Afterthoughts - Power Rangers Hyperforce: Episode 01

From Saban Brands and Hyper RPG

Afterthoughts:

Power Rangers Hyperforce - Episode 01

Premiering on October 24, 2017 on the Hyper RPG Twitch Channel, Power Rangers Hyperforce is a 25 episode, weekly, live, tabletop roleplaying game, and a joint venture between Saban Brands and Hyper RPG. Before we get to the point, here is some more information about the game.

Not sure what a tabletop roleplaying game is?

The short explanation, a game in which a group of people play the roles of characters in a world mostly controlled by another player (often called the Game Master), and together they weave a story.

A more complete detailed description can be found from Roll20.net;

"...a Tabletop RPG allows a gaming group much more creative freedom in where they go, who they meet and what they want to do. The barebones essence of a Tabletop RPG is collaborative storytelling. It’s a story co-authored by everyone sitting at the table while playing the game. You and your friends fit themselves into the shoes of a character in the story. The decisions made and the plot twists that occur reflect the characters everyone is pretending to be.There’s no invisible walls to block exploration, no limits to what your character looks like and there’s no programmed restrictions on your character's behavior.

The setting of the game can be familiar, like a favorite TV show, or something entirely alien and new. The only limitations are the rules of the game and the collective creativity of the people playing it."

And what is Hyperforce itself all about?

Set in the year 3016, 16 years after the events of Power Rangers Time Force, a new team of Time Force Cadets will be called upon to be Power Rangers to defeat an ancient evil threatening all of creation.

- The Cast -

 Peter Sudarso as Marv, the Red Ranger

 Andre Meadows as Eddie, the Blue Ranger

 Meghan Camarena as Chloe, the Pink Ranger

 Christina Vee as Vesper, the Black Ranger

Paul Shrier as Jack, the Yellow Ranger

In addition to Peter and Paul, who are both Power Rangers alumni (the Blue Ninja Steel Ranger and Bulk, from multiple seasons, respectively), there will be special guest stars from the show's history showing up as well.

As we move on, it should't have to be said, but I'll say it anyway.

Spoilers!

So, my initial thoughts?

In a word? Amazing.

From the opening scene in a Time Force Academy class room with Erin Cahill reprising her role of Time Force Pink Ranger Jen Scotts, it was obvious this would be great. Each of the cast members absolutely killed it, creating a team of very unique and varied personalities. Outside of Erin, Paul Schrier stole the show. From not only the actions he had his character perform, but also the way he worded everything both in and out of character. When he was talking, the viewers got a real treat.

The story itself is off to a solid start as well. The threat, currently known only as "The Alliance," appears to be a danger rising from within the ranks of the Time Force agency itself. They claim infinite numbers, because time is infinite. And they are quick to tell you their goal is evil, and evil is their goal. Is this the rebirth of the United Alliance of Evil? They appear to be lead by a terribly mysterious cloaked figure who is first seen by the future Ranger team hurling energy blasts as the Pink Time Force Ranger.

In the end, the team saves Jen, the mysterious baddie flees into the time stream, Jen gives the Rangers a time ship and their morphers, and the ship's android follows the mysterious baddie back through to time... the year 1994.

A dark conspiracy from within a government agency?
A mystery figure shrouded in darkness?
1994?

That can only mean one thing for episode 02...

The Rangers want to believe.

- Highlights -

* DOUBLE HAMMER FIST!

* Marv putting his hand to his ear, yelling, "PROFESSOR SCOTTS," despite not having a comm-unit.

* Everything involving Erin Cahill. It was great seeing Jen Scotts back in action.

* Vesper rising to the situation despite her slacker beginning.

* Eddie's impersonation of the dean.

* "There is also a very robust construction industry."

* "Ay yi yi yi yi."

- The Suspects -

We don't have much of anything to go on for who the Alliance leader could be, though if we assume the original press release was truthful, and the ultimate threat is an ancient evil, here are some possible suspects (regardless of how unlikely) if the villain is a pre-existing character. I am looking at possibilities outside of totally possible choices of it being a fan-favorite like Lord Zedd or Rita returned.

Thrax

The time of Thrax's birth is somewhat of a potential plothole in the Power Rangers universe, but the son of Rita and Lord Zedd would have to be ancient to have been trapped by the Sentinel Knight when SK still had a physical body. After his only appearance in the series, Thrax was believed destroyed, but hey, this is Power Rangers. Evil can always return. And Thrax is a villain so under developed that Hyperforce could use him pretty much however they wanted with risking contradictions to established lore or personality.

Ivan Ooze

With absolutely no continuity ties to the Power Rangers TV franchise, this ancient foe of Zordon would be a great choice as the leader of the Alliance. What better way to bring a fan-favorite PR villain crashing into continuity with the TV series?

Another of these guys

Nothing says the cloaked baddies is THE big bad. Perhaps they are just a lackey, and another member of the Dark Spectre and Maligore's race is awake, trying to assert domination of existence as the big bad.

Queen Bansheera

Sure, sure, Queen Bansheera appeared to be taken care of, but ultimately she was dragged back to the demon world. Maybe she was destroyed, or maybe the demon queen simply gave the other demons a reminder of why she was, in fact, called Queen. And in a thousand years, maybe she found her way back out.

If we play a little loose with the definition of ancient, and just go with old (over a thousand years old, say), one other threat comes to mind.

Venjix

Venjix was never defeated by the RPM Rangers, and we know crossover between the primary Ranger dimension and the RPM dimension is possible, as both RPM Red and the Super Megaforce Rangers have crossover before. In fact, RPM Red crossing over would have been the perfect time for Venjix to hop worlds, since he was last seen hiding in a morpher. It would be nothing for him to stay hidden, plotting and planning, until technology reached a level in which his ultimate plans could be enacted.

Now, if the hooded figure is a lackey, and not the big bad, and is directly relevant to the Time Force story, I'd say Alex going rogue seems like a real possibility. Or much less likely, but would be highly entertaining, maybe Circuit, tired of being unappreciated, especially after Time Force moved on to a different style of android, got a killer upgrade.

- Wishful Thinking -

* Jason Narvy guest starring as Skull, and we either have Jack captured and Paul plays Bulk to Narvy's Skull for a episode, or we learn Jack in a descendent of Bulk's, and the Rangers keep having to save Skull who keeps getting himself in trouble trying to prove Jack is really a brainwashed Bulk.

* Yoshi Sudarso guest starring as Koda, if only to see Peter and Yoshi together as Rangers.

* Not only the inclusion of Thrax in some part of the story, but an explanation for how he is the child of Zedd and Rita and be as old as he would be to be trapped by the Sentinel Knight as he had been.

* The entire Time Force Ranger cast returning for a major crossover with the new Hyperforce Rangers.

* Ransik joining the Rangers for an adventure, showing them the power of redemption in action to turn a dangerous villain into a big damn hero.


If you're a Power Ranger fan, and haven't checked out Hyperforce yet, and you aren't subscribed to Hyper RPG's channel, episodes will be uploaded to their Youtube channel a week after airing. I highly suggest if you give Power Rangers Hyperforce a watch, great things are happening on it.

The Mythos - Power Rangers (2017)

The Mythos -

Power Rangers (2017)

     This new heading, "The Mythos," is one concocted to take a look at some of the prevailing background and lore of a movie, season, or series in general. This first entry of the 'Mythos" segment will focus on the new Lionsgate movie, "Power Rangers."

     For those who may not be in the know, this film an a modern re-imagining of the original "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" series, a series in which the evil space witch Rita Repulsa is freed from her space dumpster prison, resulting in the alien wizard Zordon recruiting a team of teenagers to save the world. Armed with an array of sci-fi weaponry and a changing roster of giant mecha known as zords, these teenagers became the Power Rangers. And while the show is currently on its 24th season, "Power Rangers Ninja Steel," the "Mighty Morphin" descriptor was only carried for the first three seasons. Those three seasons, however, were composed of 145 episodes (the franchise as a whole is up to 831 episodes and two films, not counting "Ninja Steel" or the new movie).

     Given the high episode count, there are a lot of ideas and backstory to the Power Rangers mythos, some of them better developed than others, a lot of it only getting mentioned in the season it is introduced. The franchise as a whole is, it seems, focused more on being a 22 minute toy commercial rather than the interconnected sci-fi franchise with deep continuity and imaginative lore that it could be... even with the spandex and rubber monster suits. One of the potential perks of the new movie branch of the franchise is the chance to pick and choose from 24 seasons (and two movies) of mythos to play with and develop. This first movie gives some shining examples of how the writers are not afraid to develop and rework some of those ideas.

     And I feel it succeeds in those re-imagined concepts, and would like to talk about some of them. So, from this point on, there will be...

Mighty Morphin Super Sentai

   

Welcome to the Mighty Morphin Super Sentai blog.

What is Mighty Morphin Super Sentai?

It is a Facebook fan page for all things Power Rangers, Super Sentai, and tokusatsu in general. The purpose of this blog is to allow for better archiving of our, the MMSS admins, thoughts and musings regarding the above topics.

This particular blog has always been the blog of one of the MMSS admins (admin Dr. K), however, it is being transitioned into the official MMSS blog. This is why you may see some posts dated well before this introductory post.

We are still getting things sorted here, but hopefully we'll get things going full bore soon.

Thank you for your patience.

-Mighty Morphin Super Sentai Admin Team

Power Rangers: Guardian Squad - A Fan Adaptation of Go-Busters

     The following is a compilation of four previous posts, nothing but tweaks to the layout have changed. Also, this was written before Dino Charge was announced, and before Super Megaforce aired. Were I to re-adapt Go-Busters, I'd adjust the story for the current state of Ranger affairs.

     Now, on to...

Power Rangers: Guardian Squad -
A Fan Adaptation of Go-Busters

Season 1

The Premise:

     Some time has passed since we've last visited Silver Hills, and in that time the Silver Guardians have done wonders with making it a great place to live. Led by the Quantum Ranger (if Dan Southworth is not able to reprise his role as Eric, then the power of the Quantum Ranger will have been transferred to another), crime is practically non-existent and the city has been provided with a clean, renewable energy source, free for all citizens. The Think Tank, a research and development project ran and co-funded by the Silver Guardians, in conjunction with Hartford Industries, had developed a way to tap into a self-replenishing bio-field that surrounds the planet, and use it to power the city. By creating a series of giant collector towers, the city of Silver Hills is powered by the Morphing Grid itself.

     Neither the Silver Guardians nor Hartford Industries have a short memory, however, and they have developed a new series of Ranger technology to defend the city, and the Morphing Grid, should another evil show itself. Led in the field and trained by the Quantum Ranger, the new Rangers use their wrist-mounted Guardian Boosters to Ranger-Up and protect the city. And they will be needed, as a new threat to Silver Hills is imminent.

"What If?" The Saban/Lion's Gate MMPR Movie

"What If?"

The Saban/Lion's Gate MMPR Movie

     As you may already know, a new Power Rangers movie in in production between Saban and Lion's Gate. This movie is, by all current reports, based on the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers characters, the characters and concepts that comprised the first three seasons of the Power Rangers television series. Early reports implied that the new movie would not be a reboot, or at least not in a way that ignores the 20+ years of the TV series' continuity (a continuity which does have its fair share of inconsistencies and plot holes).

     At the same time, I personally think that if the movie is not a reboot in some form or fashion that it will either be extremely limited in what it can actually do with the MMPR characters, or just create a lot more plot holes and inconsistencies in the franchise's continuity. As such, it would seem the best way to handle this new movie (and potential sequels) is to go a route similar to the newest Star Trek movies and create a new, alternate, timeline for the series

     Not only would I love to see the new movies as an official alternate timeline, I would like things to go a step further. The current season of Power Rangers, Dino Charge, will continue next year with a new title, Dino Supercharge, and this series will end in the fall of 2016. The new MMPR movie has a release date of January 2017, which gives Dino Supercharge the perfect placement to not only segue into the new MMPR movie and the creation of the new alternate timeline (thus keeping the entire franchise's history not only in one piece, but making the creation of the new universe dependent on the original timeline) but to wrap up the franchise's original continuity to make way for the new timeline.
    
 This would mean going forward, each new season of Power Rangers would now take place in this new alternate timeline, one very much built upon and tied in with the new movie. This would also allow for new, tighter, reigns on continuity (not in a restrictive sense, but more a chance to keep from creating the same types of glaring plot holes the current continuity suffers from).

Chrono Rangers - A Fan-Made Power Rangers Team

The following is the concept for an original team/season of Power Rangers created by admin Gokai Green of the Mighty Morphin Super Sentai tokusatsu fanpage on Facebook. It is a wholly original creation, not based on any sentai or PR series.

Power Rangers

Chrono Rangers

 -Story Concept -

The year is 2350. 150 years ago a new subspecies of human emerged. Sensitive to the flow of time and anomalies in the time stream and marked physically by their chalk white hair and the hourglass-like markings on the backs of their hands, these individuals have been labeled Homo sapiens chronos by the scientific community and chrono humans (or simply chronos) by the laity. As these people became aware of an increasing number of time anomalies, Chronos (so called because of the colloquial name for many of its founding members and the fact that its primary purpose was the preservation of the time stream) was formed to monitor and attempt to combat these anomalies. More recently, a group of beings calling themselves the Unclocked have emerged, seemingly from outside of time itself, with the goal of whiping out the entire timeline. It is now up to an intrepid team of newly licensed Power Rangers to combat this threat.

"What If?" - The Legendary War

"What If?" - The Legendary War

Thanks to the United Kingdom being further ahead of the US regarding the airing of "Power Rangers: Super Megaforce," many in the US have already seen the final episode of the season entitled "Legendary Battle."

"Legendary" has been a tagline to this season from the beginning

     Since the start of Megaforce (which was adapted from "Tensou Sentai Goseiger") we've been teased about the upcoming Legendary Battle. In the first few seconds of the first episode we see brief flashes of it delivered via a dream to the future Red Megaforce Ranger, Troy. From that point on, the rest of the season deals with an alien invasion of Earth, which is just a precursor for the real invasion in season 2.

     With the start of Season 2, now called Super Megaforce and (mostly) using footage from "Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger," the Rangers are upgraded with Legendary Morphers that use keys to grant the Rangers access to the powers of the Legendary Rangers (all Rangers from the past, plus some never before seen in Ranger history [I may do a post on that later]), and eventually new zords (some based on past zords, some not, and one just reusing a name [I really should just do a general post on Super Megaforce, "Legendary Battle" aside]). Powered up and looking like pirates (but, you know, totally not pirates), the Rangers continue to fight an invasion using Legendary powers and meeting a few Legendary Rangers along the way.

     This all leads up to the final episode, which has been teased and been building for two seasons, "Legendary Battle." We know we're getting 10 cameos from past Rangers, we know the episode will run longer than normal, hopes have been building. It also helped build this hope that Season 2 of the Megaforce series was a marked improvement over season 1.

     By all accounts, things actually looked like they may well be...

     Well, having now seen the "Legendary Battle" I can say it most decidedly was not legendary. I didn't expect much more footage than what had been used in the Sentai for the Great Legend War from the Gokaiger sentai series, but the few minutes that comprised that sequence was cut down to be even shorter. The cameos were entirely pointless, and it left the franchise with an absurd amount of new plot holes (the franchise already has so many...), and the extra run time for the episode was only a minute or two.

Gokgaiger's "Great Legend War"

Power Ranger's "Legendary Battle"

     The "Legendary Battle" could have, should have, been so much more. Now, assuming no budgetary constraints, and with the rest of the Super MegaForce season the same as it actually is, I present a "What If?" scenario...

Series Type: Mini-series
Series Length: 5 episodes
Series Airing: Immediately following "Super Megaforce"

Power Rangers: Star Patrol - A Fan Adaptation of ToQger

Power Rangers: Star Patrol

 A Fan Adaptation of ToQger

     Trains. This is the concept of the newest super sentai series, Ressha Sentai ToQger, and one that many seem to think will be difficult to translate. Of course, a big part of this line of thought is also likely due to the more comedic nature of ToQger, along with an unconventional finishing move and that trains aren't entirely relevant in US culture. Of course, this doesn't mean adapting it into a season of Power Rangers will be difficult, it just means creativity is needed. What follows is a general overview of a concept I've devised to use with the ToQger footage.

*     *     *

The Threat:

 

     Located upon a cloud of dark energy, resting in interstellar space, lies the Fortress of Night. The Fortress of Night serves as mobile base of operations for the Chaos Syndicate, an evil organization bent on domination of the galaxy. The organization has a triad-leadership structure;

Power Rangers: Jurassic Justice - A Fan Adaptation of Kyoryuger

Power Rangers: Jurassic Justice -
A Fan Adaptation of Kyoryuger

The Premise:

     We return now to the city of Angel Grove, which has known relative peace since the end of Astronema's invasion, though there was a brief moment of danger during the Warstar Empire's invasion. A reclamation program headed by Eugene Skullovitch quickly rebuilt the city afterwards, and things soon returned to normal. The peace of the newly restored city would be short lived.

     A few short years later, what appeared to be a meteor was heading towards the city when it suddenly split in two. One piece smashed into the ground, sinking into the Earth near a children's hospital. The other doing the same, though it landed in the park near a Power Ranger memorial statue. The “meteor” was in fact a pair of brothers, ancient alien entities which had been at war with each other for centuries.

"What If?" Power Rangers Dino Charge

     By now, most of you will have heard that Saban Brands have announced the Power Rangers series following "Super Megaforce," and that series is "Dino Charge." Saban Brands appears to be skipping an adaptation of Go-Busters, despite how great of a series it could be used to make. Which, by the way, if you haven't yet done so, you should check out my fan adaptation of the series HERE.

Official Dino Charge Promo Poster

     This story broke in a USA Today article a few days ago, confirming that the next Power Rangers series would adapt Kyoryugers. While some were skeptical of this article, eventually the official PR Facebook page confirmed the story, and soon after Saban Brands released a press release on the matter. Both the USA Today article and the press release had a synopsis for the general story the series will follow;