You'd be surprised by the size of PR's adult fanbase. The show might be marketed primarily at young kids, but some of the sesaons also, tonally, appeal to an older audience, most of which watched the series as kids and has stayed with it - to some degree - over the years. BTW, to the people who may have given up on the franchise after its early seasons, you should give it another chance and check out the later seasons, in particular the following: Power Rangers in Space Power Rangers Lost Galaxy Power Rangers Time Force Power Rangers Dino Thunder (not personally a big fan, but enough of the fandom likes it for me to reccomend watching it) Power Rangers SPD (again, not a big fan, but it's popular with the majority so I'm again recommending it) Power Rangers RPM
Also for thouse who have stopped watching I'd recommend 'Forever Red' and 'Once a ranger' which were anniversary shows with a good deal of call back, especially FR. I saw most of Dino Thunder and will say it does its share of winks and nudges, the only one that comes to mind that isn't too much of a spoiler is Tommy commentating on the Rnagers fashion/colour choices.
Disney was foolish not to make use of this resource. Quality aside, age aside, you have 700 eps of air time you're not using, and if you add in all of Saban's lesser lights, it's gotta be in the 8's if not 1K area. Whole channels are run on less than this. If nothing else--release whole seasons on DVD. You could even nix Turbo's rep by releasing one half with the departing MMPR vets (as part of Zeo), and the other half along with the intro to Space. Channel, DVD--whatever--there is a base, and Disney never moved to exploit it. It kind of reminds me of Lincoln's comments to McClellan about the Army Of The Potomac--if you're not using it, can I borrow them? As to the appeal : Good goofy fun that occasionally transcends its limits.
Not to mention those of us who started watching as adults because the female Rangers were just plain hot. Especially Amy Jo Johnson, the original Pink Ranger. She's probably more responsible than anyone else for giving the show its initial popularity among adult male viewers. I didn't care for SPD, though maybe that's just me. It did go for a more sophisticated approach, with a lot of tension among the Ranger characters, but I just didn't care for the characters or their portrayers that year. Otherwise, I agree with your recommendations, although I'd add Mystic Force and Jungle Fury from the Disney years. I did a 3-part overview of the Power Rangers saga to date on my blog, beginning here: http://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2009/12/26/in-memoriam-the-power-rangers/
^ I was trying to reccommend seasons of the franchise that the majority of the PR fandom considers to be of decent to high quality. I would personally agree with you regarding Mystic Force, but am in a distinct minority there. Other series that I personally love that don't get a lot of appreciation from the PR fandom at large are Ninja Storm and Wild Force (although I haven't seen the latter in its entirety). Speaking of NS, I've got a suggestion for yuou based on the comments you made in your blog: give it another chance, and this time, pay attention to the similarities between it and the first 3 seasons of MMPR, because the parallels are uncanny. Most of the PR fandom considers Dino Thunder to be the most 'MMPR-esque' of the later seasons in the franchise, but, for me, that distinction goes to NS, because nearly every single one of the characters is an analogue in some way to a character from MMPR.
I figured that this would be the best thread to post this in. Linkara, who does the Atop the Fourth Wall comic reviews is currently working on an excellent History of Power Rangers video series.
I'm surprised. I thought it had one of the better storylines and one of the more consistently effective and appealing casts. And while Jungle Fury had its problems (such as a failure to develop the Rhino Ranger effectively and an overly abrupt resolution to some things), I thought it worked well overall. That doesn't exactly recommend it to me. MMPR, from a writing and characterization standpoint, was the weakest of all the Power Rangers incarnations. The first season would've been unwatchable if not for its highly charismatic, photogenic, and athletically gifted cast. And it's clear that NS was trying to be like MMPR, taking a comedic tone and focusing on hip teens, but the execution was very annoying and unfunny to me, and the cast was one of the least appealing.
^ I respect that analysis. NS is definitely what I like to call a 'split' season; it's got both its supporters and its detractors, but the supporters of the season aren't in the minority - overall - the way that the supporters of WF and MF are. Speaking of MF, one of the problems that a lot of the PR fandom has with it is that most of the 'focus' was on the character of Nick at what many felt was the expense of the others.
Fantastic videos. I owe it to Linkara and those videos for getting me back into Power Rangers. I can't wait for his Space review.
The current reruns on ABC add new, lame effects to the old episodes. Hell, there are times when it feels like they're turning it into the old Batman TV show with "Biff," "Pow," & "Wham" superimposed on the screen. Plus, they're taking too long getting through the early episodes and re-rerunning the early episodes. Most of the episodes before the Green Ranger showed up were shite. Yeah... While I suspect that much of the show that I loved when I was 12 will not hold up now that I'm 27, I'd still like to see them release some more of the old stuff on DVD, like everything up through Power Rangers in Space. While Power Rangers Turbo was one of the weaker series, I loved the 2nd half of it, with Hilary Shepherd Turner as Divatox. (Trekkies here would remember her as that slutty member of the Jack Pack in "Statistical Probabilities" & "Chrysalis.") She was great fun as the villain. "Viva La Diva!!!" I'll also have to disagree with the drooling over Kimberly. She was cute, but it's all about Kathrine! Tall, blonde, leggy, a sexy Austrailian accent, what's not to love? I'd also like to give a shout out to Ashley, Cassie, & Astronema from Power Rangers in Space!
It scares me that you're serious. I remember years ago, they reused Starship Troopers uniforms in one version...and I was like WTF?
That's fair, particularly where Madison is concerned; in fact, they even lampshaded their underuse of Madison by doing an episode about her feeling that she wasn't contributing enough to the team. But I feel the other Rangers aside from her were handled about as well as was typical. I'd say that it's pretty routine for the lead Ranger to get the most development and the other teammates less so. And Nick's story arc was one of the more interesting Red Ranger arcs. I'm not entirely sure, but I have the vague recollection that this "enhanced" version of MMPR was actually made over a decade ago when the reruns were syndicated or repackaged or something. So if I'm right about that, it's not ABC's or Disney's fault, except in that they chose to go with this edition rather than the original. It's too bad I find the interpolations so annoying. As much as I hated the writing in the first season, it would be enjoyable to revisit the old gang, especially Kimberly and Trini. Yeah, Turner's Divatox was the best PR villain ever. Nobody ever enjoyed being evil quite so much, or was so much fun to watch being evil.
Interesting stuff. Page 3 is probably the most shamelessly heterosexual anaylsis of the series I've ever seen. BTW, what did you mean by, "It was dark, but it was also funny, with great witty dialogue (Guzelian has a knack for it) and hilarious, biting deconstructions of longstanding Power Rangers tropes. Yet even as the show made fun of PR conventions, it simultaneously managed to concoct almost plausible-sounding scientific explanations for them — reconstructing even as it deconstructed"? What kind of conventions did it deconstruct? I decided to check out how some of these Rangers' careers have been going since they left the show. - Of course, Amy Jo Johnson has clearly had the most success of any of them, landing regular roles on Felicity & Flashpoint. - Walter Jones has had a decent career of supporting roles and guest roles on various TV shows & B movies. His biggest post-Ranger role was on the Nickelodeon sci-fi series Space Cases (many episodes of which were written by Peter David and Bill Mumy and occasionally featured a pre-Firefly Jewell Staite). He also had a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo on Buffy the Vampire Slayer as one of the frat boys throwing the Halloween party in "Fear Itself." - Patricia Ja Lee has been doing more anime voice over work it seems. - Unfortunately, IMDB shows scant few credits for Austin St. John, Jason David Frank, Tracy Lynn Cruz, or Catherine Sutherland. (Except Catherine Sutherland was in that Jennifer Lopez movie The Cell.)
I'm not entirely sure I'd call her the best villain ever. I've still got a soft spot for ol' Lord Zedd. But you're right that no one else can play a fun villain like Turner. There's one episode I remember in particular, where she was holding auditions for new monsters. Just the way she got so exasperated with the moronic auditioners was pure comedy gold. It's ironic that I can talk about this show so (relatively) openly now. I remember back when I was in middle school, my best friend & I loved the show so much. His parents bought him nearly every toy in the line from the beginning of the series all the way up through Power Rangers in Space. Yet we both felt like we were a few years too old to watch the show respectably. We were closet Power Rangers fans, always terrified that one of our classmates would discover our secret and destroy our social standing forever. It got so bad that, when we went to the theater to see Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie, I thought up an alibi in case anyone we knew saw us there. Lo & behold, we did end up running into a P.E. classmate of mine. When he asked us what movie we saw, without a beat, I lied, "The Empire Strikes Back."
Everything. Every cliche of the previous fifteen years of Power Rangers. The multicolored costumes, the transformation phrases, the animalistic giant robot vehicles, every trope and silly stylistic gimmick you can think of. The most brilliant and hilarious example was an episode that made use of the gimmick of having random explosions go off behind the Rangers when they transform and pose. They rationalized it as a release of excess energy from the transformation process. And then, when the other Rangers were menaced by the monster of the week, the Blue Ranger figured out he could use this effect -- by transforming with his back to the monster!! And some movies too, including a TV movie with the very apt title of Perfect Body (about bulimia or anorexia, but with a ton of AJ gymnastics). I think he did a CSI episode once. Of course, Archie Kao, the Lost Galaxy Blue Ranger, has been one of the CSI Lab Rats for many years now. Several other former PR cast members, including Hilary Shepherd Turner, have done CSI guest spots. It's odd, since they don't have any casting directors or producers in common. As has Johnny Yong Bosch, who's one of the leading anime dub artists in the field. Sure, Zedd was fun, but Divatox was sexier.
Awesome! What were some others? Personally, I used to always be bothered by why the giant monsters never seemed to attack the Megazord during the seemingly vulnerable transformation stage. At least, on Power Rangers in Space, it looked like the Astro-Megazord had some sort of shield around it while it transformed. BTW, speaking of Zords, I have a long-delayed rant coming about that red battle-Zord that Billy gave to Tommy on Power Rangers Zeo. Here, after several years of perfectly functional, conventional Zords, Billy tries to reinvent the wheel with a Zord controlled by telepathy. Unfortunately, because it's controlled by telepathy, it doesn't work right when Tommy is under stress. So since he can't stop angsting about his newly retconned long-lost brother, his new Zord can't fight for shit. It's like those bio-neural gel-packs from Star Trek: Voyager. They were supposedly faster than traditional circuits but they seemed to get infected every other week.