Sunday, 30 December 2012

Hexagon Proposal Analysed

It's been known for a long time that there was an alternative, Ranger War style story proposed for Ninja Storm. Well, the details have finally been released, and they sure are interesting. To read the full text of the explanation, go here. To read an analysis of it, click below!
The unused ‘Hexagon’ plan, as it has come to be called, revolved around the idea of an umbrella organization unifying most of the various Power Rangers teams we had seen over the years. The name ‘Hexagon’ came from the idea that the base of operations for the season’s Power Rangers would be a giant building like the Pentagon, except with six sides to symbolize the number of Power Rangers on most teams.
There are a few things to look into here. Firstly there's the membership of Hexagon. Of the post Zordon era teams, there are a couple which would be difficult to convince to join- Time Force and Lightspeed Rescue. They are both already part of a larger organisation, instead of being lone teams working off whatever resources they have on hand. This could be solved by the answer to the next question, though.

Who would be funding this organisation? In Time Force, Lightspeed Rescue and SPD there's an implication there's a level of government involvement (albeit behind the scenes). The government could force the TF and LR teams to join Hexagon, and that could provide story potential- but only if done just right. That said, if one of the main themes behind the story is people going mad with power, then having government involvement would cause plot issues, because then people would ask "why doesn't the government just swoop in and do something about it?" That said, one episode where the police (or maybe GSA?) try to take Tommy down and fail, cementing his case of the crazies near the end of the season.

The Hexagon was to be led by Tommy Oliver, who would act as the mentor for the season’s Power Rangers like their Zordon or Captain Mitchell. As Forever Red illustrated, Tommy had been keeping in touch with various Rangers in the years since the episode Passing The Torch, Part 2. No longer the ponytailed, wifebeater-wearing teenager of MMPR days, Tommy would now look more like a federal agent in a suit.
Tommy as the mentor? Eh. At this point we hadn't quite reached the Tommy saturation that DT finally created, so it could have worked as an idea. This again brings back to where Hexagon came from, because it's not like Tommy is the smartest of people and can convince Congress to give him money. The only answer is private investment, so I guess you could stretch credibility and say that Wes' father and his billionaire friends helped fund it for... some reason. Either that or he got some sort of intergalactic backing from a Hexagon equivalent on another planet.

With all that said, the change in his character to a type of federal agent in a suit makes a little more sense than "he's a teacher now... with a PhD for some reason". He had nbeen moving into leadership roles more and more, from ranger, to red ranger, to the co-coordinator of a small task force dedicated to tracking down the Machine Empire. It's as plausible as it needs to be to be used in a Power Rangers season.


The idea of the season had its genesis in Reinforcements from the Future, Part 1 when Wes tells Cole “There are other Rangers out there, all fighting for a common goal,” matured in Forever Red when linkages not seen in the show were hinted at (Carter knowing TJ, Andros knowing about Jason, etc.), and really began to become clearer watching Tommy again.
I guess that explains some of those odd lines thrown into the episode, but considering that he came up with the idea of Hexagon long after the episode was written and shot, it feels a lot like him justifying some of the nonsensical parts of the episode. Forever Red was a fun episode, but it worls best when you watch it without paying attention to the continuity issues brought up by it. While there are explanations for the various continuity issues, they aren't expanded upon in the episode itself (a consequence of it being halved in length) and are best kept for fan theorising. Like a lot of the other stuff in this proposal, it comes across as being retrospective continuity.
Tommy would send these three Rangers away on missions in response to attacks by the villains. Instead of just one central city where all the fighting would take place, each episode’s battle could take place in various locations around the Power Rangers universe. The three Rangers would travel around in the Hexagon’s special stealth chopper, piloted by Joel from Lightspeed Rescue – a planned recurring character.
There isn't much fleshing out of what the villains want, which in concerning. The basis of this ranger war is all about what the most wise method of fighting evil is- a centralised group or disparate, unconnected teams. The villain and what they want to do surely is important to the overall progression of the plot. The motives of the villains could even be such that they use wedge tactics to intensify the fighting between the two groups of rangers and make it easier to achieve their goals. Instead there's a lot of fanwank about there being factions of villains with unresolved plots doing... something.

While I understand the idea of going around the world/galaxy to fight the villains' monsters, it only makes sense if it works with the motivations of the villains, which are unexplained. The OO rangers going all over the world made sense in the overall plot, because they were essentially in a global scavenger hunt to chase down the Corona Aurora. This is a big part of the story that really hasn't been thought about, and really should have. It's later explained that doing so would help with cameos, but that doesn't make much sense. If Hexagon was a central authority bringing together all rangers, isn't that enough to cause past cast members to show up? "You need to master your sword work if you can win- so I've brought in Leo, who knows a thing or two about swords..."

The two Beetle Hurricangers (Dark Red and Dark Blue) were to be used as a rogue group of Power Rangers that operated outside of the Hexagon network of superhero teams. As all Power Rangers seasons tried to have at least two female Rangers per season, I certainly didn’t want to break with that tradition and lobbied for the creation of a US-exclusive third Beetle Ranger – probably a Dark Yellow color – female Ranger. These Beetle Rangers were to be less in the traditional goody two-shoes mold of Ranger and have more of a rebellious, anti-authoritarian attitude to them. They would reject the Hexagon mentality of all superheroes operating under the leadership of one man and instead advocate Rangers should be independent and operate on their own.
From what I understand, the fact that the Hurricangers were made up of (at that time) two distinct teams was one of the reasons the Hexagon idea was invented in the the first place. However, I highly doubt that the network would pay to have an original ranger. It has only happened two times in the history of the franchise- the first time, for LR, was done because the Sentai team was limited to five members and Saban thought that they lost a lot of marketability through losing this merchandise icon and went to the expense of creating one (albeit a Turboranger suit with a LR helmet). The spirit rangers were paid for with the money they would have spent on a battliser, and I must say that it was a better use of the money. It was a great idea IMO, because the spirit ranger arc was just great and Jackie really deserves a lot of credit for this. The show also had a sentai that didn't have a sixth. Dark yellow wouldn't look too good. She also wouldn't have a zord.


Rangers from past seasons would eventually find themselves choosing one side of the conflict over the other, making themselves available to assist one group but unavailable to the other. For example, maybe Delphine and the Aquitian Rangers reject the Hexagon and either refuse to cooperate with the Hexagon Rangers or show up to help the anti-Hexagon Rangers. The main focus of the show would be on the new characters of the season, but many of the guest stars would be previous Rangers. One of the main recurring Ranger roles was to be Jason the Red Mighty Morphin Power Ranger who was to definitely be on the side of the anti-Hexagon Beetle Rangers and almost a mirror opposite of a Tommy-style mentor for them.
This goes against what had been commonly believed about the Hexagon concept- the anti-Hexagon faction was always believed to have been led by the Phantom Ranger, because hey, let's dig up as many unresolved stories as possible. With that said, it probably would have been better to go for Jason from a story telling perspective because of the history of Tommy and Jason being friendly rivals. A fundamental difference like this would definitely bring these differences to the fore. Of course, this would never have happened because it would have been incredibly unlikely to get ASJ back onto the show for a full season. It's good to dream, though. An alternative would be Billy (with the occasional support from the Aquitian rangers, perhaps?), but it would require a lot of grovelling to get David Yost back onto the show, considering the problems he had on set.

There is a lot of potential behind the "Who's side are you on" idea, because the writers could really mess with the viewers by making the Hexagon look like the better side, and over time make it increasingly obvious that Hexagon isn't the side to be on. If it's handled correctly it would get the kids interested and taking sides themselves with the role playing, and the best thing to happen for any TV show is a highly engaged audience which is genuinely interested in what's happening.


The green Shurikenger would be added later in the series and for plot purposes would be called the most powerful Ranger ever created because he would in the end be the final challenge the Rangers would have to unite against to fight, but more on that later.
This would have been a plan that he came up with later, because the details of Shurikenger wouldn't have been released at that point. I can't see what he's thinking with this, what side is he on the beginning, and what exactly would he be doing as the season progresses? This seems really half baked, but I'm sure that if the idea was picked up something interesting would have been done with the character. Perhaps he was a lone agent, choosing neither side because he didn't like the stupidity of the politics and preferred to do what rangers exist to do, and that is fight evil... or something like that.

Tommy made his bones as the Green Ranger back in MMPR and to this day, the Green Ranger mini-series still represents possibly the best five episode stretch of Power Rangers. As the Green Ranger this season, Tommy would occasionally help the Rangers in their battles. Paying homage to the Green Ranger mini-series, Tommy and Jason would even battle each other once again.
I'm underwhelmed by this idea. Firstly, I'd prefer it if Tommy didn't become a ranger, but rather go for the lone agent idea I mentioned above. That said, if he is a ranger then I guess he could be the final villain they need to take down, but that seems to go against the whole ranger thing, I can't imagine PR having rangers take down other rangers, it seems a bit odd.

There was a plan to explain how certain Rangers in Forever Red regained their powers. There was a plan for revealing the Phantom Ranger’s identity. There was a plan for explaining Terra Venture’s interstellar technology from PRLG which contradicted the non-spacefaring, modern civilization all other seasons took place in (it was a refurbished Dark Fortress and part of a grander conspiracy). There was a plan for the Silver Guardians. There was a plan for a Power Rangers Wild Force team up with Merrick, Zen-Aku, Jindrax, and Toxica (the latter two now leading a traveling carnival) aligning with the anti-Hexagon Rangers, and Cole, Taylor, Alyssa, Max, and Danny assisting the Hexagon Rangers, before all joining together to fight the good fight (of course).
Well, there's so much fanwank there it's hard to know where to start. This paragraph feels like it's trying too hard to be honest- how exactly will all of this be integrated into a season? You have several villain factions all of which need to be taken out (made up of past and new villains), two ranger factions fighting each other over ranger politics, a ranger organisation which needs to fight evil and also become evil in its own way, plus all the loose end tying that needs to happen above. It's quite a feat and it would take some absolute miracle working to fit it all in and also make the budget work around having an original ranger, paying past cast members to come back to reprise their roles and just getting all the small stuff that's expensive to work. This makes the show expensive so there will be a lot of episodes with extensive use of Sentai footage, which means that there will have to be some amazing writing to bend the footage to work with the original story created. It will make iS look like a cakewalk.

Explaining where Terra Venture came from would be interesting, but unnecessary. That said, if it was part of a greater conspiracy it has potential to be an interesting plot point. But would the writers be able to integrate it into the overall narrative? Good ideas can quickly become bad ideas if they are crowbarred uncomfortably into the story. The plan for the Silver Guardians... perhaps as guards for the Hexagon facility? Tommy's personal bouncers? The team up sure would have been interesting, but I'm not sure how Jindrax and Toxica could help them, they never really demonstrated any ability to fight, they merely carried out some orders and made the monsters grow in WF (that said, I did like them).

Some final thoughts- essentially it's a great idea, but it will encounter so many problems. Firstly they will have to bend the sentai footage around this story, which would be really difficult. By the premise the show will have the "Beetle Rangers" fight the core three all the way through, which the sentai footage of them fighting will run out. This wouldn't be a huge issue because of the addition of another ranger, but I doubt that would happen due to the expense. The coordinating of past cast members is difficult- Gokaiger got it to work because the cameos were there as a treat, they weren't crucial to the story as a whole. They might have affected the story in specific episodes (Go Go V and Hurricanger for instance) but the overall arc did not rely on particular past members returning.

It is a great idea... for fanfiction.net.

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