Did Power Rangers go off the rails after they started swapping casts?

[Sage Shinigami]

Every Power Ranger fan knows one of the biggest milestones in PR history was the first episode of Lost Galaxy, when they had COMPLETELY dumped last year's cast, primarily because, "They were here last season, why should we have them again?"

That personally sucked a lot of the excitement out of the series for me, and I never really stuck with the series for real periods of time after iS was over. I thought that was just me growing out of Power Rangers, but given that I've been watching Super Sentai since 2005, I don't think that's it either.

Two weeks ago, I was showing Goseiger to a friend of mine and in the midst of conversing over the episode I said something I don't think I'd ever thought about before: "If they hadn't started switching the casts out I'd still be watching Power Rangers."

He agreed, but I realized that actually WAS a big deal to me. When Lost Galaxy came on, the only two people I knew still watching it were me and my friend Keith--even my cousin that was close to my age had given it up, and I felt a bit of pressure to do it myself, but I could never bring myself to do it until in Space was ended.

Occasionally watching Power Rangers since then, I realize a lot of the draw in watching the original series came from the mythology the writers built up from season to season, and the creativity they displayed explaining the costume/power/zord changes from year to year.

And yeah, even though by in Space NONE of the original cast was there, the replacements were (mostly) organic. Kinda like Dr. Who, but with cooler costumes and worse acting. :laugh: Much as I hate to admit it, back then Power Rangers had a separate identity from Super Sentai, whereas now each season feels like its a watered-down version of the Japanese "older brother".

Does anyone else feel like Power Rangers lost something when they introduced the changing casts?

 

[MetalSymphony]

I thought making a break from a running continuity was a fresh way to free up the series so it could explore plot's without having to tie it to some guy in a tube and a Annoying robot in some way.

Sure, now there was no ongoing sub-plots or real connection to the previous series (barring any crossover shows), but your mileage will vary if that's a good thing or not.

 

[Demi-Fiend]

The cast wasn't completely dumped in Lost Galaxy, for fucks sake the main villain of the previous season became a regular and several villains returned and offed the pink ranger. That said, I stopped watching for Turbo, and started again with In space, then stopped again with Wild Force.

 

[Mr. Yellow]

I believe Judd has intentions of turning the Lost Galaxy cast into the Lightspeed rangers IIRC. And I enjoyed the changing of casts, give it a fresh look every year.

 

[Kivat]

This is a good question, because your right as far as the average group of people who used to watch PR and think/thought they out grew it, it was really because of the character swap.

When I say average people I mean people who don't know toku outside of PR. Like my friends, as cool/gangster as they (think) they are we always tend to bring up PR, and when we do they ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS say the 1st season (MM as a whole) was the best.

The original cast had a lasting effect, because even when the started swapping in MM actually, that's when things starting going down.

 

[Gold Samurai]

There was this old live journal entry that supposedly broke down how Power Rangers future seasons were thought out

http://deriksmith.livejournal.com/4099.html

Gospel #1: Power Rangers Turbo

Chip took over the reigns on Power Rangers Turbo from the departing writer 18 episodes in (at the season break, back when PR had these weird seasons that broke a third of the way into each season.)
Turbo was an odd mixture of good and bad. It kicked off with a theatrical movie which paid for all the sets, props and costumes- including re-making from scratch some really awful looking Japanese main-character suits with subtle changes that made them so much nicer. On the downside- the previous year (Zeo) has been a serious Military-themed Sentai inspired by 1970's invasion anime.
Turbo was adapting Carranger, a Sentai about racing... and a comedy parody of the last 20 years of Sentai.
Season 1 (episodes 1-18) stumbled badly. It stripped the comedy out of the Sentai, and attempted to continue the previous year's serious bent. Groundwork was laid for the old villains to continue. Every episode followed the new, grittier PR formula of searching for bombs before they exploded and killed lots of people.
To place in perspective just how badly Turbo stumbled, when someone refers to Power Rangers Turbo they are referring to episode 18-on. They are in fact never referring to episodes 1-18 and 19-45 collectively, unless referring to say- a VCD collection. When discussing the series, 'Turbo' refers to the series beginning only two episodes before Chip took over. (A transition story.) Forty percent of the series-- the 40% which featured the cast that had been around since MMPR, the cast the fandom loves-- has just been dropped out of fan-consciousness. "Well that part really doesn't matter, and it's not Turbo." Most fans will tell you it was only the first 13 episodes, it seemed so insignificant is... shrank in memory.
Dino Thunder's Fighting Spirit, which featured Tommy dream-fighting his previous incarnations as Power Rangers omitted his stint as Red Turbo Ranger. "Well, that really doesn't count."

This is the show Chip inherited. A burned out cast, a Sentai silly to the point of un-usableness, continuing a dead-serious story arc, and bombs at soccer matches set to go off when someone scored a goal. Oh- and a 12 year old Blue Ranger foisted on the series on the theory that it'd be a huge ratings boost. (It wasn't.) Oh, and they'd added two chimps to the cast for comedy relief. They were in the credits.

One might say Chip's outlook was grim- but not doomed. Despite the clunky opening, Turbo had not ground to a halt. Justin (the kid-ranger) had been awkwardly shoved into a mentored role-- but he had not become the 'annoying kid character added for the audience to relate to.' And there were changes in the wings, two new cast members has been quietly introduced to replace some of the departing, burned-out cast.
(It's said, apocryphally, that the plan was to have Tommy and Kat leave, and keep the other 2 old cast members as Mentors- and the decision to dump all 4 of the cast that's been here since MMPR was made after the writer change. I don't know if it's true or not... but it makes a lot of sense.)

However Chip had been a bullpen writer for PR for 3 years. Watching, observing, making notes and full of ideas and creative energy for how he'd do things differently- full of boundless optimism "The trick is to just write around that problem, let me show you how." The energy of the young, and a little elbow grease, could make this work.
All four of the old cast were swapped out, leaving just the 12 year old- who was re-purposed into a mentoring position and treated like a full equal by his teammates. The new cast, almost miraculously, gelled within two episodes. Dump the old villains returning, this series needs to concentrate on its primaries. No 6th ranger in the Sentai? Grab that armored guy and declare him a ranger. Turn the chimps into humans, dump the bomb plots, lean into the Japanese comedy-footage, alternately playing the parody-like over the top sequences as dead serious or going along with the silliness... and you have Turbo. The Turbo everyone talks about when they say 'Turbo.'

I still think it's the best series. Carefully weighted plots, episode-driven yet laying slow groundwork for the next year. It excelled at off-center scenarios that gave the episodes really different flavors, and had the best season cliffhanger or any PR show, ever.

 

[Bolt]

Power Rangers fans are some of the most attentive, analytical people I have ever seen operate, strangely.

 

[Lynxara]

I think swapping the cast each year (or most of the cast, anyway) was a dramatic improvement in terms of keeping the show watchable. I don't think it lead to PR becoming less popular on the whole.

PR became less popular because in mainstream American entertainment, you very rarely see kids' action franchises last more than 5 years or so, usually 10 at most. Instead it's expected that franchises will come along, run to their logical conclusion, then go away to make room for the next big idea tailor-made to the interests of a new generation of kids.

It is a testament to the durability of both Super Sentai and the Power Rangers approach to adaptation that the franchise has managed to keep going for nearly 20 years at this point, non-stop. There's very little like it in the history of American kidvid.

I think the real thing that drove a decline in popularity for Power Rangers is that action shows for kids improved dramatically over the course of the past 20 years. PR debuted when kidvid was coming off of a prolonged "funny animal" swing in kidvid programming, so the closest you got to high-quality kids' action shows were the more adventurous Disney Afternoon shows.

The only other really exciting thing in action cartoons going on back when PR debuted was Batman: The Animated Series. Its high-quality writing drove other action cartoon makers to step up their game, resulting in a steady increase in the quality of action programming. PR struggled to keep up and did for awhile, eventually resulting in great seasons like Lost Galaxy, In Space, and Lightspeed Rescue

So modern PR hasn't changed all that much, while its competition has turned into high-quality stuff like Ben 10, Batman: BatB, Spectacular Spider-Man, Iron Man: Armored Adventures, various shounen anime, etc. These are all really great shows tailor-made to set a kid's brain on fire with excitement.

PR would have to step up its game to compete seriously, and right now Disney doesn't seem willing to throw the sort of marketing and resources behind the franchise that would be necessary to do that.

 

[garfield15]

Power Rangers fans are some of the most attentive, analytical people I have ever seen operate, strangely.

I know right? I think even more so than Super Sentai fanatics.

 

[Lynxara]

Super Sentai fans are, I think, held back by language and culture barriers. With PR it's possible to talk to people who worked on the shows and just know a lot more about production.