Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Season 2, Episode 26: Zedd Waves

When the last episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers ended, there was a new member of the Zord team.  Tor was revealed as the Thunder generation’s carrier Zord.  It was a turtle Zord that could stand up and shoot missiles out of its hands.  Billy also led a Teen World Conference which was bringing teens from around the world together to foster peace.  For some reason, Jason, Zack, and Trini weren’t at the conference.  But Rocky, Adam, and Aisha were, so that’s good.

There’s not much to expect from the next episode.  They won’t introduce another Zord right after Tor.  We’re still an episode away from The Power Transfer, so there isn’t going to be a write-off for the three Power Rangers that will be leaving.  This is likely to be the most standalone episode of the introduction of the new Power Rangers.  We’ll see as I watch…

Season 2, Episode 26: Zedd Waves

Stone Canyon, the home of Adam, Rocky, and Aisha, was holing a triathlon.  The three Stone Canyon natives were participating while Tommy, Billy, and Kimberly watched on.  It began with swimming, which led into cycling, which led into running.  While spectating, the teens brought up the idea of going away to the World Peace Conference and what would happen to the Power Rangers without them.

Bulk and Skull had a new idea to find out who the Power Rangers were.  They thought that they’d get on a boat in the lake that the triathletes were swimming through, and use some equipment to find out if they had more power than most people.  There was no evidence to indicate that the Power Rangers weren’t from Angel Grove, so I don’t know how they expected this plan to work.

It worked for Lord Zedd.  He took the equipment and turned it into a monster called Beamcaster.  The monster looked like an old school radio microphone, and spoke like a DJ.  It could use radio waves to turn people into zombies that followed the cult of Lord Zedd.  The whole idea was that the monster would brainwash everyone into followers, including the Power Rangers, and then nobody would stop Lord Zedd from conquering Earth.  The Power Rangers and their new allied friends built a machine to counter the powers of the waves.

Two major fights happened between the Power Rangers and their enemies.  This does not include the Power Rangers showing up and being turned into zombies.  One of the fights was a putty fight that happened in the park while Adam, Aisha, and Rocky were riding their bikes.  It was a pretty standard fight.  There was also a fairly standard fight near the end of the episode that ended with the Power Blaster killing the Beamcaster.  There was no giant monster and Zord fight.

The main thing that this episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers moved forward was the World Peace Conference.  As I said in the previous episode, it sounded like the Teen World Conference that Billy was hosting was going to be a throughline for the changing of the Power Rangers team.  This episode mentioned that some of the best teens from Angel Grove were likely to be chosen for the World Peace Conference.  This is how Jason, Zack, and Tommy will be written out of the show.

One last thing that I want to make mention of is the great joke of Bulk and Skull being turned into zombie Lord Zed followers.  Bulk was the first one to turn and walked away like a zombie, muttering “All hail Lord Zedd.”  Skull looked after him in bewilderment before being turned.  When Skull turned, in his comic relief way, he began saying “All hail Lord Fred.”  Even under a spell, he was bumbling around.  It worked perfectly.

This was one of the best episodes of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.  It might not have moved the story forward in ways that other episodes have, but it brought the stakes up and the humor actually landed.  It didn’t go too far into ridiculous and make me facepalm continuously.  It just worked better than other episodes.  It’s also the last episode before The Power Transfer.  We’ll see how that two-parter goes soon.  Come back and check it out when I get those posts up.