Today Netflix begins the countdown to the historic 30th
Anniversary of Power Rangers with the release of “Once and Always”. Serving as a stand alone special and prequel
to the forthcoming Power Rangers Cosmic Fury, Once and Always features the return
of many of the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, some of whom haven’t appeared
in the franchise since its earliest days.
Seeing as how I promised to do some Top 5 lists dedicated to the
franchise as my way of celebrating…and I’ve only done one so far…it’s time I
made good on that goal. So to honor the
return of the first group of Power Rangers I ever saw in action, I’m looking
back at my fondest memories from the very first series to pick out my Top 5
Biggest Moments from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
#5-Ninja Powers…Believe It The big screen debut of the Power Rangers in 1995 was a
big deal for every fan.
One of the
coolest parts of the movie was seeing the temporarily depowered group getting
special ninja powers on their outer space adventure.
Somehow, I caught on that The Movie wasn’t
true cannon and thus was surprised when the Third Season of the TV Series opened
with the Rangers losing their Thunderzord powers and needing to seek out the Ninja
Powers for their new season upgrades.
Personally I wonder if they could have done an entire season with just
the Ninja outfits but that might’ve been too different a change, even for one
season of Power Rangers.
#4-Lord Zedd in the House
With Rita failing time and time again to stop the
Rangers, she was becoming more and more of a joke (she’s certainly not nearly
as powerful as her Sentai counterpart as I’ve come to learn).
So how do you up the ante for Season Two?
By creating an original villain and making
him the scariest and baddest looking guy in the entire galaxy.
Based on his appearance and voice alone, Lord
Zedd brought a new kind of menace that showed the Rangers that the time for fun
and games with Rita and her cronies was over.
He even managed to permentantly destroy the original Dinozords, just to
make a point.
Fun fact: This 3 Part
Season Two Opener was aired in Primetime on Fox rather than during the afternoon.
I guess Fox found this show to be so popular
they wanted to have kids enjoy it with their parents before The X Files.
#3-The White Ranger Revealed
There had been rumblings of a new Ranger being teased for
a while in Season Two.
And with Tommy
off the roster after losing his own powers, there were plenty of rumors who it
could be.
Was it going to be someone
new?
Or was it a robot of some kind based
on that scene of Billy spying on Zordon and Alpha working on the suit.
The answer was soon revealed as the White
Ranger appeared like an Angel from Heaven…and we all gasped and cheered when he
removed his helmet and there was Tommy, back in action and way more bad ass
than ever.
Tommy was already cool to
begin with (we’ll come back to why in a bit) but this was a hell of an upgrade
to get that turned him into the Ranger every kid wanted to be.
#2-The Series Finale Cliffhanger
About midway through the Third Season of the series, it
was announced that a new series would be taking over from Mighty Morphin at its
conclusion: Power Rangers Zeo.
This was
a pretty big deal back in the day, the first big change to look of the
franchise.
The big question on everyones
mind as a result though was, how do we get there?
Well, I don’t think anyone expected the
answer we got.
After the last few episodes
as the Rangers deaged to kids and having to get back to normal while a team of
Alien Rangers took their place, the team turned back to normal and obtained the
Zeo Crystal…only for Goldar and Rito to set off a bomb deep within the Command
Center.
The powerless Rangers were
helpless barely escaped only to see their home base annihilated in a huge
blast.
Quite a downer ending to a
historic three year run for the very first Power Rangers series.
#1-The Green Ranger Saga
Week after week, we’d seen the Power Rangers continually triumph
over Rita and her minions.
Well eventually
she had to say enough was enough and when she got her hands on a power coin and
corrupted Martial Arts protegee Tommy Oliver, history was made.
In this epic five episode saga, we saw the
Rangers defeated time and time again.
They even lost their powerful Megazord in a three on one beating against
three opponents.
But at the heart of it
all, Tommy proved to be the coolest adversary of the show so far, able to
handle the entire team pretty much all on his own.
This was one of the first big epic tales of
Power Rangers, one that saw our heroes sunk to rock bottom and forced to figure
a way back up and it had us all on the edge of our seats the entire time.
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