Power Rangers Zeo: Episode 14: Mr. Billy's Wild Ride

The last time I wrote one of these posts was four and a half years ago. It was an episode about a monster infecting Angel Grove with computer viruses. The computers were down. The Zords were down. The teenagers with attitude enlisted the help of a tutor or teacher to give them an antivirus that cleared everything up. It ended with Billy saying he was returning to Earth from Aquitar and The Machine Empire vowing to stop that.

Next up is an episode that I’m sure will be all about Billy trying to get back to Earth and Angel Grove. It will showcase the struggles he was up against as The Machine Empire tried to stop his return. You see, they want to break up the team because the team is stronger together than apart. That has always been the case, and yeah, breaking them apart would make a difference. But that won’t happen. Right? Billy won’t stay in Aquitar yet. Right? We’ll see in…

Episode 14: Mr. Billy’s Wild Ride

Billy was on his way back from Aquitar in a one-person spacecraft. The Machine Empire wanted to stop his return, so they put Billy under a tractor beam sort of thing to bring him to their space base. Zordon and the gang sent their own beam into space to bring Billy back, but the battling beams sent Billy careening towards the Sun. The beams were also damaged so that nobody could save Billy.

Except there was one way to save the former Power Ranger and current ally. The Power Rangers morphed up and headed towards a warehouse at the university. This warehouse contained a fuel cell. If they used it to replace their damaged fuel cell, they could bring Billy back from his deadly collision course and reunite with their friend. However, The Machine Empire sent Klank to that same warehouse with a monster called Mechanizer and a giant fight ensued.

This was where the episode turned into a Tommy episode. The fight ended with Adam, Rocky, Kat, and Tanya fleeing a warehouse that was on fire and exploding. Tommy was nowhere to be seen. Kat tried to get back in to save Tommy, but everyone held her back. Tanya then saw Tommy up above and he jumped out of the second story with a perfectly preserved fuel cell.

They took the fuel cell back to the Power Chamber. However, they couldn’t aim the dish from inside. Tommy headed outside on his own to manually direct their satellite dish. Along the way, he had to avoid shots from The Machine Empire’s Quadrafighters, which were basically fighter jets. He got it done, turned the dish, and Billy was saved. Almost the end.

When everyone was reunited at the Youth Center for some smoothies, Bulk and Skull came wandering in. They had been sent on an orienteering trip in the woods. The pair got lost and took a taxi back. They were avoiding Lt. Stone because he would get angry if he found out. And, in comic relief fashion, he found out when the taxi driver stormed up to Bulk and Skull demanding payment. The end.

Mr. Billy’s Wild Ride felt different than most of the Power Rangers episodes I can remember watching. It all came down to the story beats. It had the same structure of the bad guys saw something the good guys were doing and sent down monsters to make trouble with it. It was how those similar elements were utilized that felt different. The monster fight didn’t take place at the end of the episode. It was right smack dab in the middle. The climax was one Power Ranger saving his friend while being shot at on the edge of a cliff. There weren’t even any Zords. It felt more personal, which was something we hadn’t gotten too often at this point in the series’ run.

Much like was the case in Mean Screen, the Bulk and Skull storyline in Mr. Billy’s Wild Ride was almost non-existent. They came in near the beginning to give a reminder of who they were when Billy mentioned he missed everyone, even those two. Then they came in at the conclusion as a bookend of comedy. Had they not been in the episode, it wouldn’t have changed a thing. It would be nice if they got a little more involved.

The only thing about the main storyline in Mr. Billy’s Wild Ride that felt a little strange to me was the fight in the university warehouse. First off, it obviously wasn’t a university warehouse. In the sentai series that Power Rangers Zeo took footage from, Chouriki Sentai Ohranger, it was probably a factory or power plant. It looked much more industrial than a university would have. It was mostly the Tommy part of it that bothered me, though. They showed everyone else getting out, and then Tommy just appeared with the fuel cell. It would have been nice to show his escape from the fiery, exploding building.

That said, I still liked Mr. Billy’s Wild Ride for how it changed up the formula. A lot of my favourite episodes of Power Rangers, whether they have been from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers, or Power Rangers Zeo, have been episodes that strayed from the norm. Episodes that dared get a little more personal, rather than the cookie cutter fluff. This was one of those episodes. I’m sure Power Rangers Zeo will have better. There’s a three-parter coming up next. But, right now, this was a nice one to come back into the series with. And it showed that Billy stuck around a little bit longer. We’ll see how that continues in There’s No Business Like Snow Business.