Cut and Paste Translation/Live-Action TV

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Examples of Cut and Paste Translations in Live-Action TV include:

• Super Sentai to Power Rangers, with the battle footage spliced into entirely new stories. The first three seasons of the latter took three completely seperate seasons of the former and reworked it into one "mega-arc", and the later incarnations seem to only be superficially similar to their originals, with the motives of the characters and some story elements being completely changed. Of course, Power Rangers was never intended and doesn't claim to be a dub/reenactment of its Super Sentai parent, despite borrowing suits and battle footage.
  • It should also be noted that certain Power Rangers seasons have stuck decidedly close to their source material, like Power Rangers Time Force sticking to Mirai Sentai Timeranger's original plot or more drastically, the Shot For Shot Remakes Power Rangers Wild Force and Power Rangers Samurai. Others have had varying levels of similarity, such as Gekisou Sentai Carranger into Power Rangers Turbo and Denji Sentai Megaranger into Power Rangers in Space. Carranger was a parody Sentai show, and Turbo suffered from many reasons on top of that footage (seriously, the Rangers were once baked into a pizza); such is that Disney was wiser when adaptating the equally campy Engine Sentai Go-onger into the apocalyptic Power Rangers RPM, and mostly Lampshaded and moved right past some of the inescapably Go-Ongery elements (such as mech designs). In Space, on the other hand, was a drastic variation upon the Sentai version; Megaranger never even left the Earth, instead literally surfing the web! In Space was a smash hit, though.
    • Also, Power Rangers Lost Galaxy takes place on a space station and leaves Earth in the rear view mirror in episode one, never to return outside of Reunion Shows. Some episodes owe more to Star Trek and Star Wars than past incarnations of Power Rangers. Seijuu Sentai Gingaman is... not like that. Didn't stop Lost Galaxy from achieving the highest viewing figures (...at the beginning, because Saban Screwed by the Network it in favor of the Digimon Adventure dub).
      • Conversely, Gosei Sentai Dairanger is an homage to Star Wars. The second season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers...is not.
      • Power Rangers Ninja Storm was another season that took a decent distance from its source material. While Ninpuu Sentai Hurricanger was not exactly a serious season, Ninja Storm takes camp and runs with it, with overexcitable heroes, bumbling villains and Lampshade Hanging on the loose.
  • Taken to a frustrating extreme with Disney's "remastering" of the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Rather than simply sharpening up the image, random freeze-frames and comic book-style character explanations run rampant, and flashy-yet-crappy CGI has been randomly spliced into the 1993 footage.
  • In the third series of the original show, the Ninjazords appeared first, followed by the Shogunzords. In the original Kakuranger, however, it was the reverse. Essentially, the entire second half of Kakuranger was used first. To give an example, Vampirus was the first monster of the week for the season. His Sentai equivalent was in episode 36.
• VR Troopers was made from three different Metal Heroes series: Choujinki Metalder, Jikuu Senshi Spielban, and Space Sheriff Shaider. Somehow, having three shows to draw on didn't stop it from recycling plots.
• When the Ultraman series Ultra Seven, was dubbed into English by Cinar for TBS, it received a bizarre Gag Dub that made it almost entirely incomprehensible. This version has since been almost entirely forgotten even by fans of the series.
• To capitalise on the success of Power Rangers, Saban licensed Kamen Rider Black RX and turned it into "Saban's Masked Rider": a gay old Aesop-tastic romp starring a superhero alien learning about Earth culture with his adoptive American family. Later the editing got so shoddy that at times you could clearly see the original Japanese actors, or the fact that the footage they were splicing in was from two seperate movies (Kamen Rider ZO and Kamen Rider J) starring completely different heroes. Reportedly, Kamen Rider creator Shotaro Ishinomori was so incensed by Saban's take that he swore never to license the franchise again.
  • Kamen Rider Dragon Knight did much better, even winning a Daytime Emmy for stunt choreography. Its ratings meant not enough of the intended demographic were watching to keep it alive. The last two episodes weren't even aired, though were made available on the website. Odds are, we aren't getting that second season. It, too, is dissimilar from its footage-sake, and it's best if you don't go in with a "Ryuki Dub" mentality (see Power Rangers in Space, Power Rangers RPM, above.) Interestingly, Dragon Knight became a Recursive Import and did quite well back in Japan.
• This happened to Star Trek: The Original Series when it was dubbed into German. In the episode "Amok Time", in which Spock must return to his home planet to mate or else die, all sexual references were cut and the plot changed so that he was suffering from "space fever", making his battle to the death with Kirk a mere hallucination.
• In one of several early, unsuccessful atempts to introduce Monty Python's Flying Circus to American audiences (unrelated to And Now For Something Completely Different), American network ABC bought some episodes from the John Cleese-less final season with the sole intention of cutting out separate sketches and inserting them as filler into a different show, called The Wide World of Comedy. This was done very clumsily, with rampant censorship, and the result was reportedly incomprehensible. The Pythons, who had in their contract a clause that their show would not be re-cut without their permission, used this as grounds for a breach of contract lawsuit against the BBC, who held the rights to series. The result was that all material produced by Pythons for the BBC became their intellectual property, which was unprecedented at the time.
• The HBO broadcast of the Extras Christmas special did this with some jokes, cutting or replacing references to British celebrities who aren't known in America. It was mild but still silly, because the show in general is still full of Britishisms that don't necessarily translate. It also makes a scene about talking celebrity dolls very jarring. The original one has a Jade Goody doll that says a catchphrase and then the racist remark she made about Shilpa Shetty's name on Big Brother. The American version replaces it with a Kramer doll that does a Seinfeld quote followed by the part of Michael Richards's notorious onstage rant about the black members of his stand-up audience where he reminded the white people present them that in the past they could have lynched them—which is less Never Live It Down and more Dude, Not Funny.

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