A cross between our TV Flashback series and Power Rangers coverage, we’ll be looking back week-to-week at past Power Rangers seasons, beginning to end, to coincide with breaks during and between the current seasons. With Dino Charge currently on hiatus, our Flashback coverage will resume through the summer.
Episodes 25 & 26: “Tutenhawken’s Curse” & “Disappearing Act”
Originally aired: August 7 and 21, 2004
Dino Thunder is an odd season in that it flips the dynamic; there’s a bubbling romance between Kira and Trent, but we’ve seen scarce little of their spark since the evil White Ranger drama. So far, the romance that’s taken up the most screentime is one that started as a joke: the unbelievable pairing of the nerdy gamer and the superficial wannabe. While Ethan and Cassidy was a pairing I remembered years later, I didn’t realize just how much time and effort the show put into it until now.
Both “Tutenhawken’s Curse” and “Disappearing Act” hinge on Ethan and Cassidy as the emotional base, the latter much more than the former. “Tutenhawken’s Curse” is a throwaway episode, for the most part, playing a “Calamity Kimberly” type of story on Ethan. Ethan’s bad luck mostly consists of gross stuff falling on him and then him falling in other gross stuff, and the only thing that really keeps it entertaining is Kevin Duhaney’s often overexaggerated reactions to everything. I’ll admit, breaking your computer would be a good cause for a day-long funk, but the rest of the stuff is mostly Ethan being extra bumbling. It leads up to Hayley gifting Ethan…another motorcycle, which, after the Raptor Riders and the Dino Thunder Cycles, we didn’t really need. Luckily, its superfluousness is played for laughs — what they really need is a vehicle that can fly — and the joke is on Hayley more than anything, so it works okay. The eventual Hovercycle is clunky and weird, with a bizarre wheel-to-propeller transformation that, while certainly creative, is not terribly easy on the eyes. It’d be a fun toy to play with because of its strangeness, but it’s not that fun to watch onscreen.
At least, that’s why they’ve come together as friends. When forced to make real small-talk on an actual date, that’s when things get hairy. “Disappearing Act” finds its main plot in a plant monster and a permanently invisible Tommy (the final extension of Jason David Frank’s mandated vacation time), but it’s all second to exploring this odd relationship. There’s a lot of warmth in the general team in “Disappearing Act” as everyone tries to help Ethan on his first ever date, which shows how far they’ve come as friends from their more corrosive early days.
As much as Katrina Devine and Kevin Duhaney have great chemistry and I’d love to see a full relationship play out between the two, it’s a ballsy move to end a romance the show spent so much time on. It’s lovely how amicable it all is; this isn’t a loss for anyone, they simply realize that their interests don’t jibe. That’s certainly something relationships can overcome, but even in an “opposites attract” relationship there has to be enough common ground to let you enjoy each other’s company. Ethan and Cassidy have made each other better, and that’s great. But they probably wouldn’t make each other better if they were around each other 24/7, and that’s why they agree to stay friends. That they both have demanding side jobs is but another reason for the break-up. They might technically revert back to where they were a few episodes ago, but they’ve come out of it different people. It’s a justified, organic progression for the characters, significant for them both. The best thing you can ask for from a failed relationship is that you learned something new about yourself, and Cassidy and Ethan do just that.
Odds & Ends
- This week in (sort of) 2004 references: “Next time we’ll play Tomb Raider.” I say “sort of” because we’ve have iterations of Tomb Raider come out since then, so this isn’t a dated reference so much as an acknowledgement of things that pervade pop culture over multiple generations.
- Trent’s line readings during his first morphed appearance with the Rangers in “Tutenhawken’s Curse” is uncharacteristically stilted and monotone.
- A Power Ranger getting slimed is a really funny in hindsight, considering the show eventually ended up on Nickelodeon, aka the slime capital of the world.
- The amount of food Ethan brings to the picnic is certifiably insane.
- The context isn’t the same, but Tommy says “If there’s anything I learned from being a Ranger, it’s that anything is possible,” which is almost an exact quote from the original (and non-canon) Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie.
- “Send the Tyranodrones to attack him.”
“…Don’t we usually need a reason?”
“Yes…strange, isn’t it?” - “Thornox is a mutant flower I created by injecting powerful steroids directly into its DNA. It’s pure evil.” Um…what?
- “I’m a reporter, I can’t be nice!” – This show has a really skewed view of the media.
- “An invisible science teacher. That is just so totally graphic novel!”
Episode 27: “Fighting Spirit”
Originally aired: August 28, 2004
But it also offers a long-term “passing of the torch” from the old era to the (what was then) new era. Keep in mind that Power Rangers had only moved to New Zealand and under full Disney ownership a little over a year before this. Not being a Los Angeles and Saban production after 10 years meant this was uncharted territory, and Dino Thunder is an acknowledgement of that abrupt change. It combines familiar archetypes, themes, and characters of the old days with the new type of storytelling and format of the Disney era.
“Fighting Spirit” is exemplary of this, of course, and a reason it was the other episode along with “Lost & Found in Translation” from Dino Thunder on my Anniversary Watchlist. This is a really great episode for longtime fans, even more competent than the commemorative “Legacy of Power.” I’ve mentioned it before, but 2004 was a time before Samurai and Megaforce burnt everyone out on empty references — it was really really cool when the show acknowledged its roots and continuity. And those references are much better here, mostly because they’re not just references.
There’s an artfulness to the structure of “Fighting Spirit,” which sees Tommy literally and metaphorically fighting for his life in a coma and in his subconscious. The set-up is a brilliant way to justify seeing Tommy’s old Mighty Morphin and Zeo costumes, as they represent different pieces of Tommy’s psyche. Tommy’s Ranger identities had to meld with the Sentai footage through those four seasons — the rogue anti-hero Green Ranger, the hotheaded superstar White Ranger, the cool, calculated leader Red Ranger. (This is all minus his brief tenure as a Turbo Ranger, but honestly, does anyone really care? TJ was a better Turbo Ranger, anyway.) “Fighting Spirit” turns these disparate forms and personas into a full-fledged identity crisis.
The fight scenes in Tommy’s head are beautifully shot and choreographed. Each segment is filtered through the respective Ranger’s color, while extremely well-placed fog and a distorted lens in many shots creates a wonderful dreamlike effect. The locations in general are gorgeous, and match the fighting styles displayed in each segment. The bare desert set-up in the Red arena allows for grittier, dirtier hand-to-hand combat, including a cool bit with Tommy getting brutally tossed around in a puddle of water. The White forest arena allows for more traditional martial arts fighting, but adds in what Tommy refers to as his “new moves” — wirework, which became more heavily used after he originally departed. The old ruins of the Green arena puts the explosion-heavy animated effects on display, another element that significantly expanded after Tommy’s tenure.
The details are fun, too, even if they aren’t totally correct. The White Ranger provides a recurrence of Tommy’s signature evil laugh, even though that’s typically associated with the Green Ranger. And there’s a pseudo-recurrence of the Dragon Dagger theme, in that it’s a sound distinctly reminiscent of it, but it’s not actually reused. That’s a confounding thing about this season, as they were able to use the original Saban music in “Legacy of Power,” but here and then in Operation Overdrive, any Saban material was legally off-limits. And all the costumes are back and in good condition, with the exception of the Green Ranger. Among a couple of small details noted on the Wiki page, the most prominent is an inexplicable silver stripe on the helmet. That one infuriated the fandom so much that when they reused that helmet prop ten years later, they made it a point to digitally paint over it in post-production.
These complaints are kind of moot in the grand scheme of things, though, because even without the use of Power Rangers lore, this is an incredibly solid, engaging episode of the show in general. It’s one of the best in terms of structure, as it utilizes every character while keeping the narrative considerably tight. Tommy’s coma battle creates a high-stakes throughline, cut alongside a monster battle that ups the stakes even more by stripping the Rangers of their powers. Without Tommy, Hayley is the de facto mentor, but the powerless Rangers don’t follow her counsel and instead jump right into battle, as we’d expect. Sandwiched between all this is Cassidy and Devin, who face a rift when Cassidy is asked to sensationalize a story about the Power Rangers abandoning Reefside — even though they know this probably isn’t what’s happened — which goes against Devin’s morals. Ultimately, the Rangers show their true courage by standing up to the Terrorsaur without their powers, and are thus rewarded by the return of their mentor with supercharged powers. Meanwhile, Cassidy continues her upward slope of development, as she sticks it to her boss and editorializes the heck out of her piece, ensuring Reefside that the Rangers would never abandon them.
“Fighting Spirit” isn’t a game-changer of an episode; the major plot point is getting Jason David Frank back in person and Tommy out of the costume, and it’s a breath of fresh air to get out of that black hole of storytelling. But it’s undeniably one of the best, not just of Dino Thunder, but of the show as a whole. In a season that often struggles with pacing, this episode is pitch-perfect as a pulse-pounding thrillride veiled in nostalgia, with a solid thematic throughline. Most importantly, though, the teens show how capable they are even without the Legendary Ranger on the team, which Tommy freely acknowledges. As much as this is a Tommy-centric episode, it’s still not really about him; it’s about these new Rangers he’s taken under his wing and inspired to be heroes of their own right. “Fighting Spirit” refers to Tommy’s own spirit on the surface, but moreso, it’s the spirit of the Dino Thunder Rangers, and Power Rangers as a whole. It’s a respectful acknowledgement that these new Rangers, new seasons, and new eras are still deserving of the Power Rangers title, no matter how different they appear from the first teenagers with attitude and how different the show is from its earlier iterations. As different as the show has become with age, it’s always had that same fighting spirit, and that’s something still worth remembering eleven years later.
Odds & Ends
- This episode aired on the eleventh anniversary of the first episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, which is pretty awesome.
- Tommy and Hayley both have an incessant need to put their logo on everything. Does your weight bench really need to have the Dino Thunder logo on it? Really?
- I love the utter excitement of the Ranger teens towards Tommy’s dream battle. Including that Conner starts crying (and denies it.) Great capper to a great episode.
