Power Rangers Flashback: Dino Thunder, Episodes 1-2

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. 

At different points in its 20+ years of existence, Power Rangers has been an inescapable cultural touchstone, or a secret gem flying under the radar. Thanks to the two-year anniversary celebration, coupled with the explosion of 90s nostalgia, Power Rangers has steadily trotted its way a bit closer to its former glory, saturating itself back into the mainstream consciousness for better or worse.

As such, the background is quite different from its previous years of more underground (and controversial) experimental seasons, while hopping from network to network with the general public all-but forgetting the show existed. Suddenly, we have a Red Mighty Morphin Ranger balloon in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, a big budget reboot film in development, and a gigantic 20th anniversary toyline that re-released tons of classic collectibles and made a new figure line of every Red Ranger ever. It didn’t come completely out of nowhere for fans following the franchise’s revival from cancellation by Saban in late 2010, but it probably did for the general public.

If that all sounds like a precursor for talking about the 20th anniversary seasons, Megaforce and Super Megaforce, that’s on purpose. Megaforce was a direct throwback to Mighty Morphin‘s first season, almost to a neurotic extent, but it existed in what’s still a weird era for Power Rangers. The franchise began getting attention again, but it didn’t quite know how to react. Where the show settled was making a relatively generic couple of seasons, opinions generally fluctuating between “just average” and “a lazy disappointment.” It had references to old seasons, it had Tommy Oliver and a handful of veterans, and it used old powers. But the show often seemed confused to where it was aiming; the references to old seasons would go over the current kids’ heads, but the actual plot and structure of the show was the most simplistic it’d been in years, definitely not aimed at an older audience. That led to a big mess of a series, to put it lightly.

I’m certainly not here to tear down Megaforce, though — my own thoughts are already all over the reviews. And the point isn’t to say how much better other seasons are than Megaforce; in fact, this is about the most I plan to make those comparisons going forward. The reason for talking about that is to point out how much time and context affects any given season, and why over this show’s long run, it has varied so wildly from era to era. It’s also the reason why, out of all the seasons that are arguably better or weirder or more interesting, Dino Thunder was chosen to be the subject of the first Power Rangers Flashback right now. Just like the recently completed Megaforce seasons, it’s a throwback to Mighty Morphin, and it features references to the past and celebrates its long history. But it exists in a very different time for the franchise as a whole, which I’ll get into further as this series progresses. It also bridges nicely to the upcoming Dino Charge season, because you know, dinosaurs.  And who doesn’t want to talk about dinosaurs?

So let’s talk about dinosaurs.

Episodes 1-2, “Day of the Dino”

Originally aired: February 7 and 14, 2004

Dino Thunder, right from its first episode, takes the core concepts of Mighty Morphin — teens chosen by a higher power to become dinosaur-themed heroes — and adapts them into what Power Rangers had grown into by this point. The show had matured substantially after around its sixth season, In Space, continuing this trend up to being acquired by Disney. Ninja Storm, the season before Dino Thunder, was the first of a new era; in addition to the first fully-Disney produced season airing on ABC Family (Wild Force was only produced and aired there at the halfway point), a relocation to New Zealand meant big production crew turnover, more location shooting, and lots of Kiwi accents awkwardly masked as American ones. It was also a huge shift in tone, with that season heavily embracing self-referential comedy and the first to fully indulge in making their Rangers a ragtag group of misfits, bordering on affectionate parody.

Dino Thunder took this tone and ran with it, in a way that better balanced franchise familiarity with the new jittery neurosis Ninja Storm had experimented with. Where Mighty Morphin had idealized role models for kids in lieu of characterization, Dino Thunder attempts to show what teenagers with real attitude would be like if they actually acted like teenagers. The powers are not out of vague space magic, but straight technology (with maybe a hint of dino gem magic.) The main villains are revealed as people close to our heroes, tied into personal histories and hiding in plain sight. The threats are smaller-scale and internal, but the potential for them to become worldwide threats is what this team is tasked with stopping.

And it all starts with Tommy Oliver.

…No, I mean this particular season literally starts with Tommy Oliver, running from a bunch of monsters and leaping into the ocean from an exploding island. And regardless of your feelings of Tommy or Jason David Frank in 2015 (and anyone who follows me on Twitter knows mine), that’s pretty awesome.

Something I hesitate to delve into, but is necessary, is the Power Rangers enigma that is Tommy Oliver. So I’m actually going to refrain from talking much about Jason David Frank’s role on the series until we get a few episodes in — because, well, that’s pretty much exactly what the show does. Even the most oblivious of viewers are probably aware that Jason David Frank means something to the franchise, but “Day of the Dino” plays him rather mysteriously, with Dr. Oliver as an enigmatic figure in a story mostly from the perspective of the Reefside High would-be Rangers. Frank, who is billed last in the credits but given the one and only “Starring” prefix, is rather subdued in this hour, fitting surprisingly nicely into the mentor role in which he’s written. It’s clear that there’s a bigger history behind him, but it doesn’t really matter what that history is, yet — all that matters is that these teenagers have a teacher who knows way more than he’s telling them. He also roundhouse kicks a dinosaur, so he’s definitely the kind of teacher any student would think is the super cool.

That said, a weird aspect of “Day of the Dino” is that it introduces pretty much everyone except for the Power Rangers first. Kira and Ethan appear, but mostly in the background like any other students. We meet their teacher, Dr. Oliver; the totally-obviously-the-bad-guy-in-disguise Principal Randall; Cassidy Cornell, the snappy teen reporter everyone hilariously groans at when she merely introduces herself; and her hapless lackey, Devin. For a show that spent its first six years in high school, this is the first time it feels like a fleshed-out high school is truly the setting. It’s still an unrealistic TV version of high school, but it’s closer to the real thing than the vague, sometimes elementary-feeling “high school” of Mighty Morphin and Megaforce. Zeo admittedly handled some more mature issues in its high school setting, but the big difference in Dino Thunder, and likely the reason the school is so heavily featured before the Rangers themselves, is that the kids are fully recognized as teenagers. They’re annoying, snarky, indecisive, and their priorities are completely off-kilter.

That sets the context for when we do meet our heroes, because they’re not much less insufferable than their classmates. Conner is skipping class for sports and being unapologetically sexist, Ethan is hacking into the school mainframe for a prank, and Kira is…well, Kira isn’t really doing anything wrong, but her pseudo-punk attire (as much as you can be punk with heavy yellow accents) implies that she’s supposed to be a counterculture type. They’re three archetypes – a dumb jock, a tech nerd, and an artsy musician – but these archetypes are merely their backbone, not all they are. “Day of the Dino” succeeds best, perhaps better than a lot of other seasons, at establishing these three as fairly realistic teenagers. They are stereotypes in the same sense that any person who likes sports, technology, or music is a “stereotype,” but they also have plenty in common, like their mundane desires to get out of detention in the easiest possible way. There are plenty of seasons where the Rangers begin as misfits or morally questionable people, but Dino Thunder is unique in their Rangers being pretty neutral from the get-go, just some immature kids who sort of stumble into their powers (however much Dr. O tries to claim “the dino gems chose you.”)

Because what they do have in common, like a lot of troubled teenagers, is that they’re still noble at heart. Underneath the overinflated angst and laziness, they’re perfectly capable of making the right choices, even if – as we’ll see many times this season – they often hesitate about what the right choice is. The caustic camaraderie is one of this season’s highlights, evidenced in full-force here. Ninja Storm started a trend where its Rangers are snarky, Buffy-esque misfits, one which continues through most of the Disney era, and Dino Thunder nails it. They argue and make fun of each other, but no one is out to get the other. Hell, they’re already working together for common interests early on before they even recognize the magnitude of their situation, planting the seeds that they’re capable of typical Power Rangers teamwork. And by the end of this two-parter, they already grasp the necessity to work together for the greater good once the robotic dinosaurs start their rampage.

Perhaps where the episode falters a bit is just how it gets from point A to point B. The coincidence of the teens ending up in Dr. Oliver’s basement is a key part of the plot and forgivable. But how does Dr. Oliver not notice the missing gems when the unguarded stand is still sitting in the middle of the lab when the teens leave? And, as much Emma Lahana is charming as Kira (especially when she calls Conner on his sexist crap with “Did you just call me babe?!”), she doesn’t make a greatest impression as a hero, unfortunately. Not only does she generally fall down a lot, she’s also the only character to be kidnapped in a damsel in distress plot point. That said, points back for having Kira escape all on her own, while the guys hilariously contribute nothing to the rescue other than witness her coincidentally fall out of a portal in front of them. That kind of makes it worth it.

She’s also the first one to use her civilian superpowers, a weird aspect of this season. While previous seasons had courted with some civilian powers, they were often rooted in Rangers’ alien heritage, or logically related to their training and powers. Something like Andros’s telekinesis in In Space fleshed him out by distancing him from the Earth-based characters, and the elemental ninja powers of Ninja Storm‘s core three showed that, Power Rangers or not, those ninja schools did teach their students special techniques. Dino Thunder‘s powers are just kind of random, and the concept roots itself in what often feels like a different show from Power Rangers. Many of the bits in “Day of the Dino” with misfit teens meeting a mysterious mentor and gaining otherworldly abilities feels more like Young Adult sci-fi, hearkening more to the likes of Strange Days at Blake Holsey High or Animorphs than Power Rangers. So it’s hard to write those powers off as bad decisions — frankly, they’re very cool and well-rendered on screen — but they become irrelevant as soon as the teens morph into Power Rangers. It’s a very different show before we see actual Power Rangers, and that’s as off-putting as it is endearing.

“Day of the Dino” is most successful when it’s focusing on its characters, though, and those new (well…new in 2004) Ranger powers and fight sequences leave a bit to be desired. While early Power Rangers and Super Sentai material is charming in its creative puppetry and imagination, and recent material actually has genuinely good effects, Dino Thunder falls into that awkward middle ground where the effects are often trying a little too hard to be flashy. For a while, starting with Wild Force and running through most of the Disney era seasons, Power Rangers (and its source material) started going a little nuts with the CGI, to its detriment. Even the worst CGI is at least more balanced in seasons now, but during this period there seemed to be a whole slew of “throw everything in and see how it sticks” mentality at work.

The Dino Thunder suits are rather so-so, though the use of the diamond motif that calls back to Mighty Morphin, intentional or not, is appreciated. The most conflicting are the helmets, which take the Mighty Morphin aesthetic and simplify/cartoonify them, while removing mouthpieces. That results in a strange uncanny valley effect, which many of the mouthless helmets do, but worse so since the visors don’t comparatively take up enough space to justify the mouthlessness (think Lightspeed Rescue or Mystic Force.) Again, they’re not bad per se, but they end up feeling like a weaker knock-off of Mighty Morphin rather than their own thing.

The same can be said of the whole scope of their powers, really. Many of the weapons have an odd cartoony quality too them, like the way their weapons teleport in, or the entire interior of the megazord. The show asserts that the Dino Thunder powers are derived from mixing actual dinosaur DNA with technology, and that sort of justifies the bio-tech look of the megazord. It’s just hard to tell what we’re looking at sometimes.

But the first episodes are very fun, regardless. The characters are immediately well-defined, and the banter and chemistry among the three leads are on-point. And perhaps the best plot-driving factor is how much mystery there is surrounding everything. Most seasons introduce us to the main threat and use that as the propelling force, with character stories introduced later on. Dino Thunder relies on much more intrigue, with the whys and wherefores of Dr. Oliver, Mesagog and his henchmen, and how they’re all connected with the name “Anton Mercer” and that exploding island are plainly displayed. There’s a history here that the show promises to delve into, one which veterans of the show and new fans alike are completely in the dark about. That makes for one of the more engaging premieres in Power Rangers, and an easy hook for the season even if you aren’t in it for dinosaurs or Tommy.