Thursday, September 10, 2015

Like Old Times with Dino Charge

It's great to be excited for Power Rangers again as Dino Charge is really taking me back to the classic Judd Lynn days and is easily some of the best episodes I've seen on TV since the Jungle Fury Spirit Rangers' arc and early SPD.*
  • "POWERS FROM THE PAST" starting out with the villains and story for basically the entire first act is more than I ever could've imagined. And right from the get-go they had foreshadowing with all the monsters in the cages. This is how you use the completed sentai to your advantage. Tyler and Shelby's accidental morphing to protect themselves was a nice fresh take on a premiere, plus not seeing the whole team in the beginning.
  • Riley's introduction and fight with Fury in "PAST, PRESENT AND FUSION" were pretty cool.
  • I loved Sledge and his crew coming to Earth in "A FOOLS HOUR" and immediately plotting to find the Rangers command center... Something we don't see very often on the show. The Rangers got demorphed a little too easily but it was still a pretty decent introduction for Dino Steel.
  • "RETURN OF THE CAVEMAN" and "BREAKING BLACK" continued good character development setting up backstories. I especially liked what they did with the footage for Chase's episode. Also, I'm enjoying how they're pacing introducing zords/Megazords and the various combos. Pretty sweet looking cockpit too.
  • "THE TOOTH HURTS" was a fun episode with some great scenes on Sledge's ship and fight footage. Riley and Chase clashing over how to do things and eventually coming to an understanding was more good character development. 
  • "LET SLEEPING ZORDS LIE" through "THE ROYAL RANGERS" were all pretty good as well. I really like how they're doing the 6th Ranger storyline focusing on the gold energem before Ivan. I liked the Rangers plan to trick Fury with Tyler and Shelby pretending to be the Prince and Princess. Hopefully Dino Drive Mode will be seen outside the cockpit at some point.
While the old days often had average filler episodes early in the season and sometimes scattered around, Dino Charge is moving at a great pace and everything Judd's doing is earning at least a 4/5 in my book (5's in the case of Fool's Hour and Tooth Hurts). You really can't ask for more than Judd finally getting to run the entire show and writing the whole season.



* RPM was great and all, but was never seen on TV in the Pacific Northwest.