"It's a bomb!"
Power Rangers, as a television show, has been scraping the bottom of the barrel for the last five years now. Yes, I'm counting the MMPR reversioned episodes. Lazy writing, terrible acting, and disappointing payoffs have plagued all the new seasons produced by Saban Brands. Some fans blame executive producer Jonathan Tzachor for the poor quality, and while I can't personally account for which creative decisions he made during his reign, his absence in the newest series seems to leave him a bit red-handed. Power Ranger Dino Charge has proved from its opening scenes to be a dramatic improvement over anything to come from the new production crew for plenty of reasons; better world building, characterizations, and acting from the cast being chief among them. Once again, fans turn their attention to the executive producer, in this case Power Rangers writing/producing alumnus Chip Lynn. His previous Power Rangers seasons include the back half of Turbo, In Space, Lost Galaxy, Lightspeed Rescue, Time Force, and the back half of RPM. Spot a few fan favorites in there? Needless to say, it's good to have him back.
Episode one is titled Powers from the Past, in which we meet all five rangers in a hurried manner and then we watch pretty Sentai footage for fifteen minutes. Oh, I'm sorry, that was the Megaforce debut. And every episode of Megaforce. The opening scene actually sets up a bit of backstory for the show's villains and (apparently) mentor. 65 million years ago, Sledge (voiced by Adam Gardiner) is an intergalactic bounty hunter who's after powerful crystals known as the Energems, which are in the possession of the Keeper (voiced by Richard Simpson). Keeper's ship is shot down over prehistoric Earth, and without much time to hide the Energems, he merges them with an array of dinosaurs that somehow understand English. Fury (voiced by Paul Harrop), one of Sledge's henchmen, is sent to Earth to retrieve them, but accidentally brings back the container with a bomb inside, sending Sledge and his heart-clad fiancee Poisandra (voiced by Jackie Clarke) into oblivion. Meteors (that Sledge had been gathering) fall to Earth and cause the untimely demise of the dinosaurs.
Fast forward to the present day: we meet Tyler (Brennan Mejia), a young man on a search for his father who went missing years ago, Shelby (Camille Hyde) a teenage waitress at a dinosaur museum, Chase (James Davies), a skateboard-riding, lady-chaser from New Zealand, Koda (Yoshi Sudarso), a gruff guy who's always hungry, and Kendall Morgan (Claire Blackwelder), the bitchy owner of the museum. When Kendall, Chase, and Koda go on a dig and tell the dinosaur-obsessed Shelby she can't come, she stows away in the back of their truck. At the dig, a hooded figure steals a fossil containing one of the Energems that Keeper was trying to hide. Shelby chases after him and discovers that under the robe he's actually an alien monster named Iceage, who promptly attacks her. Tyler swings in to save her, and the two use the Energems to transform into the Red and Pink Dino Charge Power Rangers.
With so many introductions and so much time spent building up the show's mythology, it's a miracle the episode works as well it does. Chalk that up to all the care being put into the scripting, acting, and editing, all of which far outshine anything that has come from the Neo-Saban era thus far. The cast is so likeable (They have chemistry! What a concept!), the story is full of so much creativity, and the Power Rangersey aspects (introduction of suits, zords, weapons, etc.,) don't take center stage immediately. We haven't even met all the rangers yet! Now, is it full of a holes? Sure. Does it all make perfect sense? Of course not. Nothing in Power Rangers has ever made perfect sense. But my God, it's fun. It's finally fun.
While I do love the opening sequence, there are a few major elements that detract from it. The biggest issue I have with the aliens are their designs; Keeper has gigantic, creepy eyes with a mouth that moves inconsistently, Sledge looks like part of his suit is a green screen where a cool effect should be happening, and Poisandra looks pretty ridiculous. I can't say anything bad about their voice acting, but as far as design goes, I think they came up a bit short. There's also the issue with the CGI dinosaurs that all gather together around Keeper when he's giving out the Energems; it was a nonsensical idea. I would have rather he just ran throughout the forest granting the dinos the power as he found each of them as he found them. Not to mention that the CGI is pretty terrible (bad CGI in Power Rangers?! NO FUCKIN' WAY). I could bring up some other odd things the episode contains (like Tyler rock-climbing inside and ACTIVE VOLCANO), but in all honestly, it's overwhelmingly forgivable considering all the things the episode does right.
So if it's not the best premier ever, it's certainly got tons going for it. Dino Charge plants a lot of seeds, and if they are carefully tended to and nurtured throughout the series's run, we might have something great on our hands. Chip Lynn, for the first time, is able to see a Sentai series front to back, and can plan out a series-long arc much easier than ever before. The story with Tyler's dad, back stories for the other rangers, learning more about Sledge and Poisandra (and seeing more of their awesome prison ship)... it's so great to be excited for a new series again! I have faith that if Dino Charge continues along this path, it may rank as one of the better Power Rangers series of all time. Having 40 episodes (20 per year, kill me now) gives it an edge over Disney seasons that often have pacing problems and earlier seasons that were hampered by budget problems. Will it ever reach Time Force levels of good? RPM levels of funny? Mighty Morphin' levels of charm? Dino Thunder levels of... anything? I can't really say. But if Dino Charge continues to try, I will still commend it even if it fails miserably. Plus the theme song rocks, despite it rehashing that same "go-go" bit. It could have been worse.
Neo-Saban score: 11/10
Power Rangers score: 8/10
