Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Season 2, Episode 10, Welcome to Venus Island

Previously on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, we watched the gang participate in a broomball match against a rival Youth Centre.  Lord Zedd used the rival’s mascot as a way to steal Tommy’s Green Ranger powers.  The Power Rangers fought hard to get them back.  Tommy‘s power was restored, but it was weaker than ever.  Their hope was fading fast.

The next episode may follow up on that storyline.  I don’t know how much it will, since it is looks like a Trini episode.  With the focus on Trini, the Tommy storyline might fade away like his powers.  Who knows though?  I haven’t seen these episodes since I was a kid.  This one could turn out to use Trini well and weave her into the Tommy story with creativity and skill.  Likely not.  This is Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, after all.  The show isn’t known for great writing.  We might as well get onto it.

Season 2, Episode 10: Welcome to Venus Island

There was very little teenage life story in this episode.  Tommy, Trini, and Kimberly were at the beach building a sand castle with a girl who lived in Trini’s neighbourhood.  Richie, a character introduced in the previous episode, walked by and Trini stared at him.  This is a blossoming relationship.

Bulk and Skull had two new ideas to figure out who the Power Rangers were.  The first idea was to dress as putties so that the Power Rangers would rescue the beachgoers.  It didn’t work.  None of their ideas ever do.  The other idea was to question people who were saved by the Power Rangers and have a local artist draw pictures from the descriptions.  The artist drew whatever he wanted instead of the description, so that plan also backfired.

Lord Zedd was inspired by Bulk and Skull’s putty idea to send putties down and kidnap Trini’s friend.  The only problem was that Goldar dropped an important note.  After some codebreaking, the Power Rangers figured out that the note was instructions to take the young girl to Venus Island.  The Power Rangers needed to find the island before it disappeared and took her away forever.

There were two fights, both involving the monster after the Power Rangers arrived on Venus Island.  The first fight saw the monster sucking Jason, Zack, Billy, and Kimberly into its stomach.  They escaped by heating up the stomach with their gloves.  After the escape, the Power Rangers put together their Power Blaster and shot the monster to death.  There wasn’t a lot of fighting in the episode.  It ended pretty quickly.

The Green Ranger storyline is nearing its conclusion.  This episode was a confirmation of that.  Yes, I know that two episodes from now is Green No More, and that is when the storyline ends.  This episode had Tommy sacrificing himself to save the young girl.  He was willing to give up his powers to keep someone else safe.  He doesn’t have too much juice left and he’ll lose it all to keep others from harm.

Another storyline that picked up from previous episodes, or in this case only the previous episode, is Richie.  When Richie was introduced, I was confused.  He was brought in to help coach the broomball team.  There was no story reason for him to be there.  This episode followed that up by having Trini stare at him as he walked by.  The team behind Mighty Morphin Power Rangers seem to be building Trini as a character.  It has taken them a full season to do so.  She has a love interest and that is going to make her an actual character.  Finally.  Too bad she’ll be gone soon.

There are some strange things that happened in this episode, such as Billy’s quick decryption of the code and the fact that information was in a bottled letter instead of Lord Zedd just telling Goldar, but one thing overshadowed everything.  The Power Rangers are secret about their identites.  They don’t want people knowing who they are.  Near the end of the episode, when Tommy freed the young girl, everyone praised his work.  They said “Good job, Tommy!  Yeah Tommy!”  That makes sense because they wouldn’t call each other Ranger or whatever.  But they did this in front of the girl.  They didn’t even try to keep Tommy’s identity secret around her.  They blurted out his name as if it didn’t matter.  If Bulk and Skull were hiding in the shadows, they would have solved everything.

That brings this post to a close.  Tommy is going to lose his powers.  It could be the end of the next episode, or they could save it for Green No More.  The next episode is The Song of Guitardo.  That should be interesting.  The name is bad, but I like music.  Having the villain play music is promising.  As long as the music is good.  If the music is good, I will like it.  If it isn’t, we’ll be getting another Pumpkin Rapper, and that’s bad.  Which way will it go?  I’ll get back to you with the next Mighty Morphin Power Rangers post.