Silver Wolf
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Considering that Powerrangers.com has recently started showcasing the "A Friend in Need" three parter, it's obvious that discussion about "Saban's Masked Rider" would turn up.
One thing many fans have felt disappointed about concerning the actual series was that this "crossover-pre-pilot" showed a lot of interesting potential as a show, yet it was all practically dropped when the series actually premiered. Instead of building on what was shown or at least keeping some of the elements from that three-parter when moving the conflict to Earth (which considering the available footage was practically inevitable), we ended up with negative continuity concerning the lead character's big televison premiere, things becoming dramatically lighter and softer, some fairly apparent "lack of effort" in terms of editing and writing or at the very least of the very reduced and simplistic kind, and... Ferbus. Apparently this wasn't always going to be the case, though.
"Escape from Edenoi" was actually re-shot, and thus rebuilt the series from the ground up. The episodes as originally filmed, were very different from what we ended up with. Instead of Dex running from Edenoi to protect the Rider Belt from falling into the wrong hands, they planned to take a few more pages from Superman's book: Edenoi was going to be destroyed by Count Dregon, with Dex escaping the dying planet with the Belt, but instead of a "chase" between hero and villain over a "macguffin", the goal was to save Earth from falling to the same fate as his lost homeworld. Things also appeared to be played a bit more straight, with the comedy as a bit more of a balanced counterpoint to the dramatic elements, or as much as a typical early 90's kid show would balance them at any rate. There also was no Ferbus in it.
Then Standards & Practices interfered and the show was swiftly turned into what we now know. This is also in addition into other changes like that of the Electro Saber into being used as a "laser blaster", and barring Ted Jan Roberts from doing much of any out-of-suit fight scenes, as Power Rangers had previously stirred up a controversy over "imitate-able violence," despite Roberts being hired for the role of Dex because of his martial arts skills.
Obviously this earlier version of "Escape from Edenoi" was never given the light of day, but Sir Stack recently uploaded this very early series promo (from a Fox Kids affiliate meeting, apparently), with some of that unaired footage.
From the video description:
This was "shown" a few months prior to the television premiere of "A Friend in Need", take a look for yourself:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djnZUgzZEs0"]Unaired Series "Promo"[/ame]
It's still a bit disheartening that they still goofed up with using Kamen Rider J (if I'm not mistaken) in the logo, and the words "situational comedy" are a little worrying, but it still looked like it at least retained a little hint more of that three-parter's potential, or at least it would have been interesting to see how they would have handled things, given what we see in the promo. I doubt the majority of that footage still exists though.
So would people say that this was better than the show we got, or was the series actually an improvement?
One thing many fans have felt disappointed about concerning the actual series was that this "crossover-pre-pilot" showed a lot of interesting potential as a show, yet it was all practically dropped when the series actually premiered. Instead of building on what was shown or at least keeping some of the elements from that three-parter when moving the conflict to Earth (which considering the available footage was practically inevitable), we ended up with negative continuity concerning the lead character's big televison premiere, things becoming dramatically lighter and softer, some fairly apparent "lack of effort" in terms of editing and writing or at the very least of the very reduced and simplistic kind, and... Ferbus. Apparently this wasn't always going to be the case, though.
"Escape from Edenoi" was actually re-shot, and thus rebuilt the series from the ground up. The episodes as originally filmed, were very different from what we ended up with. Instead of Dex running from Edenoi to protect the Rider Belt from falling into the wrong hands, they planned to take a few more pages from Superman's book: Edenoi was going to be destroyed by Count Dregon, with Dex escaping the dying planet with the Belt, but instead of a "chase" between hero and villain over a "macguffin", the goal was to save Earth from falling to the same fate as his lost homeworld. Things also appeared to be played a bit more straight, with the comedy as a bit more of a balanced counterpoint to the dramatic elements, or as much as a typical early 90's kid show would balance them at any rate. There also was no Ferbus in it.
Then Standards & Practices interfered and the show was swiftly turned into what we now know. This is also in addition into other changes like that of the Electro Saber into being used as a "laser blaster", and barring Ted Jan Roberts from doing much of any out-of-suit fight scenes, as Power Rangers had previously stirred up a controversy over "imitate-able violence," despite Roberts being hired for the role of Dex because of his martial arts skills.
Obviously this earlier version of "Escape from Edenoi" was never given the light of day, but Sir Stack recently uploaded this very early series promo (from a Fox Kids affiliate meeting, apparently), with some of that unaired footage.
From the video description:
Sir Stack said:
This was "shown" a few months prior to the television premiere of "A Friend in Need", take a look for yourself:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djnZUgzZEs0"]Unaired Series "Promo"[/ame]
It's still a bit disheartening that they still goofed up with using Kamen Rider J (if I'm not mistaken) in the logo, and the words "situational comedy" are a little worrying, but it still looked like it at least retained a little hint more of that three-parter's potential, or at least it would have been interesting to see how they would have handled things, given what we see in the promo. I doubt the majority of that footage still exists though.
So would people say that this was better than the show we got, or was the series actually an improvement?
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