MIGHTY MORPHIN

This article is about a/an series entry (the 1st) in the Power Rangers franchise.

The **first season of *Mighty Morphin Power Rangers*** first aired on Fox Kids from August 28, 1993 to May 23, 1994. Although it was a children's series, it became an iconic part of 1990s pop culture

On January 2, 2010, a reversion of the season with a new logo, comic book-inspired graphics, and alternative special effects began airing on ABC Kids, but was pulled from the schedule after 32 episodes.

*Mighty Morphin* was dubbed in South Korea as ***Invincible Power Rangers*** (무작 파워레인저 *Mujag Pawaleinjeo*).

## Synopsis

Long ago, the ancient wizard Zordon Battled the evil sorceress Rita Repulsa. After many years he managed to defeat her using five magical power coins. As punishment for her loss, she was sealed in a canister on the Earth's moon. However, before being sealed away, Rita trapped Zordon in a time warp.

10,000 years later, Rita and her minions have escaped their prison and are out to conquer Earth. Zordon, desperate to stop her, has his assistant Alpha 5 recruit five "teenagers with attitude": Jason, Trini, Kimberly, Zack, and Billy. Granted the powers of prehistoric animals in the form of Power Coins, they become the **Mighty Morphin Power Rangers**.

After several losing battles, Rita captures a newcomer to Angel Grove named Tommy Oliver and brainwashes him to become her Evil Green Ranger. Though Tommy inflicts repeated and crushing defeats to the Rangers, they are ultimately able to wrest control of his mind away from Rita, and he joins the team as the sixth Power Ranger. His first stint with the Rangers would be short lived, however, when Rita creates a magical green candle to strip Tommy of his powers and return them to her control. Tommy elects to give what remains of his powers to Jason in order to keep them away from Rita.

The Rangers continue to battle Rita's increasingly evil schemes, and Tommy is later brought back to their side (albeit in limited capability) when Zordon is able to infuse his Power Coin with his own ancient power. However, Rita's presence only invites even more trouble...

### The second season of **Mighty Morphin Power Rangers** is the 2nd overall season of *Power Rangers*, based on *Kyouryu Sentai Zyuranger* while borrowing elements of *Gosei Sentai Dairanger*

Angered at the repeated failures of his servant Rita Repulsa, the evil emperor Lord Zedd arrives and overthrows her. He then begins to attack the Power Rangers with Pirantishead, a stronger monster than the Rangers are used to fighting. Pirantishead freezes four of the Dinozords and takes control of the Tyrannosaurus Dinozord and the Dragonzord. Because of this, the Rangers are required to upgrade their Dinozords into more powerful Thunderzords, which can combine to become the Thunder Megazord. After doing so, they defeat Pirantishead and give Lord Zedd his first defeat.

As he continues to fight the Rangers, Lord Zedd decides to destroy the Green Ranger Tommy Oliver with a special Green Gem designed to take away his powers permanently. Though the Gem is eventually destroyed, it is too late to restore Tommy's powers. However, Zordon gives Tommy new strength in its place -- the power of the White Ranger.

The Rangers later make some new friends in Rocky DeSantos, Aisha Campbell and Adam Park, who also discover the Rangers' identities. When Jason, Zack, and Trini are selected to go to the Peace Conference in Switzerland, the Rangers are required to find three replacements for them. They travel to a deserted planet to retrieve the fabled Sword of Light required for the Power Transfer, but Lord Zedd introduces Serpentera, his gigantic personal Zord. While powerful, Serpentera's massive energy consumption proves to be its undoing. The Sword is retrieved and taken back to Earth, where the retiring Rangers name Rocky, Aisha, and Adam as their successors.

Eventually, Lord Zedd proves no more successful than Rita was, but he does not give up as he undergoes a Centennial Recharge. Rita Repulsa chooses this time to return to the moon and slip a love potion into Zedd's Rejuvenation Chamber. When he wakes up, Zedd is madly in love with Rita and marries her. With both Zedd and Rita together, the Power Rangers are faced with even more terror.

## Production

Saban was originally going to produce only 40 episodes in the series, ending with the two-parter Doomsday. Another character was to make an appearance, named Bubba. As the episode was originally written, he piloted Cyclopsis, and was based on the character of Kai from Zyuranger. After Cyclopsis' defeat at the hands of the Rangers, Rita would be sealed away in an urn (mimicking the ending of Zyuranger), and the teenagers would give up their powers.

However, due to the unforeseen popularity of the series, Saban, the company that produced Power Rangers, was faced with the possibility of exhausting all of its *Zyuranger* footage with no more to fall back upon in order to continue producing the show. Saban contacted Toei, the Japanese company which produces the Sentai series, along with Rainbow Productions which designed and produced the monster suits, requesting another half-season's worth of *Zyuranger* footage to be made specifically for Power Rangers. The two Japanese companies agreed, creating around 25 brand-new monsters and filming both human- and zord-sized battle footage for each. They also incorporated elements from MMPR into the footage, including a relationship between the Green and Pink Rangers, and the Blue Ranger's portrayal as the brains of the group. This footage is collectively known in the *Power Rangers* fan community as "Zyu2".

Around this time, Saban was also negotiating a deal with Toei to acquire footage from Gosei Sentai Dairanger, the Sentai series which followed *Zyuranger*. Saban used more than half of the Zyu2 footage in the remainder of Season One of *Power Rangers,* but when it decided to replace the Dinozords with the mecha from Dairanger in Season Two (termed Thunderzords in *Power Rangers*), the Zord footage of the remaining Zyu2 monsters became obsolete. To compensate for this, Saban attempted to splice the Zyu2 and *Dairanger* footage to ensure that the Zyu2 monsters were fighting the Thunder Megazord instead of the Dino Megazord. The new scenes would show only the monster attacking, followed by a shot of just the Thunderzords taking the damage. It did not always work, and occasionally the monsters could actually be seen making physical contact with the old Megazord. Saban also decided to continue to use the Zyuranger costumes instead of replacing them with the Dairanger costumes, despite the second season being adapted from Dairanger. However, the only Dairanger costume that appeared in Power Rangers is the Kibaranger, which is adapted into the White Ranger's costume for the remainder of Season Two.

The Rangers' Blade Blasters and individual weapons were left unused for much of the season until the Power Weapons were outright dropped after the episode "Rangers Back in Time-part II" (except the Power Axe which last appeared several episodes later in "Storybook Rangers-part II").The reduction in weapon use was due to complaints from parents about the supposed violence in the series which also led to the dumbing down of Lord Zedd and created a much more campy and goofy character. Although the reason for this drastic increase in complaints has never been ascertained, it is likely due to the fact that Mortal Kombat 1 had been released a year before the first season aired. That game's violence and copious amounts of blood caused an uproar in parents over fears that their children would begin hurting each other and trying to copy these moves because they looked cool. It is likely that complaints started at the tail end of Season 1 and they began to implement changes by Season 2.

Season 2 was the first real season of Power Rangers that had continuous story arcs outside of multi-part episodes, starting with the Green No More saga between The Green Dream (episode 7) until the eponymous two part episode of the arc (which ended with episode 12). However, more infamously, there was the Power Transfer fiasco which began with "A Monster of Global Proportions" (episode 25) and concluded with the eponymous two parter (ending with episode 28) although one could actually start it with the episode "Two for One", both because that it was during production of that episode that three of the cast left and because the infamously terrible dub voices begin. The reason for this uptake in multi-part episodes is unclear but one can take either an optimistic or a cynical view of the motives. The optimistic view one can take is that they were experimenting since they weren't limited by Sentai footage but the cynical view is that they were running out of ideas by this point and were dividing episodes into multiple parts to kill time. Fans have pointed out that this proverbial wheel spinning is most apparent in four episodes, "Rangers Back in Time" and "Storybook Rangers" which many argue felt like it was just killing time in one way or another to get to the usable footage.