reason for disbelief in its return was the fandom's rumor mill. You hear someone going on about how their uncle's grandma's dog walker who works at [name of company somehow involved in show but often not the one that actually produces it] knows about the new season and [your favorite past character here] is coming back and it stars the children of [most popular pairing at the time here] and their names are [all American names here; poster doesn't even know it's a dubbed anime!] every ten minutes for long enough, and the eye-rolling becomes a reflex. When I'd first heard about a new season, I'd thought "it's been all this time since Frontier ended, and they're still at it?" and I didn't even bother looking into it. Imagine my surprise when I saw it advertised on Toon Disney... as the season was already underway in the US.)
And not only do old favorites return a lot these days, so can old not-so-favorites: I've never heard anyone say a good word about Masked Rider, ever, but the failure of the last attempt to bring the Kamen Rider series to the US doesn't mean we don't get Kamen Rider Dragon Knight.
I'd hope, though, that if PR did have to take a powder for a while, it'd return with the same name. Even though it'd still be Americanized Sentai, it wouldn't be quite the same if it was called Super Task Force, made by entirely different people, and played by different rules. It'd be better than nothing, but I want my Rangers. And I want that 20th anniversary teamup, and to see what Koichi and Jackie do for episode #1000. (Get Amit Bhaumik back, in both cases, I'd hope.)
Point is, it's not over until it's over, and sometimes not even then. Half the shows we watch, this one included, are living proof.
Anyway, on to the main event.
From the beginning, you can tell this series is gonna stand out from the others. The villains have already taken over the world and the Rangers are fighting with a resistance? I'm torn between "awesome!" and "They stole my idea."
You see, there's this sentai series with animal theme, Red being a bird. Two seasons later, there's a sentai series with a bird theme, Red looking just like the guy from two seasons ago, except for a V-shaped line (much like the ones on RPM suits.) So I'd thought, what if the animal-themed Rangers went through business as usual, leading up to their Big Grand Final Battle... which they lose. The last scene is as they're all dragged away to their apparent doom by the main villain... except Red, who can only watch helplessly. The season finale closes with the bad guys starting to level the city, with no one capable of stopping them. See you next year! :D
Next season, the world looks like... well, basically, this. Four new Rangers-to-be, barely struggling to survive, don't recognize the resistance leader who recruits them, but we do... and the former Red doesn't tell them that there was a team before them who didn't do so well, only that he's more familiar with the enemy than most, and has a plan. And so it begins, again. (Whatever came between Liveman and Jetman could be the season after them. No reason to waste perfectly good footage.)
Old Rangers would survive and eventually be rescued, of course... how else do you get a teamup episode?
Anyway, seriously onto actual episode now. We start with a longer version of the opening narration, much like MMPR. It describes how the world was taken over by a sentient computer virus called... Venjix.
Does the new producer just not know the name, or did General Venjix just download himself to a computer somewhere, and make his dream of resurrecting the Machine Empire a reality in a different way than he'd originally planned? The villains reminded me of the Zeo ones from the first time I watched Go-onger. Two of his lieutenants weren't destroyed outright, so maybe they got upgraded to become the ones we see.
The ticker on the bottom of the screen for the 'news footage' looks all wrong. Each word, not each point, is separated, so it's less "evil computer virus ravages world... Kalish is a douchebag... rain in Spain doesn't fall mainly on plain after all..." and more... like... this... with.. whole... sentence... stretched... over... miles. (And since when do they use ellipsis for that anyway?)
Venjix looks a lot like HAL-9000. Only Power Rangers would dare try this without it being tongue-in-cheek. And make it work. Or does it only work 'cause we're all used to Power Rangers' brand of cheese?
(Tommy: "Your brand of cheese will never win!" Venjix: [Switches brands] Tommy: "Nooooooo!")
We also get to see a lot of villains wrecking town, something that never woulda flown a while back.
No sign of Kelson Henderson, which is too bad. He's a great actor, but gets such lame roles, so he probably won't be remembered too fondly by PR fandom. Phineas isn't enough to erase Norg, Flit, and (the unappreciated, IMO) Boom. But James Gaylyn (Zeltrax!) is the colonel!
Soldier: [Gives depressing report] "What should I do, sir?"
Colonel Truman: "Go shoot at something."
Soldier: "Yes sir."
He has this 'done this way too long' feel to him. No emotion until the bus drives up, with refugees aboard. The driver's got a Scottish accent! Awesome! We've seriously never heard one in PR (unless it's a minor guest sorta thing.)
The driver, Flynn, astonishes the Colonel by getting through the army of grunts in relatively few pieces with his mad driving skills. I wonder if this is to establish him as the awesome stunt driver type who's going to zig and zag his Zord around and stuff.
More than just driving skils. He tosses a partially-dismantled grunt out of the door when he first drives up.
As the last of the refugees escape into the city as the enemy planes make bombing runs (and more generic shooting that everyone does not escape), we get mention of Truman's son, who was apparently in the company the soldier's bad news was about. Truman must reluctantly close the city's shield anyway, and the voice we hear is that we'll later associate with "Dr. K." Thing is, as we see hands pushing buttons, we hear it non-digitized... and it still sounds female, though Dr. K is referred to as 'he.'
And only now do we meet the next two Rangers: at the last second, a pair who turns out to be Summer and Scott barely make it under the gate on a motorcycle. Summer takes of her helmet and does this slow-mo head-toss, her hair fanning out. Because she's worth it. She reminds me of Ronny, very much, which is definitely a good thing.
Doesn't work nearly as well for Scott.
Scott talks to his father, who talks to him as if he's just another soldier. He's Eagle 2, and someone else is Eagle 1 - and is apparently no longer with us. Judging by Truman's reaction, it was someone important. Scott's brother, maybe?
Definitely his brother. Watching it again, a soldier (same one from before?) mentions his sons, plural.
Here's where Power Rangers' death euphemisms come into play. "Destroyed" needs no explanation. "Down" under apparently fatal circumstances usually means he's just around the corner. "Disappeared" will be used just like "destroyed," sounding for all the world like just another way around saying "dead," but the person will always turn up again at the dramatically appropriate time. This also carries to other Saban shows (Spider-Man, for example.) "Gone," the person's mistaken half the time, but not the other half. If you 'were lost,' on the other hand, you are toast. You're beyond toast. On the deadness scale of one to ten, ten being... uh... really, really dead... 'lost' puts you at about a 13.
Seriously. Badly wounded, chained up in a box that's tossed into molten lava, and 'disappeared' in the explosion that destroyed the whole solar system twelve seconds later? See you episode 25-ish, with an explanation that's surprisingly plausible. 'Lost' in the fateful banana ice cream incident? Hope you made out your will.
Anyway, in the case of "Eagle 1 is down. He's gone, sir," 'Gone' puts him at a 5, and 'Down' pulls it back to a 3.
So, is Eagle 1 going to be the sixth Ranger, a bad guy, or a bad guy who becomes the sixth Ranger?
Soldier: "What if people are still out there, sir?"
Truman: "Then heaven help them - because we can't."
And with that, we go to a black screen with "Power Rangers RPM" written in rather non-fancy letters. Dude.
This is definitely not gonna be your average season. I think they put that title card there just to remind you that yes, this is still Power Rangers.
And we skip ahead another year. The desert area never gets old. A little camera-tilting makes it even more versatile.
The guy we'll come to know as Dillon is driving along, and wearing a gas mask. We did see a lot of brown fog before - it seems that the machines have made the atmosphere more to their liking. Another Zeo flashback: Mondo tried to do this to the water once. Grunt oil makes water that will kill you on the spot... or make very good coffee, according to Lt. Stone. However, this place isn't toxic according to Dillon's scanner, the better to show the actor's face earlier.
Is the song that's playing on the radio at the beginning a real one?
Dillon pours the last of his water on a lone flower. Aww.
Best grunt fight ever: when the Grinders come and attack, the scene is just the flower, and shadows move and we hear the sounds along with the music (grunt fight songs! I keep hoping we'll get 'em back, but it never happens.) The part with the grunt legs... genius.
Dillon ponders his pocketwatch/music box. Uh-oh.
Seriously uh-oh. A guy who (it turns out) doesn't remember where he came from, whose only keepsake is a pocketwatch? It's official: we're all doomed. Don't open it... no, no good reason to open it...
Does it work as a music box, or is that just BGM?
Enter Ziggy. He tries to mug him, but he's not very good at it when Dillon doesn't let him finish his spiel. Dillon's worked out that his 'gun' is a car part.
Turns out Ziggy knows the way to Corinth, and talks Dillon into taking him with him, and this is when he explains about his origin (or lack thereof.)
Ziggy: "No one's ever run the barricade during daylight! No one!"
Dillon: "Well, I'm about as close to no one as you're ever going to meet."
Grinders have motorcycles. Please please please tell me we'll see them again... like we didn't see Lily's again.
Dillon likes lollipops! I knew I was going to like him.
Turns out that sticking it to a homemade bomb somehow makes it go. Scratch a few Grinders.
So of course that's when the giant freakin' cannons appear.
This makes me wonder something: you're an evil computer program. You already rule the world. There's one human colony left that isn't much of a threat to you. Why do you care this much about preventing the last few stragglers from getting to it? If they need humans for something, they've gotten most of them by now, haven't they?
If you're an evil robot and finally take over the world and give those yucky organics the boot... what do you do with it?
I always wondered that. What if Skynet in the Terminator series ever finishes off the humans? What then? We've seen nothing of Skynet in movies or show unrelated to its human-bashing efforts. What does Skynet do in the areas where there are none left?
When Truman and company detect the car, the diagram on the screen makes it look like they could just as easily go around the cannon towers. Maybe only the ones that are active are shown.
And that establishment shot... the tower! The tower is in the clouds and the rest of the city is miles below. Is it hovering in the air? It seems held up by a very thin something-or-other... maybe that's not its support, but an antenna, so high it's gotta point down.
Truman finds something's not right about one of their life signs.
Venjix's headquarters are much less awesome-looking. His minions even less so. You got a yellow guy and a red-and-white guy, with the same Zeo-meets-Turbo design you'll get used to this year. Watching it, I forget which is which often, but I'll try and keep 'em straight for this. Venjix himself is still a HAL-like red 'eye' on the wall.
The bombs are called thermic charges. I guess they don't wanna say "thermal detonator" and get sued.
Dillon only gives his name now. At first, he'd said he didn't have one. Did he just make up the name Dillon now?
Ziggy drops the last bomb, as it's beeping faster and faster. Eventually, Dillon propels it out while swerving... apparently without anyone sticking a lollipop to it. It manages to kablooify a cannon tower nicely anyway.
Rather than, y'know, have the other cannons fire, Venjix has an arcade claw thingy pull out a "generation five attack bot." Now this guy looks very much like you took a Turbo monster and made him metal.
They get into town at last, Grinders right behind, and three uniformed people come up, which flashbacks show to be Flynn, Summer, and Scott.
The morph command is "RPM! Get in gear!" Which is pretty much the entire theme song as well, so it's not much of a surprise. And it looks like this team won't be hiding their identities, because they do come up unmorphed and don't hesitate to transform in front of Dillon and Ziggy.
The morph scene goes for 'elegant simplicity' as compared to last year's. I think I like it, though it's hard to really tell since it's a three-way.
Woah. Scott being Red means Dillon isn't. You mean the guy who comes in out of nowhere isn't instantly handed the red suit? Definitely a brand new day.
(I know, that started pre-Kalish. But it was Kalish who ran it into the ground. Wes got the red suit because as Alex's ancestor, only he could wear it, and Jen was still in charge, even chewing him out for not following orders once. Cole was given the red suit with the usual authority because the Lion Zord's chosen Ranger is always the leader. Casey got the red suit... because it's just habit by now. This year, one more sign of a head writer who cares is that not every habit is kept.)
The weapons show the racing theme that was big in sentai but doesn't really work for RPM. The guns look like gas pump handles.
Well, there's a little. You can hear engines rev and tires screech when the Rangers move fast. The bands on the wrists and ankles spin like tires!
The fight is mostly good ole grunt-kicking. Still less full-on hitting than pre-Kalish, or even Kalish's first couple days on the job, if you're to watch for it and count, but... JF fights looked like they were playing pat-a-cakes. (Not sure how you spell that.) That is definitely over.
Some slow-mo, but it's used as opposed to abused. I'm not surprised to not see things instantly revert to pre-Kalish status: after all, this is a new producer whose introduction to the series was Kalish stuff. He's got Disney's tighter-than-Fox-Kids censor rules in his ears... and not the fact that it should look like Time Force.
That's what I was worried about, actually: someone who doesn't know what a good PR fight looks like is told by the network folks just how defanged they want it, and all battles would get solved by playing Parcheesi or something. That fear is gone, 'cause for the first time in a while, I'm seeing a fight and not silly dancing and arm-waving, all slowed down to the point of being excruciating.
And that monster? Where's he in all this?
Going after Dillon and Ziggy, of course. Fortunately, Summer saves their butts, driving the monster away. As the Rangers go after him, bringing out their personal weapons, Dillon asks Ziggy... "What's a Power Ranger?" Ziggy looks at him like he's lost it.
I always wonder which team is referred to when someone refers to Rangers in general and not the team at hand. And the fact that Ziggy expects Dillon to know what a Ranger is even without having had an opportunity to meet Corinth's Rangers... you gotta wonder what happened to the other teams.
(There's an obvious, depressing answer that makes that 20th anniversary teamup highly unlikely even in the event of renewal... but they wouldn't do that. Would they?)