I just got (and watched) all of the Mighty Morphin Alien Ranger DVD (I got it out of order, since besides it I only have MMPR Season 1 Parts 1 & 2) but it was cheap and I knew I’d get it eventually, so I just picked it up at wal-mart. It had its problems. Just based off of what I saw, they did not want the alien rangers fighting. I think the alien rangers actually punched something (not counting the rather stupid “punching air” moments to go along with their zord fights) twice, maybe. Mostly they did more of the stupid slapstick that the kid actors were doing. It was bizarre, because not even the very, very young kid targeted Samurai or Mega Force (from what I’ve seen of them, I never did get more than a few episodes into either) seemed to have tried so hard to not include any fighting. I don’t know if they were trying to appease parents by basically eliminating the violence while the rangers were kids or something, but I doubt you could find another 10 episode run in the whole series with less actually fighting.
Most of the child actors replacing the main cast were ok. The only outright bad one I thought was the girl playing the young Katherine. She was a bit more annoying than the others, and frankly a bit hard to understand at times. Besides that, the others were usually tolerable, although I’m glad Billy became an adult again after only a few episodes. The alien rangers themselves were ok. I didn’t like the general lack of action (and they obviously had enough Kakuranger footage, but they only used it in mostly nonviolent scenes, like when the blue ranger ran on water or the beginning of a fight, but not the fight itself, with a witch themed monster) and the whole twitching the heads thing was a bit annoying, but they were an interesting idea. The command center’s destruction is just as cool at it was when I first saw it, it’s a really good scene that must have been intense for fans watching when it aired on TV. Overall, this was a worthwhile purchase, even if it wasn’t the best that MMPR had to offer.
One thing was weird is that I’d seen parts of these episodes before. I had an old VHS for years (I think it was called zeo quest). I watched it so many times that its practically burned into my brain. While I figured most of it would be on the MMAR DVD, what I didn’t know was that the VHS was actually a compilation of the second five episodes of the disc, only edited to only include the Zeo quest and command center destruction scenes from those episodes, while editing out the individual plots of the episodes and almost all of the alien ranger’s scenes. I always thought that the kid’s zeo quests took up a few episodes along with the CC destruction plot, but apparently both were spread over about five episodes. It was weird but cool to finally see the full episodes, and it made watching stuff I knew very well interesting by finally seeing everything. The vHS also included their becoming the Zeo rangers, but obviously that wasn’t going to be on the MMAR DVD.
I definitely want to get more of the DVD’s. I have all of season one (I’m watching the second part right now, I’m on episode 41). I watched a good amount of PR on a local channel when I was a kid, but its been years and they aired it kind of weirdly. I’m not super familiar with Season 2 and I don’t think I’ve seen more than a few episodes of Season three, so it will be interesting when I get to them. I’m also waiting and hoping we get Lost Galaxy on DVD sometime next year (I need my favorite series on dVD, it sucks to have to wait so long for it.)