Zordon
recruits five overbearing, emotional humans to defend the Earth from
Rita and her minions. All of the staples of the franchise are
established.
Rewatching
the pilot it’s amazing just how much is established in so little time. The characterisation is established for one. Sure, the characters in MMPR
are little more than their hobbies, but who they are and their
relationship with each other is established early and reinforced several
times. Jason is the leader, and demonstrates this with his karate
class. He knows how to teach and leads a group of people, and these
skills transferred readily to his role as the red ranger. It was these
first scenes that made me like him as a red ranger, because he has a
screen presence and a powerful voice that aids with the ADR. ASJ yelling “We
need dinozord power, NOW!!” still sounds wonderful after all these
years.
For
the other characters their main characteristics are established too.
Billy is the tech guy and a nerd, and this is reinforced several times.
It is done in a shockingly clichéd way, but that was the sort of writing that played in that time slot during the 90s. The writing for PR
reminds me of the writing for a lot of high school comedies I used to
watch around that time, such as Welcome Back, Cotter. I guess that was
part of the show’s success- while the ranger stuff was new for the
audience, it was placed in the context of the high school comedy which the
target audience was thoroughly familiar with. I’m getting off topic,
though.
Trini
was the weakest character of the season, and it shows here, as her only
trait was being the one to decipher Billy’s tech speak. This means
her defining quality is shown as connected with another character.
Whether this is a great thing or not is up to you to decide, but I
personally think it’s a shame. I’m one of the fans who thinks Thuy was a
good actor and deserved more than she got, while Kimberly hogged a lot
of female oriented plots. But oh well. In this episode a subtle
indicator as to the sort of person she is comes forward in the scene in
the Command Centre where Zack, Kimberly and Billy leave, citing
disbelief, and it is Jason and Trini who are less doubtful, thinking
that perhaps this is real and an opportunity could go begging if they
walk away.
In
this episode, Kimberly’s character is explored shallowly but her
character is one that everyone is familiar with- the valley girl. She
really didn’t need any explanation, just give her a line about the Mall
while they’re at the Command Centre and there you go, your character is
explained. Zack is given nothing in this episode, with a couple of shots
and one line from Bulk telling the audience that he dances.
The
episode also introduces us to the major Power Rangers ideas. The basics
of morphing, giant monsters, zords, megazords, fighting, and the rules
of being a ranger. Again this was done quickly, with a real quick-fire
pace. That said, I don’t remember ever getting confused as a kid, just
taking it at face value and moving on. Oh, they have suits that are
shiny material that protects them from blades? Of course! The lines
during the formation of the megazord were a great idea as it helped
overcome the problem of how teenagers can drive a giant robot. They have
been used by fandom essentially to explain that ‘suit knowledge’ gives
rangers info on anything from how to pilot a zord to what their weapons
are called.
But
what about the story itself? It’s all right. It’s essentially an
exposition episode, so there wasn’t any time to squeeze in a MOTW.
Subsequent seasons don’t even have morphing in the first episode, but
this one managed to establish character, situation, themes, basic
weaponry and villains in less than 20 minutes. That is quite an
accomplishment by far. The episode suffers from the low quality of the
Zyuranger footage and a terminal case of “the 90s”, but other than that
it is really enjoyable to watch.
Overall score? Four blade blasters out of five. It loses a mark because it's such a stock storyline.
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