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fandomhigh_ooc2006-12-10 11:35 am
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A Multimedia Primer to Power Rangers: Dino Thunder
Hello! This is Shanie and since our series of fandom overview posts kicks off today, I figured I'd begin with my strangest fandom, Power Rangers: Dino Thunder. I've rounded up images and video clips, but don't worry, they're all hyperlinked to spare your bandwidth. Also, because I am Teh Rambly, I have conveniently sectioned off and LJ-cut stuff.
Quick Overview of Power Rangers in General, and Where Dino Thunder Fits Into the Mix
So Power Rangers Mystic Force is just a few weeks ended and the next series, Power Rangers: Operation Overdrive, premieres in February. PR:OO will be the 15th season of the show, though technically it will be the 14th series. We started with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, which ran for three seasons, then switched to a one-season-per-series format with PR: Zeo, PR: Turbo, PR in Space, PR Lost Galaxy, PR Lightspeed Rescue, PR Time Force, PR Wild Force, PR Ninja Storm, PR Dino Thunder, PR SPD, PR Mystic Force, and then PR: Operation Overdrive.
Why is this? All the PR series are adapted from Japanese kids' television series called Super Sentai, all of which operate on a single-season basis. MMPR tried to keep its format and retain the uniforms from Kyouryuu Sentai Zyuranger for multiple seasons, though it ran out of Zyuranger footage to reuse after a while and started pulling from the two subsequent series, Gosei Sentai Dairanger and Ninja Sentai Kakuranger. That? Didn't work so well after a while, because seriously, how often can you lose your powers and have to find new ones? So Saban adopted the single-season format starting with PR: Zeo. By this point the cast members had begun to shuffle a bit anyhow, which made continuity even more of a bitch, so starting with PR Lost Galaxy they started to form entire new teams and new settings. Much easier that way, yes? Yes. Keeps the toy marketing fresh, too. Dino Thunder draws on Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger.
The basic concept is pretty standard for all PR series across the board: a group of people, usually teenagers, get chosen to form a team of spandex-clad, helmeted superheroes, opposing heavily prosthetic-laden archvillains, henchmen, and grunt troops. They tend to be color-coded in civilian form. They yell the names of their weapons or moves a lot, take time out to do silly poses, and fight in rock quarries, often backed by completely gratuitous and multicolored explosions that serve no purpose whatsoever. They almost invariably live in a small California town (this is sometimes specified but just generally assumed to be the case, because it's tradition, dammit, except for when they were, you know, in space) that inexplicably has a major metropolitan downtown district. That would be because you can't pilot a giant robot through a downtown district of one and two-story buildings and have it look good, okay? No no no. For this there must be skyscrapers.
. . . look, there's a reason![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bridge_carson, multiplez, and I are fond of the saying "Don't ask questions, it's a 22-minute show." Our fandom is geared toward an audience of 5-12 year olds. We know this. We don't really expect meticulous continuity and we don't expect things to go into any depth. The show's simply not tailored to that. But that's where the fun comes in for the older viewer (and you'd be surprised, there's a lot of us): speculating. Filling in the blanks. Going meta like whoa. Bitching about the continuity glitches. There's stuff you just can't do in American children's television, especially when you factor Disney programming standards into the mix, but there is lots of room to speculate. There's something bizarrely freeing about being in a fandom where every series follows the same formula, and nearly every episode follows the same basic structure, and yet having lots of canon wiggle room because there's just not enough time to go into detail.
All series are also generally assumed to take place in the year in which they air, with the notable exception of PR SPD, but I'll leave that to Bridge and Z to explain. They are also generally assumed to exist within the same continuity -- although Ninja Storm muddied that up a bit by saying that the Power Rangers only existed in comic books until the NS Rangers were chosen. Ninja Storm was unique in a few other ways, particularly in that it marked the franchise's move to New Zealand. Funny, the acting caliber went up at that point too. Again, not Emmy material, but a hell of a step up from Ricardo Medina, Jr. in Wild Force or Sasha Williams in Lightspeed Rescue, that's for sure.
So NS and the comic book thing raised a bit of a wankstorm in the fandom, a sort of "OMG HOW DARE THEY CUT ALL TIES," which brings us to Dino Thunder, Ninja Storm's successor, saddled with the task of retconning that little issue. It did so in large part by bringing back Tommy Oliver (Jason David Frank), one of the original Mighty Morphin' Rangers, just to say "Yes, dammit, THEY ALL EXIST IN THE SAME UNIVERSE NOW SHUT UP AND STOP WANKING." (Yeah, yeah, you all know you probably had a crush on Tommy at some point. Admit it.)
Did it shut them up? Not really. Adult PR fans will always find something to wank about, whether it's the million plot holes in "Forever Red," the OMGTRAVESTY of casting a kid in Turbo (a valid complaint, I feel), or the infinite number of ways that fans believe the producers screwed up in adapting the sentai series into the PR series. It's fandom, what do you want? Only in this fandom, there's a yearly cycle of wank. Same wank every year, just with different names and details. But it's the same. Damn. Wank. This affords me boundless, simultaneous irritation and amusement.
Rangers
Dr. Tommy Oliver - Played by Jason David Frank. Mentor to the team and eventually the Black Ranger, Tommy is the link to all the previous series and considered something of a legend in Ranger history. Prior to his appearance in Reefside, he put his doctorate in paleontology to work by doing experiments on dinosaurs with Anton Mercer and Terrence "Smitty" Smith. These experiments were, to be honest, kind of screwed-up, and came back to haunt him in many ways throughout Dino Thunder. Tommy's Dino Gem gives him the power of invisibility.
Conner McKnight - Played by James Napier (you may know him from The Tribe) and portrayed at FH by yours truly. Red Ranger who gets the power of super speed from his Dino Gem (look, it's hard to screencap that), soccer jock . . . I won't go into too much depth here. Has a twin brother named Eric who went to the Wind Ninja Academy in Blue Bay Harbor (James portrayed Eric for a few fleeting minutes in the Ninja Storm finale, "Storm Before The Calm" Parts 1 and 2). Has lots ofraging UST ego and jealousy issues with Trent Fernandez, who I'll get to in a minute. He later earns the Shield of Triumph and the ability to transform into the upgraded and more powerful Triassic Ranger, which comes complete with the ability to transport himself and an opponent to an alternate dimension of weird squiggly CGI.
Ethan James - Played by Kevin Duhaney. The group's resident computer geek, hacker and video game enthusiast, Ethan's actually got a pretty sharp tongue on him. He can be dangerously cocky when it comes to gaming, and way too enthusiastic about anything computer-related. As the Blue Ranger, Ethan's Dino Gem gives him the ability to make his skin invulnerable to physical attacks, which also gives him a lot of extra offensive power.
Kira Ford - Played by Emma Lahana. Snarky enough to be more than a match for both Conner and Ethan, Kira is a songwriter and guitarist, much like Emma Lahana herself; all the songs Kira sings on the series were written and performed by Emma and her band. She works as an intern at one of Reefside's TV stations, and her big ambition is to be a pop star . . . hey, at least she's up front about the pop part. Kira's Dino Gem gives her the ability to emit a supersonic scream and transform into the Yellow Ranger. (Also, she gets to ride a motorcycle with the guys. For the win.)
Trent Fernandez (Mercer) - Played by Jeffrey Parazzo. Every Power Rangers team needs a member who was either evil or an antisocial outsider to begin with; Trent is both of those. The adopted son of Anton Mercer, he shows up fairly early in the series as the new kid in town (paralleling Tommy's introduction in MMPR), and has ambitions of being an artist, which Mercer doesn't support at all. He accidentally stumbles upon, and bonds to, the evil-aligned White Dino Gem, which gives him the power of chameleon-like camouflage and the ability to transform into the White Ranger. When Mesogog (more on him in a moment) believes that Trent has betrayed him, he decides to drain the White Dino Gem and strip Trent of his powers -- only to revert back to his human form as Mercer and re-energize the Gem, ordering Trent to join up with the other Rangers. It takes all of them, particularly Conner, a good portion of the season to actually trust him, especially after Mesogog creates his own evil White Ranger clone, and any trust they gain in him is destroyed again when they discover that he's known all along that his father is Mesogog. He gains it back again, eventually, this time for good.
Villains
Anton Mercer / Mesogog - A cybernetic-reptilian hybrid with psionic powers, he was accidentally created when Anton Mercer was on the verge of a scientific breakthrough in dinosaur DNA experimentation. His goal is to reclaim the earth and restore it to the "glorious age of the dinosaurs." Anton Mercer, his human form, is not evil although he can be rather smarmy and kind of a bastard; for the majority of the series they share a body in a Jekyll-and-Hyde type situation, until Mesogog eventually rid himself of this "weakness" by using a potion that separated him completely from Mercer. His lair-cum-laboratory exists in another dimension, accessible by invisi-portals, and he has a predilection for shrinking down captured enemies and defeated rivals, putting them in specimen jars full of colorful goo, and displaying them on his shelves.
Zeltrax - Tommy's personal archnemesis, a Vader-esque cyborg who starts out as being fiercely loyal to Mesogog. This would be due to the fact that back when he was regular old human Terrence "Smitty" Smith, Tommy's colleague and competitor at Anton Mercer Industries, an experiment of his went boom and mortally injured him; Mesogog resurrected him in his cyborg form. As Zeltrax, he blames Tommy for everything that happened to him. As much as Tommy wants to save Zeltrax, in the end our Dr. Oliver is no Luke Skywalker, and is forced to destroy his old friend.
Elsa / Principal Randall - Another one of Mesogog's cyborg henchmen, who doubles as the scary-in-a-bad-way, yet disturbingly hot, principal of Reefside High School. She seems to have the major hots for Tommy, and a fetish for throwing students into detention. Once her true identity is blown, Mesogog believes her to be a failure and drains her of her powers, reverting her to human form.
Tyrannodrones - Mesogog's grunt troops. Like Mesogog himself, they're a mixture of cybernetic technology and dinosaur DNA, only without the psionic powers or any real level of intelligence. Hence grunt troops.
Triptoids - Pulled out of a video game called Wizardwood into reality, Zeltrax recruited them as part of Mesogog's army. They come in black-and-gold or white-and-silver, carry staffs and make bizarre gibbering sounds, and are all in all severely weird.
Allies and Others
Hayley - The proprietor of the Cyberspace, Reefside's answer to the Bronze. She's an old college friend of Tommy's, an MIT grad and (according to Ethan) "techno-legend" who designed a lot of the technology and weapons the Rangers use and is their support guru in Tommy'sBatcave Dino Lab.
Cassidy Cornell - The pushy, obnoxious, and seemingly spoiled reporter for the Reefside High television station. (Man, for a small town high school it sure has the hookups.) At Ethan's behest, Kira eventually helps Cassidy get a job working for Reefside News.
Devin Del Valle - Cassidy's cameraman, general lackey, and friend. He's shy and a little slow, but good-tempered and sweet, even if he can be a dork. And he's massively loyal to Cassidy despite how annoying she can be.
The Conner-Car - No, seriously. Conner's car has its own following.
Dino Thunder in a Prehistoric Nutshell
We begin our story several undetermined years ago, with Doctor Tommy Oliver escaping a Jurassic Park-like secret island just before it blows up. Because, you know, we have to start setting the theme here. Cut to "some years later," when he's starting out on his first day teaching science at Reefside High School -- and immediately butting heads with the kinda-hot-yet-kinda-scary Principal Randall, who swears all students are monsters.
Said principal then sets off on a quest to hand out detention, busting Conner McKnight for ditching class to play soccer, Kira Ford for performing on school grounds without a permit, and Ethan James for hacking into the school's computer systems and causing the sprinklers to go off at random times. And it's just the first day. FORESHADOWING MUCH?
Guess who gets saddled with punishing them all? Yeah, that would be Tommy Oliver, who hauls them off to a paleontology museum, discovers that it's closed, and decides to go poking around to find out what's wrong, because a sign says that the building is the property of Anton Mercer Industries -- big ol' blinking warning lights for Tommy there. So he rounds up his three miscreants and tells them they're off the hook if they find anything that looks prehistoric. (Vague much there, Tommy?)
So what does our intrepid trio do, besides snark at each other for being the different archetypes that they are? Fall through a sinkhole in the forest, of course, and end up in an underground cavern. An underground cavern with a dinosaur skeleton that opens a hidden door into an underground lab when you move its jawbone and GEE, ISN'T THAT CONVENIENT?
Anyway. Ahem. They find three gems that they figure will get them out of detention big-time, and by some STRANGE COINCIDENCE each of them ends up taking the gem that coordinates with their wardrobe because we do our foreshadowing with a giant-ass anvil here, yes we do. But not before snarking on each other some more and making a bunch of cracks about how they're walking straight into a sci-fi cliche. Not that they care, if it gets them out of detention. Mmmm, logic. That isn't here.
So they snark some more, get out of the cavern, and end up being chased by Tyrannodrones -- which is when they find out that the gems have bonded to their DNA and given them the superpowers mentioned above. And once Tommy finds this out, well, that's all the excuse he needs to recruit them as Power Rangers.
That's where one of the neat things about Dino Thunder comes into play -- we actually get to see their Ranger obligations screw up their personal lives. Not repeatedly (remember the "22-minute-show" mantra here), but in the episode "Wave Goodbye", Conner blows a pro soccer tryout because he gets called away to deal with a monster, then tries to quit the team over it. That kickstarts a seasonlong arc portraying his growth from self-centered, superficial jerk into someone who warrants the role of team leader, culminating in the episode "The Passion of Conner".
It's a largely episodic series, but there are some nice little story bits, including Kira's "sell out or make my own music" dilemma in "Diva in Distress" and "A Star Is Torn", Ethan's adventures in Internet dating (starting with "A Star Is Torn" and continuing through "Disappearing Act"), and Cassidy's progression from irritating pest to an actual friend ("A Ranger Exclusive"). All the characters, even the non-Rangers like Cassidy and Devin, had the chance to develop and get some great character moments over the course of the season, which is more than I can say for some PR series. (Yes, Mystic Force, I'm looking at you.)
How does it all end? Well, you'll get a little taste of that next weekend, but long story short, Mesogog steals the Rangers' Dino Gems and saps power from them, making himself stronger. Trent sneaks into his fortress and steals the somewhat weakened Gems back, but they have to sacrifice all of their DinoZords to destroy Zeltrax. This leaves an enhanced Mesogog -- destroyed when the Rangers summon the raw power of the Dino Gems, draining them and eliminating him as a threat.
A kinder, gentler, human Principal Randall gets her position back, Tommygoes to teach at FH decides he's going to try and live the quiet life, Trent gets his father's blessing to go to art school, and Cassidy and Devin finally hook up. The last scene of the series is of our kids at their senior prom, where Kira and her band are providing the music.
But it's not the last time we see them, nor is it the last time they'll see any Ranger action. PR SPD featured two crossover episodes with the DT cast. "Wormhole" sends the SPD rangers back to 2004 to complete a mission. "History" finds Conner, Ethan, and Kira at their one-year high school reunion, where we discover that Ethan is going to tech school, Conner is having a hard time raising money to start a kids' soccer camp, and Kira has moved to New York to start her singing career, without too much success. They get pulled 20 years into the future and team up with Bridge Carson, Z Delgado, and their Space Patrol Delta squadmates for one last battle. Before they're sent home and have their memories of the future erased, we learn that Ethan developed software still used at SPD, Conner's soccer camps became famous, and Kira's singing career inspired Sydney Drew of SPD to pursue her own. (I could snark on Syd here, but again will leave that forbridge_carson and multiplez to do.)
Things That Make Me Go Squee
On the 'shippy side of things, there's the constant snarky UST between Conner and Kira (I am such a C/K shipper, it hurts). There's the stuff with Kira and Trent (more canon but less compelling, unless you count Ethan teasing her about him, because that's funny). There's Ethan's comedy-of-errors doomed attempts at romance with Cassidy, which are not as cute as Devin's series-long crush on Cassidy. Even Tommy gets in on the subtexty action with Principal Randall. As does Kira. *cough* Then there's Conner's disastrous first attempt at impressing environmental activist Krista . . .
One of the main reasons I love Dino Thunder so much: it's the most meta of the series, full of self-referential humor. DT didn't hesitate to poke fun at a lot of the PR franchise conventions, from their tendency to have wardrobes that match their Ranger colors to the franchise's habit of using broad archetypes for the various characters. One of my favorite episodes is "Lost and Found in Translation", which took dubbed footage from its "parent" series BakuRyuu Sentai Abaranger and presented it as a Japanese TV series based on the true adventures of the DT Rangers. Conner spent the entire episode complaining about things like "what do they know about Power Rangers in Japan," "no one could possibly take this stuff seriously," and "that's so obviously a guy in a rubber suit."
I love a series that can mock itself.
(Sidebar: Abaranger exists in FH canon for this very reason, and we've extended that to include Dekaranger for SPD and Hurricanger for Ninja Storm -- though the meta for Mystic Force is Mighty Capin' Justice Magicians.)
Have I mentioned the snark? There's snark. We're not talking Joss Whedon-caliber stuff by a long shot, but hey. The characters, especially the core three, can be delightfully snarky; while I'll be the first person to admit there's nothing outstanding about PR's writing ever, DT had some of the best dialogue between characters in terms of defining how they relate to each other. You don't throw a conceited jock, a computer geek, a musician, an artist, and a science teacher together and expect them to gel perfectly, and it shows in their banter.
The morphing sequences? Endearingly dorky. With the goofy background CGI and the posing and . . . yes. Especially the longest morphing sequence ever, from the Dino Thunder/Ninja Storm crossover episode "Thunder Storm" (yes, such an original title).
Also? Kira is hot, and I could very happily stare at Conner in tanktops forever. (I knowtouchablemarie and future_visions agree with me on the Conner part.)
In short, it's just a light-hearted, fun, silly, and occasionally surprising series -- not high entertainment by any means, but amusing and full of pretty once you learn to love the cheese.
What? Are you actually interested in seeing more?
If you are, this is not me cackling evilly.
Oh wait. Yes it is.
Because Disney Kids DVD releases are Dumb (TM), we do not have any complete series sets of any PR series on DVD. What we do get is 5 individually released DVDs, each with 5 episodes on it, spanning selected episodes from about the first half of the season. Grr.
In addition, if you get Toon Disney, their JETIX block runs selected episodes of previous PR series under the title "Power Rangers Generations." There's a good bit of DT in there.
Finally, a couple of clips from episodes, stuff that amuses me, and links of the informational variety:
Kira Ford performing "Patiently." From the end of "A Star Is Torn."
Parody-ish video set to "There Is Life Outside Your Apartment" from Avenue Q. I just found this one this morning. The aspect ratio is off, but still -- amusing.
Trent-centric fanvid to "Animal I Have Become" by Three Days Grace. Okay, actually it's a Trent/Conner vid. Not my ship, not the world's best vid, but still, teh pretty. Speaking of my ship . . .
Kira/Conner fanvid to Vanessa Carlton's "White Houses." The girl featured in the second verse is Krista, known to most of fandom as "Treegirl." A bit too literal in spots and again, not the world's greatest vid, but I kind of love the pr0ntastic non-PR footage segment in the middle -- and I'd like to note that the footage for the end of this vid this is COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTEXT OMG *FLAILS*. Ahem.
Dino Thunder's section of Rovang's Giant PR Exhaustive Timeline of Doom. I am well and truly impressed with this timeline, as well as being terrified by it.
Dino Thunder at Ranger Central
Wiki article on DT's "parent" show, BakuRyuu Sentai Abaranger.
Quick Overview of Power Rangers in General, and Where Dino Thunder Fits Into the Mix
So Power Rangers Mystic Force is just a few weeks ended and the next series, Power Rangers: Operation Overdrive, premieres in February. PR:OO will be the 15th season of the show, though technically it will be the 14th series. We started with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, which ran for three seasons, then switched to a one-season-per-series format with PR: Zeo, PR: Turbo, PR in Space, PR Lost Galaxy, PR Lightspeed Rescue, PR Time Force, PR Wild Force, PR Ninja Storm, PR Dino Thunder, PR SPD, PR Mystic Force, and then PR: Operation Overdrive.
Why is this? All the PR series are adapted from Japanese kids' television series called Super Sentai, all of which operate on a single-season basis. MMPR tried to keep its format and retain the uniforms from Kyouryuu Sentai Zyuranger for multiple seasons, though it ran out of Zyuranger footage to reuse after a while and started pulling from the two subsequent series, Gosei Sentai Dairanger and Ninja Sentai Kakuranger. That? Didn't work so well after a while, because seriously, how often can you lose your powers and have to find new ones? So Saban adopted the single-season format starting with PR: Zeo. By this point the cast members had begun to shuffle a bit anyhow, which made continuity even more of a bitch, so starting with PR Lost Galaxy they started to form entire new teams and new settings. Much easier that way, yes? Yes. Keeps the toy marketing fresh, too. Dino Thunder draws on Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger.
The basic concept is pretty standard for all PR series across the board: a group of people, usually teenagers, get chosen to form a team of spandex-clad, helmeted superheroes, opposing heavily prosthetic-laden archvillains, henchmen, and grunt troops. They tend to be color-coded in civilian form. They yell the names of their weapons or moves a lot, take time out to do silly poses, and fight in rock quarries, often backed by completely gratuitous and multicolored explosions that serve no purpose whatsoever. They almost invariably live in a small California town (this is sometimes specified but just generally assumed to be the case, because it's tradition, dammit, except for when they were, you know, in space) that inexplicably has a major metropolitan downtown district. That would be because you can't pilot a giant robot through a downtown district of one and two-story buildings and have it look good, okay? No no no. For this there must be skyscrapers.
. . . look, there's a reason
bridge_carson, multiplez, and I are fond of the saying "Don't ask questions, it's a 22-minute show." Our fandom is geared toward an audience of 5-12 year olds. We know this. We don't really expect meticulous continuity and we don't expect things to go into any depth. The show's simply not tailored to that. But that's where the fun comes in for the older viewer (and you'd be surprised, there's a lot of us): speculating. Filling in the blanks. Going meta like whoa. Bitching about the continuity glitches. There's stuff you just can't do in American children's television, especially when you factor Disney programming standards into the mix, but there is lots of room to speculate. There's something bizarrely freeing about being in a fandom where every series follows the same formula, and nearly every episode follows the same basic structure, and yet having lots of canon wiggle room because there's just not enough time to go into detail.All series are also generally assumed to take place in the year in which they air, with the notable exception of PR SPD, but I'll leave that to Bridge and Z to explain. They are also generally assumed to exist within the same continuity -- although Ninja Storm muddied that up a bit by saying that the Power Rangers only existed in comic books until the NS Rangers were chosen. Ninja Storm was unique in a few other ways, particularly in that it marked the franchise's move to New Zealand. Funny, the acting caliber went up at that point too. Again, not Emmy material, but a hell of a step up from Ricardo Medina, Jr. in Wild Force or Sasha Williams in Lightspeed Rescue, that's for sure.
So NS and the comic book thing raised a bit of a wankstorm in the fandom, a sort of "OMG HOW DARE THEY CUT ALL TIES," which brings us to Dino Thunder, Ninja Storm's successor, saddled with the task of retconning that little issue. It did so in large part by bringing back Tommy Oliver (Jason David Frank), one of the original Mighty Morphin' Rangers, just to say "Yes, dammit, THEY ALL EXIST IN THE SAME UNIVERSE NOW SHUT UP AND STOP WANKING." (Yeah, yeah, you all know you probably had a crush on Tommy at some point. Admit it.)
Did it shut them up? Not really. Adult PR fans will always find something to wank about, whether it's the million plot holes in "Forever Red," the OMGTRAVESTY of casting a kid in Turbo (a valid complaint, I feel), or the infinite number of ways that fans believe the producers screwed up in adapting the sentai series into the PR series. It's fandom, what do you want? Only in this fandom, there's a yearly cycle of wank. Same wank every year, just with different names and details. But it's the same. Damn. Wank. This affords me boundless, simultaneous irritation and amusement.
Rangers
Dr. Tommy Oliver - Played by Jason David Frank. Mentor to the team and eventually the Black Ranger, Tommy is the link to all the previous series and considered something of a legend in Ranger history. Prior to his appearance in Reefside, he put his doctorate in paleontology to work by doing experiments on dinosaurs with Anton Mercer and Terrence "Smitty" Smith. These experiments were, to be honest, kind of screwed-up, and came back to haunt him in many ways throughout Dino Thunder. Tommy's Dino Gem gives him the power of invisibility.
Conner McKnight - Played by James Napier (you may know him from The Tribe) and portrayed at FH by yours truly. Red Ranger who gets the power of super speed from his Dino Gem (look, it's hard to screencap that), soccer jock . . . I won't go into too much depth here. Has a twin brother named Eric who went to the Wind Ninja Academy in Blue Bay Harbor (James portrayed Eric for a few fleeting minutes in the Ninja Storm finale, "Storm Before The Calm" Parts 1 and 2). Has lots of
Ethan James - Played by Kevin Duhaney. The group's resident computer geek, hacker and video game enthusiast, Ethan's actually got a pretty sharp tongue on him. He can be dangerously cocky when it comes to gaming, and way too enthusiastic about anything computer-related. As the Blue Ranger, Ethan's Dino Gem gives him the ability to make his skin invulnerable to physical attacks, which also gives him a lot of extra offensive power.
Kira Ford - Played by Emma Lahana. Snarky enough to be more than a match for both Conner and Ethan, Kira is a songwriter and guitarist, much like Emma Lahana herself; all the songs Kira sings on the series were written and performed by Emma and her band. She works as an intern at one of Reefside's TV stations, and her big ambition is to be a pop star . . . hey, at least she's up front about the pop part. Kira's Dino Gem gives her the ability to emit a supersonic scream and transform into the Yellow Ranger. (Also, she gets to ride a motorcycle with the guys. For the win.)
Trent Fernandez (Mercer) - Played by Jeffrey Parazzo. Every Power Rangers team needs a member who was either evil or an antisocial outsider to begin with; Trent is both of those. The adopted son of Anton Mercer, he shows up fairly early in the series as the new kid in town (paralleling Tommy's introduction in MMPR), and has ambitions of being an artist, which Mercer doesn't support at all. He accidentally stumbles upon, and bonds to, the evil-aligned White Dino Gem, which gives him the power of chameleon-like camouflage and the ability to transform into the White Ranger. When Mesogog (more on him in a moment) believes that Trent has betrayed him, he decides to drain the White Dino Gem and strip Trent of his powers -- only to revert back to his human form as Mercer and re-energize the Gem, ordering Trent to join up with the other Rangers. It takes all of them, particularly Conner, a good portion of the season to actually trust him, especially after Mesogog creates his own evil White Ranger clone, and any trust they gain in him is destroyed again when they discover that he's known all along that his father is Mesogog. He gains it back again, eventually, this time for good.
Villains
Anton Mercer / Mesogog - A cybernetic-reptilian hybrid with psionic powers, he was accidentally created when Anton Mercer was on the verge of a scientific breakthrough in dinosaur DNA experimentation. His goal is to reclaim the earth and restore it to the "glorious age of the dinosaurs." Anton Mercer, his human form, is not evil although he can be rather smarmy and kind of a bastard; for the majority of the series they share a body in a Jekyll-and-Hyde type situation, until Mesogog eventually rid himself of this "weakness" by using a potion that separated him completely from Mercer. His lair-cum-laboratory exists in another dimension, accessible by invisi-portals, and he has a predilection for shrinking down captured enemies and defeated rivals, putting them in specimen jars full of colorful goo, and displaying them on his shelves.
Zeltrax - Tommy's personal archnemesis, a Vader-esque cyborg who starts out as being fiercely loyal to Mesogog. This would be due to the fact that back when he was regular old human Terrence "Smitty" Smith, Tommy's colleague and competitor at Anton Mercer Industries, an experiment of his went boom and mortally injured him; Mesogog resurrected him in his cyborg form. As Zeltrax, he blames Tommy for everything that happened to him. As much as Tommy wants to save Zeltrax, in the end our Dr. Oliver is no Luke Skywalker, and is forced to destroy his old friend.
Elsa / Principal Randall - Another one of Mesogog's cyborg henchmen, who doubles as the scary-in-a-bad-way, yet disturbingly hot, principal of Reefside High School. She seems to have the major hots for Tommy, and a fetish for throwing students into detention. Once her true identity is blown, Mesogog believes her to be a failure and drains her of her powers, reverting her to human form.
Tyrannodrones - Mesogog's grunt troops. Like Mesogog himself, they're a mixture of cybernetic technology and dinosaur DNA, only without the psionic powers or any real level of intelligence. Hence grunt troops.
Triptoids - Pulled out of a video game called Wizardwood into reality, Zeltrax recruited them as part of Mesogog's army. They come in black-and-gold or white-and-silver, carry staffs and make bizarre gibbering sounds, and are all in all severely weird.
Allies and Others
Hayley - The proprietor of the Cyberspace, Reefside's answer to the Bronze. She's an old college friend of Tommy's, an MIT grad and (according to Ethan) "techno-legend" who designed a lot of the technology and weapons the Rangers use and is their support guru in Tommy's
Cassidy Cornell - The pushy, obnoxious, and seemingly spoiled reporter for the Reefside High television station. (Man, for a small town high school it sure has the hookups.) At Ethan's behest, Kira eventually helps Cassidy get a job working for Reefside News.
Devin Del Valle - Cassidy's cameraman, general lackey, and friend. He's shy and a little slow, but good-tempered and sweet, even if he can be a dork. And he's massively loyal to Cassidy despite how annoying she can be.
The Conner-Car - No, seriously. Conner's car has its own following.
Dino Thunder in a Prehistoric Nutshell
We begin our story several undetermined years ago, with Doctor Tommy Oliver escaping a Jurassic Park-like secret island just before it blows up. Because, you know, we have to start setting the theme here. Cut to "some years later," when he's starting out on his first day teaching science at Reefside High School -- and immediately butting heads with the kinda-hot-yet-kinda-scary Principal Randall, who swears all students are monsters.
Said principal then sets off on a quest to hand out detention, busting Conner McKnight for ditching class to play soccer, Kira Ford for performing on school grounds without a permit, and Ethan James for hacking into the school's computer systems and causing the sprinklers to go off at random times. And it's just the first day. FORESHADOWING MUCH?
Guess who gets saddled with punishing them all? Yeah, that would be Tommy Oliver, who hauls them off to a paleontology museum, discovers that it's closed, and decides to go poking around to find out what's wrong, because a sign says that the building is the property of Anton Mercer Industries -- big ol' blinking warning lights for Tommy there. So he rounds up his three miscreants and tells them they're off the hook if they find anything that looks prehistoric. (Vague much there, Tommy?)
So what does our intrepid trio do, besides snark at each other for being the different archetypes that they are? Fall through a sinkhole in the forest, of course, and end up in an underground cavern. An underground cavern with a dinosaur skeleton that opens a hidden door into an underground lab when you move its jawbone and GEE, ISN'T THAT CONVENIENT?
Anyway. Ahem. They find three gems that they figure will get them out of detention big-time, and by some STRANGE COINCIDENCE each of them ends up taking the gem that coordinates with their wardrobe because we do our foreshadowing with a giant-ass anvil here, yes we do. But not before snarking on each other some more and making a bunch of cracks about how they're walking straight into a sci-fi cliche. Not that they care, if it gets them out of detention. Mmmm, logic. That isn't here.
So they snark some more, get out of the cavern, and end up being chased by Tyrannodrones -- which is when they find out that the gems have bonded to their DNA and given them the superpowers mentioned above. And once Tommy finds this out, well, that's all the excuse he needs to recruit them as Power Rangers.
That's where one of the neat things about Dino Thunder comes into play -- we actually get to see their Ranger obligations screw up their personal lives. Not repeatedly (remember the "22-minute-show" mantra here), but in the episode "Wave Goodbye", Conner blows a pro soccer tryout because he gets called away to deal with a monster, then tries to quit the team over it. That kickstarts a seasonlong arc portraying his growth from self-centered, superficial jerk into someone who warrants the role of team leader, culminating in the episode "The Passion of Conner".
It's a largely episodic series, but there are some nice little story bits, including Kira's "sell out or make my own music" dilemma in "Diva in Distress" and "A Star Is Torn", Ethan's adventures in Internet dating (starting with "A Star Is Torn" and continuing through "Disappearing Act"), and Cassidy's progression from irritating pest to an actual friend ("A Ranger Exclusive"). All the characters, even the non-Rangers like Cassidy and Devin, had the chance to develop and get some great character moments over the course of the season, which is more than I can say for some PR series. (Yes, Mystic Force, I'm looking at you.)
How does it all end? Well, you'll get a little taste of that next weekend, but long story short, Mesogog steals the Rangers' Dino Gems and saps power from them, making himself stronger. Trent sneaks into his fortress and steals the somewhat weakened Gems back, but they have to sacrifice all of their DinoZords to destroy Zeltrax. This leaves an enhanced Mesogog -- destroyed when the Rangers summon the raw power of the Dino Gems, draining them and eliminating him as a threat.
A kinder, gentler, human Principal Randall gets her position back, Tommy
But it's not the last time we see them, nor is it the last time they'll see any Ranger action. PR SPD featured two crossover episodes with the DT cast. "Wormhole" sends the SPD rangers back to 2004 to complete a mission. "History" finds Conner, Ethan, and Kira at their one-year high school reunion, where we discover that Ethan is going to tech school, Conner is having a hard time raising money to start a kids' soccer camp, and Kira has moved to New York to start her singing career, without too much success. They get pulled 20 years into the future and team up with Bridge Carson, Z Delgado, and their Space Patrol Delta squadmates for one last battle. Before they're sent home and have their memories of the future erased, we learn that Ethan developed software still used at SPD, Conner's soccer camps became famous, and Kira's singing career inspired Sydney Drew of SPD to pursue her own. (I could snark on Syd here, but again will leave that for
bridge_carson and multiplez to do.)Things That Make Me Go Squee
On the 'shippy side of things, there's the constant snarky UST between Conner and Kira (I am such a C/K shipper, it hurts). There's the stuff with Kira and Trent (more canon but less compelling, unless you count Ethan teasing her about him, because that's funny). There's Ethan's comedy-of-errors doomed attempts at romance with Cassidy, which are not as cute as Devin's series-long crush on Cassidy. Even Tommy gets in on the subtexty action with Principal Randall. As does Kira. *cough* Then there's Conner's disastrous first attempt at impressing environmental activist Krista . . .
One of the main reasons I love Dino Thunder so much: it's the most meta of the series, full of self-referential humor. DT didn't hesitate to poke fun at a lot of the PR franchise conventions, from their tendency to have wardrobes that match their Ranger colors to the franchise's habit of using broad archetypes for the various characters. One of my favorite episodes is "Lost and Found in Translation", which took dubbed footage from its "parent" series BakuRyuu Sentai Abaranger and presented it as a Japanese TV series based on the true adventures of the DT Rangers. Conner spent the entire episode complaining about things like "what do they know about Power Rangers in Japan," "no one could possibly take this stuff seriously," and "that's so obviously a guy in a rubber suit."
I love a series that can mock itself.
(Sidebar: Abaranger exists in FH canon for this very reason, and we've extended that to include Dekaranger for SPD and Hurricanger for Ninja Storm -- though the meta for Mystic Force is Mighty Capin' Justice Magicians.)
Have I mentioned the snark? There's snark. We're not talking Joss Whedon-caliber stuff by a long shot, but hey. The characters, especially the core three, can be delightfully snarky; while I'll be the first person to admit there's nothing outstanding about PR's writing ever, DT had some of the best dialogue between characters in terms of defining how they relate to each other. You don't throw a conceited jock, a computer geek, a musician, an artist, and a science teacher together and expect them to gel perfectly, and it shows in their banter.
The morphing sequences? Endearingly dorky. With the goofy background CGI and the posing and . . . yes. Especially the longest morphing sequence ever, from the Dino Thunder/Ninja Storm crossover episode "Thunder Storm" (yes, such an original title).
Also? Kira is hot, and I could very happily stare at Conner in tanktops forever. (I know
touchablemarie and future_visions agree with me on the Conner part.)In short, it's just a light-hearted, fun, silly, and occasionally surprising series -- not high entertainment by any means, but amusing and full of pretty once you learn to love the cheese.
What? Are you actually interested in seeing more?
If you are, this is not me cackling evilly.
Oh wait. Yes it is.
Because Disney Kids DVD releases are Dumb (TM), we do not have any complete series sets of any PR series on DVD. What we do get is 5 individually released DVDs, each with 5 episodes on it, spanning selected episodes from about the first half of the season. Grr.
In addition, if you get Toon Disney, their JETIX block runs selected episodes of previous PR series under the title "Power Rangers Generations." There's a good bit of DT in there.
Finally, a couple of clips from episodes, stuff that amuses me, and links of the informational variety:
Kira Ford performing "Patiently." From the end of "A Star Is Torn."
Parody-ish video set to "There Is Life Outside Your Apartment" from Avenue Q. I just found this one this morning. The aspect ratio is off, but still -- amusing.
Trent-centric fanvid to "Animal I Have Become" by Three Days Grace. Okay, actually it's a Trent/Conner vid. Not my ship, not the world's best vid, but still, teh pretty. Speaking of my ship . . .
Kira/Conner fanvid to Vanessa Carlton's "White Houses." The girl featured in the second verse is Krista, known to most of fandom as "Treegirl." A bit too literal in spots and again, not the world's greatest vid, but I kind of love the pr0ntastic non-PR footage segment in the middle -- and I'd like to note that the footage for the end of this vid this is COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTEXT OMG *FLAILS*. Ahem.
Dino Thunder's section of Rovang's Giant PR Exhaustive Timeline of Doom. I am well and truly impressed with this timeline, as well as being terrified by it.
Dino Thunder at Ranger Central
Wiki article on DT's "parent" show, BakuRyuu Sentai Abaranger.
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In fact, I was watching Dino Thunder over summer break back when it was new and my mom went, "Isn't that the ponytail guy you had a crush on when you were eight?"
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INDEED.
And if you take the show for what is (a kids show based on a Japanese show), it is fun to watch :)
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*swoons*
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Mine is an evil laugh.no subject
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Good stuff!
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*sighs*
*goes back to clicking youtube links*
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*SNUGGLES PRINCESS!STARK ICON, EEE*
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<3!!
Conner/Kira for teh win!!!