Everything’s better with dinosaurs! USA Today broke the news this morning that the upcoming 22nd season of Power Rangers will return to the tried-and-true dino theme, as Power Rangers Dino Charge.
“We know fans will find this next season larger than life,” said Elie Dekel, President of Saban Brands, according to the USA Today article. The plot centers on extraterrestrial items known as Paragon Prisms, which were bestowed upon a dozen dinosaurs for protection millions of years ago. Thanks to the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaur population, the Prisms are now lost on Earth. The show’s villains will be intergalactic bounty hunters looking to find the Prisms and use their power for evil, but a new team of dino-themed Power Rangers are formed to find and protect the powerful artifacts.
This certainly keeps in line with Saban’s goal of hooking old fans in with nostalgia since the company reacquired the franchise. Samurai featured the return of fan-favorite character Bulk and a remix of the classic theme song, Megaforce was built to be a full homage to the first season, and the upcoming Super Megaforce is the big anniversary season packed with references to the past twenty years. Dino Charge hearkens back to the original dinosaur theme of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, a theme which was brought back in 2004 for the well-received Power Rangers Dino Thunder. That season, much like Megaforce, paid homage to the early high school days of the show, not to mention it featured the return of Jason David Frank as Tommy and a 500th episode special.
While the reuse of the dinosaur theme is, of course, dependent on the Japanese Super Sentai material–Dino Charge is adapted from Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger, in this case–it’s worth noting that an entire season, Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters, was skipped to jump to this dinosaur season. It remains to be seen if any Go-Busters material will be used in Dino Charge, which will presumably premiere in February 2015.
This announcement comes with the current season, Power Rangers Super Megaforce, on the cusp of its premiere. This season officially debuts on Nickelodeon next Saturday, February 15 at 12p.m./11c. However, the Power Rangers Official Facebook revealed that it would make the premiere available online a week early–tomorrow, February 9 on Nick.com!
Be sure to check out preview clips and cast images for the Super Megaforce premiere, and check back for more Power Rangers updates as more information is made available.
1 Comment
boy was i shocked on this news yesterday. Didnt expect them to go straight to that new dino series which just finished airing in japan and skip over the go-busters series. Curious to see if go-busters is not going to happen at all or if maybe they decided to flip order of sentai use since we are a few years behind sentai. Since the two season for one series format started. If go-busters was skipped totally and we are not getting it and we are getting back to being a year behind sentai i would like that. More so if we will drop the 2 years/ one series format. And go back to a 1 season/1 year format. Even if we couldnt do 40 episodes a year i wouldnt be to adverise to get back to late disney era of 32 episodes. That can be spread over one year more easily. Other things i do like the series concept and sounds like we will get some original elements here. Also it would be great to have some original us villains we havent had that since overdrive.