Power Rangers Dino Charge #1.1 “Powers from the Past” Review

Summary: A slow-paced, exposition-heavy premiere promises an exciting season rich with possibilities.

If you have not seen this episode yet and don’t wish to be spoiled, don’t continue reading.

Recap

In the prehistoric era, an alien bounty hunter named Sledge chases down another alien called the Keeper. Sledge is bent on stealing the Energems from Keeper, which he claims is the only thing preventing him from marrying his fiance, Poisandra. Keeper crash lands on Earth, where he integrates the ten Energems into ten of Earth’s mightiest dinosaurs for protection. Fury arrives to steal them, and Keeper sets a trap so that he takes a bomb to Sledge’s ship instead. The explosion jets Fury back to Earth, and destroys the tractor beam that was holding Sledge’s collection of asteroids, which then fall to Earth and cause the extinction of the dinosaurs. In the present day, Tyler Navarro is searching for his missing father, using only his journal as a guide. He ends up in a cave near a dinosaur museum, where he finds a red Energem in a T-Rex fossil, and is stalked by a mysterious ice monster. Meanwhile, museum employee Shelby, who just works at the restaurant, tries to convince Ms. Kendall Morgan to allow her to go on a dig with the other museum employees, Chase and Koda. She’s rejected on the basis that she’s not a trained archaeologist, but she stows away on the truck anyway. Before she can reveal herself, she spots the cloaked ice monster stealing a box on their truck and chases him down to get it back. When the monster attacks, Tyler comes to the rescue, and both of them try to fend off the monster and protect the boxed artifact. The monster eventually takes them down, causing Tyler to drop the Energem he found, and Shelby to drop the box, revealing the pink Energem. They touch the Energems as soon as the monster freezes them with his ice powers, but the energy from the Energems frees them and gives them a fossilized blaster. Upon putting the Energems in the blaster, it starts working, and they accidentally activate its morphing abilities to turn them into Power Rangers. They fend off the monster, but not before Kendall, Koda, and Chase have already left. Tyler gives Shelby a ride back to town, revealing that a monster was also stalking his missing father.

Review

From the opening teaser, Dino Charge is incredibly refreshing for Power Rangers. Something is different throughout “Powers from the Past,” a premiere that certainly feels like Power Rangers and looks like Power Rangers, but there’s a marked change. Even if it aesthetically matches the look and tone of recent Samurai and Megaforce seasons, there’s an underlying structure change that immediately makes it distinct.

The easy answer is that, despite how the lavish effects and nonstop music score might fool you, this is a very, very slow episode. A lot of exposition is dumped — a lot a lot — but very little actually happens in what we’ll come to know as the main present day story. Shelby and Tyler meet and accidentally become Rangers. Technically, that’s the only major plot point, everything else is purely background.

And frankly? That’s awesome. As a pilot of a TV show, that’s a huge no-go, of course; you’ll never get your pilot to series if your entire first episode is pure set-up with only a tiny bit of the payoff at the tail end. But Power Rangers doesn’t have to worry about that, with its standalone season and guaranteed episode order every year. It can take the time to set things up and pace out its story, it just rarely ever takes advantage of that ability. That’s probably due to the assumption that kids have short attention spans, but in the scope of serialized children’s shows, the few that have paced out its initial introductory story over multiple episodes are often regarded as some of the best. The 90s series Gargoyles comes to mind, for example, taking until midway through the second episode of its five (!!!) part premiere before it even found itself in the present day. That series is generally regarded as one of the best and smartest animated shows of all time, so it’s with high hopes that I make the comparison to Dino Charge. All this is to say: Power Rangers taking it a little slow for once is a good thing, and hopefully means this season is trusting its audience more than the past few years have.

The slower pace is effective because it lends itself to immersing us in the world and the characters, rather than asking us to keep up. It takes about a 1/4 of the episode before we get into the present day in this case, and that means we spend ample time getting acquainted with Sledge, Poisandra, Keeper, Fury, and the workings of the powers and Sledge’s ship. Already, these characters feel more fleshed out than the likes of Vrak or Master Xandred. Sledge is a proactive brute, not so much pure evil as unendingly selfish and greedy. He has a ship full of bounties he’s hunted, which means his future monsters could be coming from his own cell rather than anyone with allegiance to him, an interesting development. He loves his finance Poisandra — the moment when he kills one of his lackeys for her and strikes a cool guy pose with his gun is…dare I say…kind of awesome — but he’s pretty clearly afraid of commitment, considering they just have to have those Energems first, for some reason. Even so, they make the best and weirdly cutest villain couple we’ve ever seen, particularly in that they both actually love each other despite being the bad guys. I won’t argue that there’s much complexity here or anything, but these are different shades that are open to be explored as the series progresses. As such, they already seem more like characters rather than the obligatory villains.

That we can draw all this out of just a short amount of time is a testament to how well things are laid out. Exposition is hard, and while this episode sometimes feels a bit bogged down by it, it never lags or seems unnecessary. Accomplished Power Rangers writer Judd “Chip” Lynn, who’s helmed many of the best seasons, has a knack for writing lots of expository scenes and dialogue naturally, or at the very least, keeping it engaging. The Keeper scenes, for example, are easy to predict once they get going, but the whole situation is just too ballsy to be boring. A bunch of dinosaurs get implanted with Power Ranger powers by an alien who inadvertently causes a mass extinction event. As soon as we see a bunch of new protectors, they all immediately die, with the Keeper closing his eyes and accepting his fate — it’s muted since these are a bunch of dinosaurs, but think about how incredibly dark this all is. And talk about the potential for a guilt complex! Sledge’s collection of asteroids is a perfect Checkov’s gun for that forgone conclusion, and that the backstory of this series is rooted in such a catastrophic and destructive event is absolutely insane, the more you think about it.

The designs of these characters seem a bit hit-or-miss, though all with the potential to grow. Poisandra is adapted from a Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger character, and as such, her design sticks out a bit as the weirdest from the core bad guys. But it’s a fun, even if forgettably typical female monster design, and her personality certainly matches her appearance. Both Sledge and Keeper, however, feel like two kinds of 80s throwbacks, and that’s just awesome. Sledge has the underground metal treatment akin to Shredder, clad in gritty, unpolished and spike-covered armor; Keeper is of the the fantasy puppet side, cute and cuddly but with a vicious side, like something from Labyrinth or Gremlins. Sledge is the best executed of the two (even despite the weird green spandex underneath that looks like something was supposed to be CGIed in its place.) There’s a clearly a lot of thought put into it, especially with little touches like the interior lighting in his helmet and mouthpiece.

Keeper’s design is particularly cool because it gives the false impression that he’s a more of a puppet than a guy in a suit, which makes his fighting skills extra surprising when he breaks them out. The one problem that sticks out with Keeper is the CGI eyelids and mouth, a weird choice that lends to an uncanny valley effect. The costumes and make-up on Power Rangers are never going to look realistic, and that’s one of its big charms, so it’s not a matter of it not looking real, necessarily. The key is consistency; SPD made great use of prosthetics, and created a fantastic animatronic character in Commander Kruger, for example. Keeper seems like he’d have some animatronic or puppet movement, so the CGI immediately sticks out as not jibing with the rest of his face. The eyelids aren’t bad, but the mouth is so small and the movements are so subtle that it almost doesn’t seem worth the effort.

All this talk, and we haven’t even touched on the Rangers, have we? To be fair, the Rangers don’t do very much in the episode, nor do we learn much about them outside of Tyler and a bit of Shelby. In fact, we don’t even meet our fifth credited Ranger, Riley, another surprising choice. But it’s not at all indicative of flat characters, because each one that does appear gets some sort of beat that differentiates them from the rest. And not in Megaforce‘s “defined by their interest or archetype” way; it’s hard to even tell who fits into what archetype just yet.

We know Chase is a cool and funny and tries to be a bit of a womanizer (plus a New Zealand accent!) Koda is not-so-subtly hinted at being inhumanly strong, a bit tribal and Earthy, and a little bit doofy (which, if the opening credits or online descriptions haven’t spoiled you, it’s still pretty clear what might be up with him.) Kendall is straight-laced and arrogant. And Shelby is the youthful, curious, and ambitious one, a bit clumsy and absent minded, but more in an expected teenage way. Tyler is independent, resourceful, and generally open and outgoing, a fun type for a Red Ranger that isn’t stoic but isn’t a jokester either. As fitting for the Red Ranger, he’s the only one we get significant backstory on, with a “search for father” plot that has worked time and time again for kids’ shows and ought to work just fine here. Not only does it immediately tie a personal story into the main arc — something Megaforce failed to do, for the most part — but it incorporates a signature mythology element already in Navarro’s journal.

Our Rangers who do become Rangers do it in possibly the funniest first transformation ever (second only to Ziggy’s accidental “I don’t want to be a Power Ranger!” transformation in RPM.) Tyler and Shelby’s face-off with the ice monster is very entertaining, in that they show plenty of potential and resourcefulness, but are still kept on a normal young adult level. They aren’t trained in fighting or anything, but they are smart and athletic enough to be Rangers.  The jokes are cute — Tyler trying to strike a pose while pulling random items out of his backpack, or Shelby’s sarcastic “Nice shootin’, Tex!” — but don’t fall so hard on the slapstick that it ruins the moment. This isn’t a triumphant first morph, and it’s clearly not supposed to be given we don’t even see a morphing sequence. But that all this essentially happens by accident has some intriguing implications for where this story goes.

There’s a lot of set-up going on here, but it’s all set-up that excites and intrigues. Every scene has a new piece of information or a hint for what’s to come, and it immediately makes this season rich with possibilities and directions. And that’s even more surprising considering we haven’t even had any Ranger meet a main villain, or even had the main villains appear in the present day yet. “Powers from the Past” has all the workings of a “part one,” but it doesn’t quite feel like it by the end; instead, this seems like the start to a long journey. And thankfully, that seems like a journey worth taking.

Odds & Ends

• Really dig the theme song, and it’s grown on me the more I’ve heard it. Nice way to incorporate elements of the remixed “Go Go Power Rangers,” but still making a style of tune we’ve never heard before on this show. Mixing familiarity with trying out a slew of wonderful new elements seems to be Dino Charge‘s goal, and that’s great.
• The opening credits are a nice throwback. It’s still the typical Neo-Saban style with super fast paced cuts, shiny flourishes, and sound effects, but oh happy day, no more vocal roll call! And as a plus, this is the first time we’ve had the cast turn and smile at the camera (instead of using clips from episodes) since Wild Force back in 2002. Very cool! [EDIT: DigiRanger1994 pointed out that SPD brought back the turn-and-smile for a single season in 2005. Oops!]
• They really, really tried with the dinosaur CGI. And it doesn’t look that bad, especially compared to the last time we got a “real” dinosaur. The added detail of a velociraptor running across the screen as Fury is trying to get away totally works. But I’d be content with never seeing those CGI dinos again, except in Zord form.
• Tyler talks to himself. Like…constantly. Hopefully now that he’s got some friends, he won’t have to.
• Why is there a dinner roll in a meal with burgers and ribs?
• The Dino Charge Morphers are so ridiculous, but in the best possible way. It’s literally a gun with a spinny wheel. They morph by spinning a gun. I love it.
• Going ahead and showing a photo of Tyler’s dad and pre-emptively eliminating any theories about a past Ranger being his father is a smart move. This season needs to stand on its own (outside of the occasional one-off crossover, that is.)
• The moment Sledge said “Ohhhh brother” might be the moment I fell in love with Sledge.
• “Shelby Triceratops. Catchy name!”
• “Did we just fight an abominable snowman and almost get trampled by a T-Rex?”