Power Rangers Dino Charge Retrospective: Part 3

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to this deconstruction of the demoralizing dreck that comprises the contents of this juvenile junk. Power Rangers Dino Charge, everyone!
We continue this journey with "The Royal Rangers." Titled such, because Tyler and Shelby decide to impersonate the royalty of Zandar. This is where it would come in handy if they had contact with the government, or other teams of Rangers affiliated with the government. You don't need to come up with these stupid schemes when you have official support.
Or, and here's a radical idea, maybe they could... Talk to the actual Prince of Zandar and explain what's going on? It's not like he wouldn't have reason to believe them, considering there have been twenty different Power Rangers teams. Plus, they could just show him what's happening and he'd probably help them out. Especially considering Phillip's actions later in the series. What with him being the only competent team-member and the only one who's actually involved in this whole ordeal by choice.
Anyways, once Prince Phillip gets wind of this, he shuts the whole situation down. Like it would have flown in the first place, since royalty are typically celebrities, and people should know what they look like. Even being from an obscure country like Zandar, people have the internet. Not only will the public not buy it, the government of Zandar would find out quickly, and shut them down. Plus, since the villains appear to have access to the internet and to the news, they should be able to figure out that this is nothing but low-quality bait in record time. Except they don't. Because they're idiots.
The Rangers lure Fury out of hiding, but Tyler fails to kill him for fear that the figure he sees fighting to free himself from Fury is his father.
In the next episode, "Break Out," everything I predicted would happen, happens. Prince Phillip III of Zandar shows up to put a stop to their stupid antics. He gets attacked after reclaiming his kingdom's property from the nutjobs at the Museum, and the Rangers rescue him. Phillip realizes that Fury is the monster from Zandarian legend that the knight, Sir Ivan defended Prince Colin against. Lo and behold, guess who the gold energy was? Sir Ivan of Zandar, the holder of the Gold Energem. He uses his Energem to don his Ranger suit (With no explanation as to why he knows how to do that) Ivan defeats Sledge's ground forces, and then uses the Energem to free the Pterazord from Fury's control and uses it to defeat Sledge's enlarged monsters.
After the situation is wrapped up, Ivan offers the Gold Energem to Prince Phillip, as the Prince he was assigned to protect had requested he retrieve it. Phillip, being the only sane man in this whole situation, tells Ivan to keep it to fend off the aliens who are trying to tear the earth apart in search of a collection of incredibly powerful gems that could destroy the planet if misused.
The next episode is titled "Knight After Knights," and it's entirely centered around a villain by the name of Bones somehow removing the Ranger's backbones (Metaphorically) so they won't have the courage to fight. This causes Ivan to abandon them as a lost cause, and go out to recruit a posse of competent heroes to fight off Sledge. Except instead of getting a team of Rangers, he assembles a team of civilians. Not soldiers, not a Lightspeed Rescue style team of skilled professionals, random plebs. A magician, (A fake one, not the real kind like you'd expect to see in a universe with an evil witch and an entire team whose powers are based on freaking magic) a tuba player, a referee, an old woman on a scooter, and a crossing guard.
The most important person in this whole situation is the crossing guard, played by Bruce Phillips. For those of you who don't know, Bruce Phillips played Andrews, Summer's butler from Power Rangers RPM. Andrews was a great character who was important to Summer's character arc. He was well-written and a great addition to the series. Bruce Phillips did a damn good job as Andrews. Just a shame they couldn't have used him better in this series. You wanna know what happens when Ivan takes his new crew out to handle the monsters?
They flee in terror.
Now, to some extent that makes sense. They're just random people, after all, but as this series has proven, random people can prove to be the best of heroes. Andrews was a bonda-fide hero. In some other universe, he might have been a Ranger himself. I know this whole episode was about the Rangers finding courage in the face of abject terror, but this team just sucks! Back in the Disney era, or even the classic Saban era, it would have been focused on a single Ranger's issues, and resolved them without crapping all over side-characters. Unless they were Bulk and Skull.
Anyways, Shelby shows up to help Ivan, and after a motivational speech from Keeper, the rest of the team shows up as well. They get their courage back, kill Bones, and Ivan gets a burger with fries at the cafe.
In case you were wondering, this was a filler episode that did nothing but waste the audience's time.
We finally reach one of the episodes I referenced in the beginning of this series, "Sync or Swim." In this episode, in addition to the events I mentioned prior, Ivan and Tyler begin a rivalry to last all of one episode.
Compare this to Tommy and Jason's rivalry, or Theo and Casey's. The rivalry starts when the characters are introduced and lasts long enough for it to actually have an arc. To actually show the characters changing. Because who needs character development? Who needs good pacing? Who needs to have multi-part episodes where things actually happen? No, everything has to be smashed down to less episodes than they need to actually execute everything properly so we can fit in all this filler.
Long story short, they get over themselves, they lob the bomb that Sledge tried to use to destroy the museum and kill them at his ship, it barely does anything, and we never once see the Rangers go into space, with their clearly space-worthy Megazord to try and put an end to all of this. Because it's not like that would actually help. Not like they could prevent a lot of property damage and loss of life. Not like there was an incredibly popular and iconic episode dedicated to Rangers going into space and kicking ass. Not like there were two whole teams dedicated to exploring space and handling things in space! NOT LIKE THERE WAS A TEAM LITERALLY CALLED "POWER RANGERS IN SPACE." Either Lost Galaxy or In Space would have rocketed up to Sledge's ship as soon as they found out about it and wiped him from existence. Then again, there are a few other things that previous teams of Rangers would have done if Saban hadn't utterly forgotten about them. For all his talk about segregating Ranger teams to their own universes, Johnathan Tzachor did a better job acknowledging past teams than Judd Lynn has, who might I remind you, worked on In Space!
Aside from the fact that Rangers can clearly handle being in space, aside from the fact that there are other teams that probably should have handled the situation a good twenty-some years ago, or even the fact that Earth has the capability without relying on Rangers to take out Sledge, the Dino Charge Rangers had spacefaring capability before they got ahold of the Zord that was actually modeled on the freaking Space Shuttle! This means they could have ended most of the threat posed by Sledge and his crew literally as soon as they got ahold of the god-damn Pteracharge Megazord! As in about an episode ago! But hey, that's just my experience as a tactician talking, just my years of studying military strategy and military battles to their finest points to find out what went wrong where, and who did it worst. Hell, I don't even need to have studied all of that to know that they made a bad move by not bringing the battle right to Sledge when they got the chance, the simple fact that they could and didn't is a glaring narrative error.
Now, before anyone starts in about the ground-rules Zordon laid down, I would just like to point out that not only do they never once mention any of Zordon's teachings about reducing collateral damage and having a decent amount of restraint to your actions, they also violate most of his rules at some point in the series! Trust me, we'll get to that. That's gonna be a treat to see.
Back on the subject of them not taking the fight to Sledge, I would just like to point out that this level of stupidity on their part comes back to bite them in the ass a few times, both in this season and the next. In a big way. Something that goes beyond any of the mistakes any of the other Ranger teams might have made, perceived or real. If you don't already know what it is, I wish I could see your face when you find out.
Anyways, enough harping on this rather major piece of failure, let's move past it and start harping on the other major failures they have!
Actually, let's come back to "Sync or Swim" and talk about some of the dumb antics. Tyler and Ivan's rivalry becomes one of the most childish and petty things I have ever seen. Think back to previous rivalries, Theo and Casey for instance. Theo was rather naturally and justifiably skeptical of Casey's leadership qualities, since he was so inexperienced, and this attitude led to Casey being a bit irritated with Theo. Their rivalry was a perfectly natural representation of human interaction, especially as they grew out of it over the course of the series. Tommy and Jason were both take-charge kind of guys, so they would naturally butt heads. The two of them learned that neither one of them could handle every situation, and that sometimes they needed to really work together to succeed. With each of the Rangers being the equivalent to a one-man army, this is perfectly understandable. In this? The rivalry starts off with Ivan and Tyler wearing the same sweet coat, and them getting upset over this. Tyler especially when Shelby says Ivan wears it better. Shenanigans ensue. To the point that it actually lets the villains escape from them. Compare this piece of crap episode to "Gung Ho!" one of the defining episodes from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Yes, they hardly ever used the Thunder Slingers in the show after that, but there was actual character development between Jason and Tommy!
Anyways, the next episode is titled "True Black," and it's another Chase-centric one.
Chase is testing out some new gear from Kendall, Dino Armor X. A pair of gator-jaws that turn him into a giant drill. They say it only works for him, but that's going to be forgotten soon.
Wrench uses a monster called Gold Digger to attack the training grounds later, and the Rangers try to stop him. Tyler, Ivan and Shelby are buried underground (They should by all rights be dead, either immediately or soon) and Chase tries to dig through Gold Digger's stone tablets with his claws, but it doesn't work. Apparently his inability to use the armor properly right now stems from his guilt over not helping Shelby get tickets to see her favorite boy-band. Neither Koda nor Reilly can use the Dino Armor X Charger themselves, so Chase has to apologize, the powers work fine and he saves the other Rangers. They finish off Gold Digger, tickets are gotten to see this pseudo-1Direction band called "The N-Zed Boys" and the Rangers get time off to go to the concert. This episode could have been cut entirely and nothing would have been lost. In fact, a future episode would make a bit more sense. Not a whole lot more sense, just a bit. There are still plenty of other unanswered questions. Dino Armor X is used a total of once, the N-Zed Boys are brought up a handful more times in the series, but their introduction could have been a lot smoother. Maybe have one of their songs playing on Tyler's car radio? Maybe have Shelby wear some of their merch earlier on in the series, or maybe use an actual band instead? They had to commission original music anyways, maybe they could have gone all-out on it and actually shown the concert they went to! Maybe they could have written something around that instead! It'd make about as much sense as some of the other things that happen in the series...
The title is absolutely meaningless, just like "Breaking Black" before it was. Back in the Disney and classic Saban eras an episode titled "Breaking Black" would have been more than just a cute little reference, they would have actually broken the Black Ranger's spirit. Maybe even killed him! Then "True Black" would have followed, and been focused on building them back up as a person. But hey, let's waste all the opportunities we've got to use titles in a way that fits thematically. Saban in this day and age would have had "Green With Evil" be all about the Green Ranger being jealous and getting a bit douchey for about an episode before everything wraps up at the end.
The next episode actually has a title that fits with the events of the episode. "Rise of a Ranger" is probably the strongest episode of the series, mainly because it focuses on my favorite character, Prince Phillip.
Phillip, rather than sit on his ass all the time and wait for those morons we call the Dino Charge Rangers to sort out the situation, he puts his influence to work figuring out a way to help. He has his people find an Energem, and when he can't figure out how to make it work, he decides to try and convince the forces that govern Ranger powers of his worth. He goes out of his way to help out the people of the world and actually make some kind of difference. As opposed to causing collateral damage, doing stupid shit, and not bothering to handle their villains properly like the rest of the Dino Charge Rangers do. Phillip practices combat training with a robot so he can partake in the beatdowns with the rest of the team, and basically does his damndest to be of some help. He decides to try and reconfigure his training robot for direct control and tries to use it to combat Sledge's forces. It doesn't work out 100% right, but his heart is in the right place.
Unfortunately, this isn't how the Rangers see it. They fail to acknowledge the previous robotic and cybernetic Rangers, and claim a robot isn't up to the task of being a Ranger.
*Deep breath* The Machine Empire, Robotic Turbo Rangers, Blue Centurion, Cyborg Lightspeed Rangers, Krybots, Mack Hartford, Dylan, Teneya 7/15, the Venjix Computer Network, Grinders, the various Attack Bots deployed by Venjix, freaking Robo-Knight. As well as any number of other robotic villains and/or allies who have kept up with Rangers in the past which I may be forgetting. Do you see the point? Do you understand the problem with this situation? I do. Yet again, another slap in the face to the legacy of the franchise. Judd Lynn not only worked on Turbo, he was rather involved with much of the Zordon era. On top of all of that, he was the second EP on Power Rangers RPM. You know, that series with the villains who were exclusively robots. Full stop, that's the premise. We don't even need to dig into Dylan and Teneya, the fact that the main villains were entirely made up of robots and killed plenty of the forces who came up against them, that alone undermines everything Shelby says right here. The fact that Overdrive was led by a cyborg, the fact that the third Turbo team was entirely made up of robots means that either Shelby is dumb or Judd Lynn is. Does Saban even have a continuity editor? A fact-checker, someone to keep the canon generally straight? If they do, did they listen to them? It's not like Judd Lynn is Michael Bay, and he was trying to make Armageddon more fun to watch. At this point, it doesn't even matter if he was the one who wrote that line, he worked on the script for this episode! He co-wrote it, he should have crossed that line out and had Kendall rather than Shelby feed Phillip a line about the clunkyness and complexity of the control-pad interfering with the efficacy of the robot. However, to run this all the way back to the robot itself. If I were a prince with wealth and influence like Phillip does, I'd create some kind of Real Steel-style control-system coupled with a VR headset and omni-directional treadmill. That way, I could control the robot, see what it sees, and control it as if I was actually there. You know, like the kind of control-system we've seen out of Megazords in the past. The Tigerzord, Jungle Pride Megazord, Samurai Megazord, hell even the Dino Charge Megazords are controlled like that. Probably a few more that I've missed, but the few examples I've shown should be more than enough to prove that the technology exists within the universe that could do exactly what I just laid out easily. Nothing else to it, this setup is idiotic.
Anyways, earlier in the episode, Fury saves Poisandra from one of Sledge's prisoners (Why hasn't this happened before and why hasn't Sledge just cashed in his prisoners to keep his girlfriend safe?) and gets back in his boss's good graces. This leads up to his attack on the Rangers. I'll get into that a bit later.
Right after Phillip's initial encounter with his Enegem, we move right into something which becomes a staple of this series. The endless masturbatory references to New Zealand! It was somewhat light earlier in the series, but this is where it all becomes a bit cringeworthy. Especially when they head off to New Zealand. As opposed to all the barely-disguised New Zealand shots they use throughout. How is it that everyone else who produces things in New Zealand, from Disney to Warner Bros. have managed to make it not look obvious that they were filming in New Zealand, but Saban can't? Or more to the point, don't care to?
Chase's little sister and a group from her school in New Zealand (Read: Just down the road IRL) perform a traditional dance in traditional Maori regalia. She wants to go skateboarding with her brother, but then Fury shows up and everything goes down as I said it did earlier.
Fury and his Vivix abscond with the robot, while Phillip tries to figure out what he needs to do to show the Energem he's a good person, and he does everything I just said he did. After none of that works, a dejected Phillip gives the Energem to the Rangers in the hopes that they can find a worthy wielder. Then Chase's sister shows up, and monsters attack. Phillip, without a thought for himself, rushes out to save her. Lo and behold, this is the catalyst the Energem needed to bond with him. They handle the situation (And the reprogrammed robot) and wrap things up. The girl Chase was dating earlier gets him a ticket so he can go home and see his family for Christmas, and Chase thanks her. Unfortunately, after he went through all that trouble to help, Phillip is called back to Zandar on royal business. Although I'd personally reckon he was having far more interesting solo-adventures fighting crime in his country. I think this because I feel like there's a more interesting story to be told here that wasn't.
Now, the next episode as far as continuity is concerned is "Ghostest With The Mostest," but it wasn't aired like that. In fact, it was aired immediately prior to "Rise of a Ranger." The production numbers actually put it as the twenty-first episode in the series. Considering it's a clip-show, and doesn't actually have any real impact on the series as a whole, it doesn't particularly need to be watched at all. There's no real enjoyment to be had, this episode (And all the holiday specials in this series) is nothing but pure filler.
Duplicon is resurrected, and between him and Memorella, Sledge now has a Ranger of his own to control. Kendall's system flags alien DNA, so instead of doing a blood-test on them, they decide to do a lie-detector test. Even if you didn't have their DNA on file, the one who doesn't submit to the test is likely the imposter.
Anyways, after a bunch of flashbacks to things nobody cares about, they flag that the fake Ranger is Koda right as the real Koda shows up. He was referring to Kendall as "Miss Morgan" instead of "Kendall" as he usually does.
There's really nothing of note in this episode aside for the fact that there was about a frame or two of Kyoryuger cockpit footage visible before they cut to the original footage. This wouldn't be noticeable if not for the fact that Saban has this rather strange fetish for introducing suit variants that the Rangers can only use in the cockpit of the Megazord. Even so, even with all of this, if it wasn't for the fact that the cockpits are so different, it probably would have been harder to notice. Back in the day, all you had to do was shoot some original fight-scenes and then the Japanese mecha footage could be used in its entirety. At least as long as the characters kept their helmets on. I suppose Saban just likes to try and sell more toys at the expense of the cockpit footage having zero continuity with the rest of the show. For the record, I think that Dino Drive was a complete waste of time, effort, plastic and money when a much cooler suit of armor would debut not too long after it did.

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Power Rangers Dino Charge Retrospective: Part 2

 Welcome back to my Power Rangers Dino Charge retrospective, where we continue on with the fifth episode of the series, "Breaking Black."
Contrary to the title, there will be nothing in this episode related to "breaking" Chase, nor will there be anything drug-related happening. Shame, because it must have taken plenty of drugs to think that Chase's origin is anything resembling original. Or to consider this episode anything resembling good.
Chase is being careless, but an old friend of his, Moana, a Maori mystic woman who gave him his Energem when he saved her cat, asks him to watch her shop for a while. He agrees, but one of Sledge's minions, Spellbinder, robs the shop of an amulet. He then uses that amulet on Chase, and rather than taking his Energem from him and then proceeding to use him to get the other four Energems, he skips Step One and proceeds straight to attempting to steal the others from the rest of the Rangers. Spellbinder's cape manages to fend off some of the Ranger's attacks, but Moana tells the Rangers that Chase focuses best when he's riding his skateboard, and Shelby uses this information to snap Chase out of the spell. Yes, this is literally what happens. No, I don't know why. This episode sort of feels like it should have been later on in the series, after Chase got together with his girlfriend, and with a fairly massive rewrite. Once we get there, we'll start to see more orphaned concepts attached to incredibly dumb premises for no discernible reason.
We get to the end of the episode where Koda tells Chase it's his turn to mop the floor when it's actually Koda's. Starting the tradition that otherwise mediocre or good episodes get capped off by dumb shenanigans. This is going to stick around, unfortunately.
The next episode is titled "The Tooth Hurts." It's all about a cavity monster who makes everyone's teeth hurt. Yes, that's as stupid as it sounds.
Chase and Riley begin butting heads over training their training regimens. Chase follows his instincts, while Riley follows a strict method. Yeah, that's original. That dynamic hasn't been done to death and back in basically everything ever.
Poisandra sets about getting herself a wedding cake made (After sixty-five million years) by using one of Sledge's prisoners, a chef named Cavity, to make them.
Question. How does a chef that bakes weird, ultra-sweet cakes that makes peoples teeth hurt wind up on the radar of someone like Sledge? Or even his boss, Lord Arcanon? It's not like he's adept at creating cakes that kill people, but hey, I've gotten my idea of bounty hunters from Star Wars and the old west, where people usually have to have done something to get on the radars of a crime-lord like Arcanon. Maybe he borrowed money from one of Arcanon's loan-sharks (Assuming he has loan-sharks) and he sent Sledge out to handle it. Except that didn't happen, because the writers didn't think of that.
Anyways, once the Rangers catch wind of the situation, they go out to try and handle the situation. For some reason, rather than splitting Riley and Chase up so that they can stop clashing, Keeper says nothing and the two of them let Cavity get away. They later begin learning to work together and manage to overcome their differences to destroy the monster, to the surprise of nobody.
In addition to the points I brought up in the last review, we get to a few of the flaws in Sledge's plan. He has at his disposal an entire brig full of various dangerous monsters, and an entire army of Vivix footsoldiers. He could wage a campaign of espionage and infiltration that could break the very hearts and souls of the Rangers without them ever finding out what he's doing. This will be fleshed out further on in the series when we're introduced to a few more of the covert monsters in Sledge's prison.
The next episode marks the debut of the Ankylosaurus Zord, and the debut (Or rather, the continuation) of one of the series few overarching plot-threads. Who holds the Aqua Energem?
Now, call me crazy, but I personally would have made the Aqua Zord the Plesiosaurus, but that's more of a criticism of Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger than it is of this show. Power Rangers couldn't have changed that unless they re-painted a Warrior-class and Auxiliary-class Zord and completely remade two suits. Then they'd have been stuck with plenty of unusable stock-footage. Considering how poorly this series spent its $35 million budget as it is, I doubt there was much left for fixing a rather obvious coloration error. Anyways, I'd much rather have them spend their budget on important things, like making sure the episodes are edited properly. Oh, wait. Yeah, we'll get to that sometime towards the end.
Anyways, back on track, the Rangers are on the hunt for the other Energems. Shelby comes up with a plan to eliminate fossils of dinosaurs that are already associated with an Energem, and Kendall begins working on Chargers which can hone in on the location of the Zords and the Energems. I say "Zords" as well, because that's what they pick up, the location of the Zord. Not, in fact, the location of the Energem itself. We'll get to the problems with this sometime later.
Anyways, Poisandra enlists Stingrage, one of Sledge's prisoners (Who can sting people or animals and put them into a berzerker rage. Name's a bit on the nose, no?) to track down an Energem. He, Poisandra and her sidekick Curio get to where the Zord is and Stingrage stings it. The Rangers arrive on-scene, but Stingrage stings Koda, and overwhelms their defense.
Now, do you want to know how Poisandra figured out where the Zord was?
Kendall didn't encrypt the transmission! In her own words, "Anyone could have intercepted the signal."
Yeah, no shit Sherlock! Apparently it doesn't require any common-sense to be a museum curator, because this is so far beyond basic that it literally makes no sense why she didn't encrypt their communication signals!
Anyways, long-story short, Shelby manages to calm Ankylo down, the Rangers beat Stingrage with its help, and Kendall gives Shelby fossilized Triceratops dung as a gift. Naturally, she overreacts the hell out of it.
Question, how do you know the fossilized dung is in fact from a Triceratops? Wait, you wouldn't.
This brings us the the last episode before the ridiculous Nick-mandated hiatus that mars the airing schedule of every Neo-Saban Power Rangers series. Well, that and their seasonal episode-limit. This is "Double Ranger, Double Danger."
After the Rangers blocked off their signals, Sledge tasks Poisandra with stealing their Energy-Tracer. Poisandra recruits Duplicon to help her out.
Tyler spends some time moping over his missing dad before aliens approach the site, and Kendall sends him off with the tracer instead of accompanying him herself. Yes, they sent him alone with the tracer while Kendall, who has no powers at this point in the series, stayed behind to fight them off. I'd think you might want to pack it into Tyler's Jeep, let Kendall drive and have a Morphed Ranger come along for the ride as backup.
Anyways, Tyler manages to get away, and Duplicon's cloned Rangers catch up to him (In Morphed form) and they ride off. Shelby, unmorphed, calls him up to figure out why he left without them. The cloned Rangers take this opportunity to assault Tyler and abscond with the tracer.
The Rangers regroup and face off with their clones. They kill them rather unceremoniously.
Tyler faces off with Fury. Fury gets the upper-hand, and almost kills Tyler, but a golden light emerges from his body and messes with him. Rather than take a few seconds out to blast him to kingdom come, Tyler pisses off to help out the other Rangers. Who could have handled their situation on their own if it wasn't for the obsession this series has with making Tyler use the Dino Spike to finish off villain. There's no reason they couldn't have handled that on their own. I'm almost positive that Jungle Fury handled monsters stronger than Duplicon with just the core three! Various flavors of Kamen Rider have taken down monsters more of a threat than Duplicon on their own!
Poisandra almost makes off with the scanner, but Fury attacks her and takes it himself so he can gain favor with Sledge. Rather than hopping up onto the walkway to wrest the machine from him, Tyler orders Chase to destroy the machine. The tracker is destroyed, but the Charger isn't, and Fury recovers it and escapes.
This brings us to by far, one of the biggest problems with Power Rangers on Nickelodeon. The summer hiatus. "Double Ranger, Double Danger" was aired on April 4th, 2015. The next episode, "When Logic Fails" aired four months less a day afterwards on August 3rd. Except it only aired that early in Brazil for some reason. In the states it was released on Nick.com on August 15th, and aired on television proper the next week on the 22nd. Two more weeks and it would have been a solid five months between new episodes. That's plenty of time to utterly forget a series exists and lose interest entirely.
There are a few simple rules that television shows should probably follow: You don't have more than one week between episodes from the same season. You never move a show from its airday or timeslot, be it in the middle of a season or between them. Also. This is very important too. Do NOT air episodes on different dates internationally! If you do, you're going to wind up in the exact same position Saban has been in for at least the last two years now! I was watching the fandom closely on social media, there was hardly anyone waiting on the domestic airings to watch the new episodes. No, everyone was flocking to the Brazilian encodes because they featured the original English audio track in addition to the native dub. Two episodes were aired on Cartoon Network in Brazil before the hiatus officially ended. Not that there should have been a hiatus to begin with, but wouldn't you want to synchronize your airdates so that everyone gets it at the same time and maximize simultaneous viewers? As many companies in Japan have found out, the best way to prevent people from pirating your product is to air it internationally as quickly as possible. Sadly, Saban hasn't curried on to that idea yet, because this issue persisted well into the second season, and has in fact, gotten worse! The only episodes that I know of that didn't air outside the states before they aired in France were probably the first half of the season, and the Christmas special! Yes, even the finale aired first in France before it aired in the states! At least that didn't happen for the season one finale, thank god!
Aside from all the meta-series quibbles, this is easily one of the worst episodes of the season, if not the whole series, for a number of reasons that we'll get into once I start breaking this stuff down.
Before Chase destroyed the eTracer, Fury was able to get a reading off the machine on the location of the Pterazord. The Charger is completely discharged, so there's no chance of being able to summon it without the Gold Energem. Sledge is irritated with Fury for getting the eTracer destroyed, and tosses him off the ship, but not before the cat-man takes the Charger with him.
In this scene, Wrench, Sledge's engineer, says that the only way to charge the charger up is to use the Gold Energem.
This raises a question that will hang over the entirety of the series, because it's never answered. There are a total of eleven Energems. Ten associated with a dinosaur and zord. There are a total of thirty Chargers used in the show, five of which have no dinosaur relation, and thirteen of which are associated with dinosaurs that have no corresponding Zord. (At least in the TV show) The question Wrench raises with his statement is one you may have thought of by now, but if not, I'll say it anyways.
What do the other Chargers run on? I get how the main ten work, they have Energems paired that can fuel them. The others though? They've got nothing backing them up. If this hadn't been brought up, I would have just rolled with it for the most part. All you'd have to do is say that Sledge and the gang don't really have the gear hooked up to charge it up properly and you're golden. The Energems can be a damn good source of energy for the Chargers, but regular old Electricity can work just fine as long as you've got enough of it, basically operating on the same rules that Stargate does. I presumed at the time that the Zords are intended to work with the Energems as the Morphers were demonstrated as doing in the first episode, but considering what we learn towards the end of season two, and the fact that there's a Zord that runs exclusively on Dino Chargers due to it not being paired with an Energem, I have the rather distinct feeling that they weren't paying the closest attention to the rules set down in this series. If they were even trying to follow rules when making this show, which is questionable, considering the amount of long-standing franchise rules they appear to be determined to undermine. Not to mention how often they've contradicted what were supposed to be hard and fast rules about how this series arsenal is supposed to function.
Episode Nine is where we see more than a hint that Riley is the geek of the group. Namely, he starts going full-on Sherlock Holmes to some extent, and being the only one with common sense for the entirety of the rest of the episode. Everyone is meandering about until Riley points out that the villains need to find a way to charge up the Ptera Charger.
Meanwhile, Fury and Wrench, accompanied by a prisoner named Puzzler are infiltrating the only other lab with the tech that could do that. I presume they're related to Alphabet Soup in some way, but we don't really find out why they have this technology.
Fury and Wrench leave Puzzler to guard the outside of the building, (He's a gigantic yellow thing with green maze lines all over him.) but he sees a pair of children playing chess dumbly and tries to give them advice. Naturally, this scares the crap out of them. The fleeing children tip off Chase that something's wrong, and he encounters Puzzler. Puzzler overwhelms him, but the rest of the team arrives before Chase can be killed. Puzzler flees, and the Rangers give chase. Puzzler decides to turn the building into a maze so he can have a chance of surviving his encounter. He also cranks the temperature down below freezing in an attempt to kill the Rangers. Which should't work for a number of reasons. First off, their Energems are supposed to protect them from freezing, as was demonstrated in the first episode. Second, they could literally just Morph and they'd be fine. Nobody has ever died in a Ranger suit. They're the most sophisticated life-support system in the universe, demonstrated by the numerous times that they've allowed Rangers to operate in a vacuum and not suffocate and die. "Forever Red" had a team of Red Rangers on the moon, In Space had them doing that all the time. Lost Galaxy too, probably, since it was a space-themed season too. My point is, this is a non-issue for the Rangers.
The maze is about what you'd expect out of a supernatural labyrinth. The illogical geometry, infinitely looping staircases, doorways that lead straight off a cliff, and jammed vending machines. No, not kidding. While all the other Rangers are preoccupied with other dumb things, Koda decides to get food. Once the machine jams, rather than smash the glass with his cave-man strength, or his gun, or his sword, he tries reaching inside, shaking it, doing generally dumb things. Because his character, which has some of the most potential to be interesting, is regularly reduced to "comedy" antics.
The only one to come close to actually doing something sensible is the focus-character of this episode, Riley. He climbs through the vents and sees Fury and Wrench harnessing the yellow glob thing inhabiting Fury to power the Pteracharger. Fury pilots the Ptera Zord out, and Riley escapes the maze. Now, rather than simply killing Puzzler and rescuing the rest of the Rangers, Riley challenges him to a game of 3D Chess. Riley beats him, frees the other Rangers, they kill Puzzler, and things wrap up. RIley isn't even the one to pull the trigger on Puzzler, Koda is the one to do it.
For a mid-season return, "When Logic Fails" is a pitiful excuse for anything. It's hard to describe exactly how underwhelming this was to behold upon initial viewing when it was aired. First off, this episode establishes Riley as the teams smart guy, despite the fact that this is never referred back to in anything more than a filler episode. Additionally, they dropped nothing more than one hint towards him being this much of a brain, and that was the name of his dog, Rubik! Riley just pulls this Sherlock Holmes-vision out of nowhere, and it never, I repeat, never makes an appearance after this.

That about does it for this part of the breakdown, I do apologize for the length of the wait, but I've been some combination of sick and busy for the last two weeks.
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The Angry Birds Movie

Let's be perfectly honest, was anyone expecting this movie to even exist? Angry Birds doesn't exactly have enough plot to reasonably fill an hour and a half film. A bunch of pigs stole eggs from a bunch of flightless birds, and you have to bludgeon the pigs to death with the birds to get the eggs back. It's not that hard to understand, but that also makes it hard to tell a story about.
I had forgotten that this movie was even in development by the time the cast was announced, and by the time the trailer dropped I'd forgotten it even existed.
For those who haven't been paying attention to the mobile and casual market for the last seven years (And I applaud you if you've managed that) Angry Birds is a physics puzzle-game developed by Rovio Entertainment. It saw initial release in 2009, and since then has had at least one sequel, port, or spinoff since then. Including the original game, Rovio have put out seventeen entries to the Angry Bird IP in seven years. Not to mention the thirteen other games they put out that were unrelated. In total, that's thirty games in seven years. Ubisoft looks at Rovio and says "Whoa, slow down!"
One rather logical question you might be asking now is "Why now?" And you would be correct in asking that. I haven't played Angry Birds in at least four years, and I haven't been keeping track of the new releases since Angry Birds: Transformers came out. I had to look the studio up on Wikipedia to find out how many games had been put out, and I was surprised to see they were still around. I could have sworn they were in some serious trouble financially, but that was the last I'd heard.
This movie starts out with, no joke, a beat-for-beat ripoff of the scene from The Incredibles where Dash falls through the jungle, with a few things taken from the Skrat scenes in the Ice Age movies. Red, the red bird from Angry Birds (Jason Sudeikis) is trying to deliver a cake to a birthday party, but he's late and clumsy and angry about it and gets taken to Bird Court about it. The hypocritically angry judge (Keegan-Michael Key) sends Red to anger-management classes where he meets Chuck, (Josh Gad) who is in anger-management classes for speeding and messing up the police-station and acting like he's Sonic the freaking Hedgehog, Bomb (Danny Mcbride) who explodes when feeling strong emotions, Terence (Sean Penn) who doesn't talk and is apparently some kind of horrible criminal, and their instructor, Matilda (Maya Rudoplh). Red's level of irritation with these characters rather neatly mimics my own, as does his level of irritation with how the society on his island works. On his way home from the course one day, he's stopped by a crossing-guard that keeps him from crossing the road. The first two times is alright, but the third time around an old bird is taking forever to cross the road, and it becomes nobodies fault but his own for waiting and not just walking around the crossing-guard, or walking over to the sidewalks to his left or right.
Eventually, after plenty of annoying antics and one funny line, the green pigs show up, flaunting their technology and advancements to the rather primitive birds. Red, Bomb, and Chuck sneak onto the pigs ship and find a lot of crap and more pigs there. Red confronts the head pig, King Leonard Mudbeard (Bill Hader) and he tells the others that they were going to put on a cowboy show.
More pigs show up, and stuff happens in a montage set to "Friends" by Black Shelton. A song actually sung by a character played by Blake Shelton. I'll admit, I'm not much of a fan of modern country, but if I had to listen to a country song, I'd listen to this one. It's actually not bad, but it'd be better with cleaner vocals. IE, not auto-tuned and country-nasal.
This montage also includes a Chippendale's reference, with the cowboy pigs ripping off their chaps on-stage. That doesn't even require comment, I'm just gonna let that sink in. What the hell?
Red becomes more suspicious as time goes on, and decides to go on a quest to find the legendary hero of the birds, the last of the birds that can fly, Mighty Eagle (Peter freaking Dinklage for crying out loud) and ask his advice. After a massive journey up to and across the tops of mountains, they find The Lake of Wisdom, ripped straight from The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. Then Mighty Eagle shows up, and they find out that he's a fat old retired son of a bitch who thinks he's Mister Miyagi. They leave, and find out that while the pigs are throwing a party for the birds, they're stealing the birds eggs and leaving.
This is almost an hour into the film. It takes us up to exactly the hour mark before the birds build their boat to go off to Pig Island to get the eggs back. This is an hour into a ninety-seven minute film. This leaves a little over thirty minutes for them to finally adapt the game and wrap the plot up.
The birds sail to the island and take one of the slingshots the pigs left behind. They then launch themselves bodily at the pigs buildings. This is where the mechanics of the game come into play. It doesn't make a lick of sense, and it comes straight outta nowhere, as you'd expect, but they put it in there because god-damn did we have to try and pay all this off!
They siege the castle, Red, Bomb and Chuck save the eggs, and Mighty Eagle steps in to help them escape. Terence then drives them all back to the boat in one of the pigs vehicles. Mighty Eagle's return is praised, and Red is no longer seen as an outcast in the village. They then play the entirety of that Blake Shelton song in the ending credits, and they set up a sequel mid-credits. Yeah, like that's gonna happen.
All in all, I think we're looking at this years Jupiter Ascending, but on a different end of the spectrum. While Jupiter Ascending moved too quickly, The Angry Birds Movie moves too slowly. Like I said before, there's a solid hour before they get to the actual plot of the game. Then they spend like fifteen minutes on adapting the game mechanic for mechanic, with about two or three minutes spent setting up the actual plot of the game (Which took like ten seconds in the game) and another sixty-five minutes or so on weird antics, with the remainder spent on the end-credits.
Speaking of the credits, the audio for this film was apparently produced by Skywalker Sound, AKA the best-damn sound guys in the business. So why, with that in mind, is the mixing and editing in this movie so noticeably bad? There are numerous times when it's obvious that they strung sentences together from multiple takes. Some points in the movie when multiple sound-effects play, or when an effect is playing on top of voices, it comes out sounding incredibly unnatural the way it's mixed. Just think, if Skywalker Sound can't make the audio sound good, how bad must it have been before they got to it?
Another technical issue with the movie is that the animation looks incredibly choppy, almost like they were trying to emulate stop-motion animation for some parts of the movie, but failed. It would be an interesting animation technique if not for the fact that it keeps going back and forth between being smoothly animated to being choppy as all hell. Part of the appeal of computer animation is how smooth you can make your animation look for crying out loud!
Now we come to the characters. I can't really bring myself to hate Red and Bomb, because they're not annoying, and they both seem like actual characters, save for one scene where Bomb is really freaking weird. Then there's Chuck, who's basically Sonic The Hedgehog if he were a metrosexual horn-dog, and Terence. Chuck is annoying as all hell, but Terence doesn't speak at all. They got Sean Penn to voice a character and he just grunts throughout the film!
The other characters are either tolerable or annoying, or in the case of Mighty Eagle, freaking cool because he's voiced by Peter freaking Dinklage! Yeah the character is an egotistical douche, but him just saying his name sounds epic because he's voiced by Peter freaking Dinklage!
Now we come to the performances. Jason Sudekis seems like he really doesn't want to be in this movie, but that translated well into a character I could relate to, since I quickly found that I didn't want to be watching the movie. Due to this, he's not exactly funny, but he's still pretty interesting to watch over the course of the film.
Josh Gadd considered turning this film down, since he thought Chuck was too similar to Olaf from Frozen. I've never seen Frozen, but from what I've heard, Olaf was pretty funny. Gadd need not concern himself with getting typecast, since Chuck is freaking annoying. Like I said before, he's a bad knockoff of Sonic without the understanding of any of what makes the character good.
Danny Mcbride as Bomb actually got a few laughs out of me, so there's that. The character would have been pretty good in something else, but in this, he's the highlight.
Funnily enough, despite getting billed towards the top of the card, Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla's characters are barely in the movie. You read that right. They got Smosh to be in the film and they were barely in it! Maybe they finally got the message that they're past their prime, or maybe they just had cameos. Either way, they were billed way too high for characters that were barely in the film.Now that we've gotten through the technical aspects and whatnot, let's talk about all the references in the film!
There are a few posters in the movie for Kevin Bacon in Hamlet. It's in the very center of the frame, and it's shown like three times.
Then there's the "Obey"-style posters in Mighty Eagle's cave with "Ohey" written on them. They're in the background for the most-part, but when they're introduced, the camera pans right over it, and it fills most of the screen.
During the pig-party, the deejays are both dressed like Daft Punk for some reason. Daft Punk haven't released an album or had a Hot 100 hit in three years, so this dates the movie significantly. Namely it dates it as having been written between 2012 and 2013.
There's a photobombing joke in the movie where the bird that carves pictures is trying to carve a selfie of him with the pigs boat in the background. This makes no sense, since he's just carving from what he's seen, and he didn't see Bomb walking across the background when he started!
During the siege of Pig Island, one of the birds runs into a "Calvin Swine" ad, with a pig that looks like Mark Whalberg did in the early '90s, backwards cap and everything. It could be intended to be Justin Bieber, but call me a product of the '90s, this looks like Marky Mark.
Inside of the pigs-castle, Red looks down a corridor while he and Chuck are looking for the eggs, and no joke, pig-versions of the twins from The Shining show up. I. Am. Not. Kidding. Thirty-six year-old Stanley Kubrick/Stephen King references in a kids movie! Are you guys trying to be Epic Movie? Because you're succeeding!
Then there's a scene when one of the pigs (the pigs who have tons of plungers for some reason) has a pair of plungers attached to its chest, and starts doing some kind of stripper/sexy dance. I don't get what the point of that was supposed to be.
The second most egregious moment in the film is when time slows down as the trio tries to figure out how to get past the guards. Time slows to a crawl, and the movie re-creates basically beat for beat the Quicksilver scene from Days of Future Past. Problem. Chuck is not as likable as Peter is by a wide margin, and this movie isn't nearly good enough to pull off something like that credibly.
There are other miscellaneous memes and pop-culture phenomena referenced or outright quoted throughout the film, but this one really takes the cake. Prepare yourself, this one's gonna be one hell of a doozy.
Towards the climax, Mighty Eagle puts on a record to psych himself up to help the other birds out. It being a record is bad enough, but guess what song is playing on it?
Pick a song that got popular via the internet, now find one that you'd think of that's not American. I'll give you a hint, Mike, Matthew, and Peter. No? Still nothing? This joke was ripped almost point for point from an abridged anime. Got a clue? Well, it was on Doctor Who at one point. Still nothing? Well, maybe you should check your privilege. Stock, Aitken and Waterman. Rick Astley. Never Gonna Give You Up.
Yeah, that. This movie Rick-rolls the audience. Not like the intended audience for this film would know that, they're probably not old enough to have ever been Rick-Rolled, much less to have actually heard the song when it was new.
Speaking of weird music in this film, it starts out with Paranoid by Black Sabbath! Probably best-known by the audience of the game this is based on as that song that sometimes plays on the Guitar Hero: World Tour title-screen.
When Red is feeling sad, Behind Blue Eyes starts playing, but not the version by The Who from 1977, but the 2003 version by Limp Bizkit! A cover of an almost forty year-old song that is itself thirteen years-old by one of the progenitors of the filthier side of Nu Metal. A band that hasn't been relevant in over ten years, and that I've actively tried to forget exists. That's not to say this cover is bad, but I'd rather listen to The Who's original version, because Fred Durst is no Roger Daltrey.
Then, during the end-credits montage and mid-credits scene, an over-produced rendition of I Will Survive starts playing, with Selena Gomez on vocals. This wouldn't be too bad if they'd bothered going back and either re-tuning Gomez's voice more subtly, or just re-took the vocal-track until it was on-pitch. She's no Gloria Gaynor, but she never will be, so they could have at least gone back to the studio for a couple more takes.
Apparently Rock You Like a Hurricane by The Scorpions and Wild Thing by Tone Lōc were also in the movie, but I didn't notice them. Amazing how they could have one of my favorite songs in this film and not have me notice. Rock You Like a Hurricane is iconic for crying out loud! Did they not use the riff or something?
Oh, and for those of you wondering, since the song was featured in one of the trailers, Michael Jackson's Bad is not in the film in any capacity. I can give this film a bit of credit though, the orchestral arrangement of the Angry Birds theme-song was pretty cool.
Soooo... What the fuck did this movie accomplish? Well, it made quite a bit of money at the box-office, so I wouldn't be surprised if it gets a sequel. I seriously hope that this movie didn't make enough money to dig Rovio out of their hole, but considering it's also backed by Sony, they'll probably get bought up by them and we'll see more Angry Birds movies and games, but they'll be PlayStation-exclusive from here on out.
In the end, fuck this movie. There are a few good lines scattered around the run-time, but nothing that justifies this films existence. If you've been on the internet in the last five years, and seen a kids movie in the past decade or so, you've already seem everything this movie has to offer and better. One of the jokes in this movie had the piss taken out of it in Hellsing Ultimate Abridged three freaking years ago!
Yet again, this is a movie without a single original idea to its name. Take your 0.3* rating and fuck right off. As far as directorial debuts go, this is one shit-show of a movie, and while it's similar to Jupiter Ascending, it's more like a kid-friendly version of Epic Movie than anything else.

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Image from Impawards.com

Power Rangers Dino Supercharge: E1, When Evil Stirs

Originally written for OutLoudculture.com

If you guys follow my YouTube channel (You should, it's where the OLC podcast is uploaded) you know I'm a huge Power Rangers fan. Been one for most of my life, and I'm never ashamed to admit it. The fact that I bring up Power Rangers RPM whenever I see an opportunity to should be proof enough of that.  Unfortunately, for a fan such as myself, there hasn't been a good (new) season of the show since... Well, since RPM back in 2009. Part of the problem was that RPM was intended to be the last season of the show, and in knowing this, the writing staff went all out, making bold decisions, massive changes to the formula, and changes to the world the likes of which we hadn't seen since the end of the Zordon era of the series. I won't spoil how RPM ended, so let's just say that when Saban bought the rights to Power Rangers back from Disney, they found it incredibly hard to write around, and thus wound up creating an alternate universe where the series could continue. A single point of divergence where the world was taken over by a rogue computer-virus in one universe, and where it wasn't in the other. The added benefit to this was that Saban could then exploit nostalgia from the previous seasons of the show without having to contradict RPM directly. This might have been excusable if Saban had then gone on to make a single subsequent season that was as good as anything that came before, but the moment the first episode of Power Rangers Samurai aired on Nickelodeon in 2011, the fandom realized that they were in trouble. Samurai had stupid jokes, terrible, worn out ideas, and worst of all, it had been sliced in half. You see, for those not in the know, Power Rangers is typically adapted from a previous season of the Japanese Tokusatsu series, Super Sentai. Each Sentai season is around forty or so episodes in length, and for the most part, Power Rangers has followed that same pattern, with a few more or less episodes per season depending on original content. Starting with Samurai, however, Power Rangers has averaged twenty episodes a season, with each Sentai adaptation being split into approximately two seasons, sometimes with elements of other Sentai seasons mixed in. And by "mixed in" I mean they dropped the adaptation of one Sentai series halfway through production when they realized they were coming up on the twentieth anniversary of the franchise and rushed to adapt the subsequent anniversary Sentai season. This mess was know as Power Rangers Super Megaforce, colloquially known in the fandom as "Super Mega Fuckup," since they took one of the most beloved seasons of Super Sentai, Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger and pounded all of the wit, and charm, and personality out of it. I could write a whole series of articles on why Super Megaforce failed, and I might at sometime in the future. For now, we're covering the first episode of Dino Supercharge, the twenty-third season of the series, as well as the followup to last year's Dino Charge. Suffice to say that Dino Charge wasn't great. Granted, it was a huge improvement on Super Megaforce, but overall it was pretty lame. I'd go into detail, but I fear I'd just be repeating myself later on in my review of this episode. All in all, it was a massive waste of potential held together by a few awesome fight-scenes. Right, with that out of the way let's dig into the episode. Spoiler warning, as I'll be deconstructing this episode on an almost minute-to-minute basis.

Right off the top of your head, what's the most memorable part of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Kamen Rider, or Super Sentai? The suits, yes, the characters sure, but for me at least, the music is the first thing that grabs me and the last thing I forget about a show. For a long time, between the original Saban era and the end of the Disney era, Power Rangers had entirely original scores. The background music during downtime, the combat anthem, everything was made for the series, and that was part of why it was so memorable, because you weren't going to hear that music anywhere else, unless it was from another season of the show. That still rings true for Super Sentai and Kamen Rider these days, with memorable soundtracks filled with unique music. They use different musical cues for different scenarios, even going so far as to have theme-music for individual characters or teams. I bring all this up because literally the very first thing you hear in Dino Supercharge is a piece of stock music called Careless Talk by The Royalty Free Music Crew. Something you might recognize if you've been on the internet at all for the last decade or so. It's been used by countless YouTuber's over the course of its existence, as well as by Power Rangers Dino Charge at least three times during the course of its run. Four if you count this one. My point is that the music is among the many, many budget-cuts Saban has made since buying back the franchise. Sure, there's still some original music, the theme-song is pretty cool and every now and again they have a decent piece of original background music, but for the most part the series lacks anything that could be considered a "unique" soundtrack. Even with all of the budget-cuts Super Sentai appears to have endured, they still use mostly original music for the soundtracks. As far as music goes, we start as we mean to go on.

Tyler Navarro, the Dino Charge Red Ranger (Played by Brennan Mejia), spends the entire intro sequence recapping the events of the last half of the series. The framing-device for this is him writing the events down in his journal, but he's already written most of these down at least once already in the last season. One would reasonably wonder why they had to recap the series at all, seeing as the season finale aired only a few weeks prior to this episode. Then again, I've got a mind like a steel trap (most of the time anyways) and I don't forget details like this. This helps me in my critiques of long-running franchises such as this, especially when they introduce plot-devices and storylines that contradict previously established canon. I'll come back to this later on in the series, because they're bound to introduce things that don't make sense based on the series up 'till then.

The opening credits sequence is selling a show that's way more action-packed, way cooler, and way more interesting than the show we're likely going to get, based on both this episode, and the previous twenty-two episodes. (though more like twenty and a half since the two holiday specials were glorified clipshows) This is something I detest, an opening sequence which oversells the show, or else shows that just don't deliver.
Another, rather interesting thing to point out (Which was made aware to me by @Razzle1337 and @Evilspacewhale on Twitter) is the fact that in the final shot of the intro-sequence, rather than creating a new shot to accommodate the female Purple Ranger, they just re-used a shot from Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger (The source material for this series) and recolored Kyoryu Cyan purple. Because it's not like their helmet-designs are based on two very different dinosaurs or anything. Or like there are people who watch Super Sentai and Power Rangers who would notice that. Or for that matter like the two Rangers in question are the opposite gender! Come on, Saban. That CGI skirt isn't fooling anyone. Especially when you compare the builds!
Then there are other issues in the opening, such as when the two times the T-Rex charger is seen in the opening, it has "Gabutyra" written on the side. For those of you not in the know, Gabutyra was the name of the Red Dino Charge Zord in Kyoryuger. But those are just minor issues compared to the real meat of the matter. For instance, most of the CG in the opening sequence looks atrocious. Toei is to blame for part of this, since they appear to have taken Saban's lead in cutting production values as much as they can, possibly in an attempt to see how little effort they can put into a series and still make bank on toy sales. (Although that's pretty unfair since Ressha Sentai ToQger, the series that immediately followed Kyoryuger had much better effects) Saban still takes a great deal of the blame, however, since they were the ones who chose to re-use sub-par assets instead of throwing the sub-par CG models out and starting over fresh with a higher polygon count, better rigging and better shading.
Earlier in January I was rewatching some of Power Rangers Jungle Fury, and I was astounded by how good the effects were. Just unreal enough to give the show a magical quality to it, but decent enough that stop-motion animation with the toys wouldn't have been a step up. Compare that to the CGI from this show. For the most part, it looks like someone took the toys (The American ones, not the Japanese ones) and scanned them into a computer using really bad 3D modeling software, did some rudimentary rigging and then dropped them into the scenes without bothering to shade or light them properly. As such, you wind up with CG that looks worse than filming toys on a diorama.
Mind you, these are all issues we see before we even get into the bulk of the show. We haven't even touched on some of the bigger problems. So, before we dig into the rest of the episode, let's introduce the cast so far.

Tyler Navarro is the Dino Charge Red Ranger, and third Red T-Rex Ranger (Fourth if you count the one from the RPM toyline). Supposedly he's the leader of the team, but he's never really shown taking charge of either the team or the situation. The Rangers basically take turns leading the team whenever their particular "expertise" is required. Tyler's whole motivation in life seems to be to find his father, who happened to disappear approximately a decade prior. You know. About the time that Tommy Oliver was leading the Dino Thunder Rangers against Mesagog. I don't know if they're trying to make any connections to Dino Thunder, and I certainly hope they're not trying to imply that one or possibly two of the Dino Thunder Rangers are Tyler's parents. I know Kyoryuger had a crossover with Bakuryū Sentai Abaranger (Japanese counterpart to Dino Thunder) and Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger, (Japanese counterpart to Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers) so they could be trying to lead up to some big "We are your parents" reveal later on in Dino Supercharge as part of an MMPR/Dino Thunder/Dino Charge crossover, but considering how badly the last few crossover events worked out, I doubt it.
Tyler appears to have more personality than, say, Troy Burrows from Megaforce had. He's still got a heaping deficiency of personality or authority though, otherwise he wouldn't get roped into some of the teams stupider plans. I tell you this, he's no Jason Lee Scott from MMPR, or Tommy Oliver from take your pick of the five teams he led, or Casey Rhodes from Jungle Fury, or RJ also from Jungle Fury, or especially Scott Truman from RPM. All of those I just listed were field commanders that wouldn't have gotten roped into lobbing construction equipment at a team-member until they found someone worthy of being a Ranger. It's a shame too, because I really want to like Tyler, and the series seems to be doing its best to make him a likable guy, but he doesn't have a whole lot of charisma, and his voice just isn't suited for a commanding role. I don't know if this is an issue with Brennan Mejia's acting or if it's just a direction issue. Either way, something different needed to happen, because I would buy Ziggy Grover from RPM as a leader before I'd buy Tyler as one.

Before I go on with the cast, I'd like to point out that it took me a while to remember all the Ranger's names in this series, and I still barely remember them now. I barely watched Power Rangers SPD and I can still name you most of the names of the characters off the top of my head, and I basically know the names of the entire lead and supporting cast of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Jungle Fury and RPM by heart, even years later. Dino Charge, on the other hand took about half a season before I could list off Ranger names. It got to the point where I had to have the Ranger Wiki open on my other computer while I was recording my commentary videos just so I could stop referring to the Rangers by suit color.

Anyways, next on the list is Chase Randall, played by James Davies. Black Parasaurolophus Ranger, and the token acknowledgement of the country Power Rangers has been filmed in for about a decade. Yes, we've finally got a Kiwi Ranger on the team. Not that you'd know that if they didn't plaster him and his gear in Kiwi birds and dedicate somewhere around four episodes or so to gushing all over New Zealand culture, since his accent is so broad he could pretty much be from England or Australia. Funnily enough, the actor himself is from New Zealand, and I actually know a guy from New Zealand who has a similar accent to Davies, so it's entirely possible this is his normal speaking voice, and not just something the directors cooked up to make American audiences more comfortable. Who knows?
Chase is sold as the Hot-Shot of the group, using his Morpher-gun and Parachopper as his primary fighting weapons. He's supposed to be this brash, bold figure who charges into battle guns-blazing, but all I see him doing is exploiting his catch-phrases and gimmicks while attempting to form a "unique" identity in a series which stomps on unique ideas, proper pacing, decent characterization and good storytelling until they can fit into manila folder. Chase seems like he was intended to be the new Dillon from RPM. They're both Black Rangers, and they both have Zords which act as cannons when attached to a Megazord. The difference is that Dillon was mysterious, talented, and sarcastic. He had flaws, goals, ideals, relateable emotions, and some kind of purpose in the story! Chase is a bunch of Australian and Kiwi (But mostly Australian) stereotypes holding a fancy magic gun while he spouts off his "radical" catchphrases. Dillon is cool. Chase was manufactured to be cool without any real idea of what makes a character cool.
In fact, let's compare this Chase to another Black Tokusatsu hero from 2015, one who just so happens to share his name. Spoiler warning, go watch Kamen Rider Drive, it's a really good show, and much better than anything Saban's put out in the last five years. Fans of Kamen Rider Drive will already know that I'm talking about Chase, AKA Kamen Rider Protodrive, AKA Kamen Rider Chaser. Another character that uses a gun a lot, but unlike Chase from Dino Charge, Chase from Drive had an arc, decent development over the course of the series, emotional conflicts he had to come to grips with, and actual relationships with his fellow Kamen Riders. You got to see Chase in Drive change, and learn things over the course of the series. Something which Dino Charge's Chase didn't do at all. I'd say it has to do with Drive not having to try and characterize somewhere in the order of eleven main characters over the course of its run, but Power Rangers RPM had seven Rangers, and they were all incredibly well-characterized, so it's basically down to a writing issue here. If it wasn't for all the episodes they spent piddling around doing jack squat, maybe we could have some good characterization. Who knows. No matter what, Chase from this series isn't cool, he's manufactured cool. He's never gonna be cool.

Moving on to our Blue Stegasaurus Ranger, a cave-man Koda, played by Yoshi Sudarso. Koda is about the closest thing this series has to a decently-written character, although the way his character was written back in Dino Charge was inconsistent to say the least. Fortunately there are some good character details that help to clear up some of the questions I had about the character. Unfortunately however, this episode starts off with a few character details we could have done with earlier in the series. Like how for instance, Koda is afraid of ice after having been frozen alive for thousands of years. The basis of Koda's character could have been summed up as "dumb guy jokes" back in Dino Charge, with a total of one episode dedicated to him adjusting to modern life. I hope they intend to play up Koda's innocence and drop the incredibly bad jokes made at his expense, because then we could have at least one character worth remembering. If not, then it's just gonna be one more thing to add to the pile of reasons why Saban shouldn't be making Power Rangers anymore. I'll say this for Koda though, no matter how many bad jokes or puns are made, either by him or at him, you can't ever hate him. It's just not possible.

Next up is the Green Raptor Ranger, Riley Griffin, played by Michael Taber. His gimmick is that he fences a lot, so he uses a sword. He's also apparently the requisite nerd of the group, since he happens to be able to calculate angles and pounds of force in his head. Not that this is ever of much use, except for that one time he got into a match of 3D chess with a monster-of-the week. No, seriously. Riley is another character that I can't summon up any dislike for, for no other reason than I can't really figure out what he's supposed to do. You could have easily cut him from the team, rolled his personality traits into one of the other characters and wound up with a tighter-knit group. As it is, outside of the handful of episodes dedicated to him last season, he doesn't seem to really do much outside of fill space.

Our fifth Ranger is for once not a Yellow Ranger, but a Pink one. A Pink Triceratops Ranger, Shelby Watkins, played by Camille Hyde. Shelby is Tyler's sort-of love interest when the writers actually remember that they're supposed to be having some kind of relationship. Because Daigo and Amy had a romantic relationship in Kyoryuger and we're too cheap/lazy to try and make the suit footage match actual characters!
No, seriously. Saban actually recreated some scenes and basically the entire plot from Samurai Sentai Shinkenger shot for shot, blow for blow while making Samurai. The reason why I bring this up now is because there are some shots in the episode that I'm told are taken from Kyoryuger footage which literally make no sense in context otherwise. Not between Shelby and Tyler, but between Tyler and the ninth Ranger in this little catastrophe of a team.
Shelby is... Odd. She's a waitress, but she's sort of way too smart to be a waitress, while also lacking much in the way of common sense. Then again, that basically describes most of this team when they're not in their suits. Shelby's whole gimmick is basically that she's a stereotypical girl about some things, and not others unless she feels the need to be with Tyler in that moment. For instance, the whole reason she gets roped into one of the dumber schemes the team cooked up back in the first season is because she thought Tyler looked hot in a military dress uniform. I'd love to try and give a more in-depth opinion of Shelby, but like most of the characters in this show, she feels like someone got done writing about a quarter of her defining traits and then someone was asked to write a script around them. All I ask for is a bit of consistency and detail. Show me what they like and what they don't like. A bit of personality, a taste even would be enough to shut me up at this point, at least until Saban digs more plot-holes.

The sixth member of this motley crew is Sir Ivan of Zandar, portrayed by Davi Santos, a knight from Medieval times and a country which doesn't exist. He's the Gold (Sometimes Yellow depending on the footage used) Pteradactyl Ranger. He was sealed inside one of the main villain's bodies for some reason, and was released by Tyler hundreds of years later. He joined the team after going off on an incredibly stupid journey to recruit more worthy team-mates. Picking elderly crossing-guards and pensioners rather than any of the scores of Rangers that have come before. (technically after, but I'm not even sure Dino Charge takes place in an existing Power Rangers universe) Ivan comes close to being a good character, but falls just short due to the desperate lack of any kind of development beyond "chivalrous and brave knight." We've had brave characters before, we've had honorable characters before. We need something that makes Ivan stand out. Personally, I can't hate Ivan much since he'd be just about perfect if the writers put even a little more effort into his character. I'm basically a sucker for a good time-displacement story, and Ivan is literally from one of my favorite periods of history. He fights with a longsword too! And he shoots lightening from it! He could only be more awesome if he was in charge of the team! But alas, he's not. It's a shame, because Davi Santos has exactly the kind of command to his voice that I'd expect out a Red Ranger.

The next Ranger on our list is Prince Phillip III of Zandar, played by Jarred Blakiston, crown prince of the fictional country and the Graphite Pachycephalosaurus Ranger. He became a Ranger after finding out about the Dino Charge Rangers and deciding that he wanted to help out. So, he scoured the globe for an Energem and started doing good deeds in an attempt to prove his worth to whatever mystical force governs the Energems. Long story short, he succeeded in that task and became a Ranger in his own right. Unfortunately, he never seems to show up when he's needed. Mostly because he runs a country, but also because the Graphite Ranger didn't have a whole lot of screentime in Kyoryuger, and Saban wanted to cut down on original footage. Kind of like how Tommy didn't show up until the very end of a lot of fights in the first season of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers because his Japanese counterpart lived in stasis cave and only left when his teammates were in extreme peril. This brings up some fairly major issues later on in this episode which we'll get to later. Honestly, Phillip is pretty cool. He's literally the only member of the team who joined voluntarily as opposed to being roped into it by chance, luck or circumstance. Phillip, Ivan and Koda are easily the three best characters in the show, since they've got the most personality. Right off the bat, from the moment Phillip was introduced, you could tell that he was cut out to be a Ranger. Unlike how civilians or governing figures tend to handle alien incursions in Power Rangers, he decided to pitch in and help. Hell, he went a step further, devoting the resources of his country to bolstering the combat effort. Just a shame that this has to be set in a fictional city in California (No doubt somewhere near Angel Grove) instead of a fictional country in Europe. It would have been something new at least. And they wouldn't have been able to drool over New Zealand like they did. Nothing against New Zealand, it's just that Saban seemed determined to fulfill some sort of "New Zealand promotion quota." I'll tell you this much, it was harder to watch than the sightseeing in ToQger was. At least that series is set in the place it's touring. I guess what I'm trying to say is that they should have just set the show in New Zealand, and let us see a team of Mighty Morphin' Kiwi Rangers. Some kind of change of setting at least. Something to shake things up.

Finally, we come to the last Ranger, (for now at least) Kendall Morgan (Claire Blackwelder), the Purple Plesiosaurus Ranger. For some reason, even though she's obviously the same age as or younger than the other Rangers, she insists that they call her Miss Morgan. What's her personality like? Well, it's best described as a bad knockoff of Doctor K from Power Rangers RPM. Except that unlike Doctor K, nobody sees any reason to call her out on the fact that she's placed herself in a position of authority above them despite being about the same age as the rest of the team. There's literally no other way to describe her, she is literally a bad knockoff of Doctor K, with all of the unique personality and character dynamics hammered out. And rather than making new equipment that the Rangers might actually need or have some use for, she makes useless stuff like the Dino Cupid Charger. Or a flamethrower Charger that's only ever used once. Or the Dino Stretch Charger, made completely irrelevant by the fact that they have two flying Megazords. Or, god forbid, the Dino Gas Charger, which literally causes the Megazord to fart gas into the enemy's face. Not. Making. This. Up. Rather than building new Zords, she waits for them to come to her. Rather than being pro-active and constructing some kind of Energem-powered laser-cannon to blow Sledge out of the sky, or converting his ship into something the Rangers can use, she just keeps building pointless crap, and things that barely work. Then again, they don't really establish to what extent Kendall actually built the Ranger equipment, so for all we know most of it was created by the Energems. Kendall is utterly devoid of personality, and basically just serves to fill the team roster and the base-commander role without actually doing anything unique that couldn't be done by a completely different character. Combine Kendall, Riley and Shelby and what changes? Not a whole lot.

Anyways, down to the plot.
Last time, the Rangers crashed Sledge's ship, and like idiots, didn't search it to make sure him and his crew were 100% dead. So, a new villain named Snide had taken over in his command and promised all of the inmates he rather stupidly didn't turn in for the bounties on their heads millions of years ago that they would gain favor with him if they were to bring him an Energem. Second verse, same as the first on that front. The Rangers, idiots as they are, have given up their powers and gone their separate ways for a few weeks before getting abducted by a freezing monster and taken to Snide to steal their Energems. Why they don't just break into the Ranger's base is beyond me. It's only got three Rangers on duty at this point, and abducting three Rangers from around the country, possibly even from around the world seems incredibly counterproductive, when you could just send in a single spy to monitor Ranger activity for a few days, determine that they're not even guarding their damn base most of the time, break in when nobody's there with the entire ship full of backup, kick Keeper's ass, and steal all the equipment. Keeper's staff can un-bond an Energem, so all they'd have to do is un-bond the energems and re-bond them to their own people so they can have the power all to themselves. But they don't do that. Instead, they abduct four of the seven Rangers with only Koda and Tyler escaping, although it's never really explained how Tyler escaped. Prince Phillip is nowhere to be seen for some reason, even though Snide's people managed to track Chase to New Zealand (Or possibly not, we're never actually told where he was, although he said he was going back to New Zealand at one point.). Maybe Phillip was the only one they couldn't take, because between his security and the fact that nobody seems to know where his country is, they just decided not to bother.
Most of the time, Power Rangers only leave their Morpher's behind when they've burnt out, or need repairing. Hell, Adam Park had a damaged Mastadon Morpher that he kept on him, and it still worked! So why, when you could stick a Charger in your pocket and when you appear to be able to literally summon gear from thin-air (Point Kyoryuger, at least they had holsters) would you not keep a Charger or two as backup? Why wouldn't you just use the Power to fight street-level crime the way Albert Smith, the original Dino Charge Purple Ranger did? With great power comes great responsibility, and if I had Ranger powers and had just annihilated all known alien threats, I'd keep the gear around, because you just know you're going to need it!
The only two Rangers that stayed with Kendall at the Museum after Sledge's defeat were Koda and Ivan. Koda at least makes sense, where else is he gonna go? But Ivan should be in Zandar with Phillip, he is a Knight of the Realm after all. Maybe he chose to stay there, who knows? I'd love for these things to mean more than they seem, but I'm hesitant to try and make sense of this series plot. After all, the last prediction for the show I came up with was what Koda's origin was, and I was almost entirely wrong.
Anyways, Tyler and Koda make use of Koda's earlier technique of letting clothing get caught in the ice and then ducking out, but unlike before, they do so with their Ranger suits, to which I call shenanigans. First off, I've seen behind-the-scenes footage of Power Rangers, you cannot get out of those suits without some kind of help. Second, the only part of the suit you can take off while inside it is your helmet. If you demorph, the suit vanishes back to wherever it comes from. This is a well-established rule of the franchise. It was even partially explained in Power Rangers RPM. Then again, Saban seems to take pleasure in attempting to undermine every point RPM made about the franchise. And third, I've worn paintball gear and baseball gear less complicated than those suits are, and I still can't get out of them that fast! Fourth, this raises the question as to what those suits are made of. Part of the reason I like Kamen Rider is that the Riders actually get suits that can pass for armor, whilst Power Rangers and Super Sentai teams are usually wearing Lycra or Spandex, neither of which would provide adequate protection against most of the attacks sustained in a typical episode.
Long story short, they use that flamethrower Charger to melt their team-mates, they kick some ass, the requisite Megazord fight ensues, Rangers save the day, Rangers get back together after two weeks apart due to them not following up on their last kill.

Now, let's cover some specific issues. First off, back in Dino Charge, they introduced a resurrection machine to bring back dead monsters, but it only works if they have a piece of the monster to bring back. The Rangers knew that Sledge had this technology, so why didn't they steal it? I know of more than a few dead Rangers and one dead space-wizard that they could use that on. Hell, the Rangers could use it on themselves if one of them was ever killed, that way they have a means of resurrecting fallen comrades. Hell, that machine would make death utterly irrelevant, so why didn't they take it? Or salvage Sledge's entire space-ship and turn in all his prisoners to whoever runs the space-jail for the bounties on their heads? It'd eliminate a bunch of potential threats, and turn them a nice profit as a bonus! That's money they could spend on maybe expanding the Corinth Project beyond just one city. Earth seems to deal with alien-invasions all the time, it'd be nice to have a huge shield around the planet. We are coming up on the actual time of Power Rangers SPD, so they might as well start stepping the general technology up a bunch so they don't have to erase that from continuity as well. Maybe it'll just get shunted into the main universe where all of the good shows live and whatever series airs in 2020 can just be Blando Mcboring Rangers. Season Nine.

Then there's Keeper, basically Dino Charge's attempt at creating a Zordon-style character. Except Zordon had a reason for not doing much other than giving advice, he was literally trapped between dimensions. In a lot of ways, Keeper does even less that that, since he only shows up ever now and again, occasionally fighting monsters, but for the most part, Keeper doesn't serve much real purpose. Another case of a character that could have been sliced out of the final product without any major consequences.

Finally, we get to Heckyl. Heckyl is the human form of Snide, and he would be a great villain if only he knew what an inner-monologue was! As it is, he all but incriminates himself in front of the Rangers multiple times across every episode he's been in.
This brings me to an issue with the music. There's a scene where Heckyl is talking to Kendall about getting a job at the cafe (Oh yeah, another criticism I could make that I'll get to later) and the music they play is so upbeat and cheerful that it ruins any drama the scene might have had! If this was Death Note, or Kamen Rider Drive, or Jungle Fury or RPM there would have been a much more appropriate musical cue playing behind the conversation. One that truly demonstrated the gravity of the scene.

Then there's the fact that A) The Rangers seem to feel the need to keep their identities secret despite there being plenty of very public Power Rangers teams beforehand, and it's pretty much pointless since the monsters know their faces and names, and B) That the Rangers work out of a cafe in a museum. I know in Jungle Fury the Rangers worked out of a pizza parlor, but those guys had the excuse of both being broke and having an incredibly roundabout teacher who used the pizza preparation as lessons in teamwork. These guys don't have that excuse.

So, all in all this episode kinda sucked, but it was still better than some of the worst episodes of the last season. Last season had about six episodes worth of decent content at best, but I'm holding out some hope that this season doubles that amount. Who knows? Maybe the next series, Power Rangers Ninja Steel (Yes, that's actually the title) will have higher production values and better writing if we can prove to Saban that that's what the fans really want.
Oh, what's that? Saban Capitol Group just donated two million dollars to Hillary Clinton's campaign for president? Well, so much for that then.

In the end, I give this episode a 4.0* rating.