Wall Banger/Live-Action TV/Power Rangers

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In 1993 Zordon recruited teenagers with attitude to protect the world. It has suffered a large amount of head injuries ever since.

Multiple Seasons

• Three-quarters of the seasons contain the exact same example: the Big Bad only attacks the city where the Rangers live! Why don't more of these "galactic conquerors" attack somewhere that doesn't have super-powered teenagers?
• Civilian powers in Power Rangers from "Ninja Storm" to "Jungle Fury." The original premise of Power Rangers is that a group of totally normal human teens are given fantastic powers to help fight the forces of evil. Giving them civilian powers, especially if they're unrelated to their Ranger powers , which happened a lot during the Kalish era, makes morphing redundant... or the civilian powers, since usually the Rangers don't use them before morphing. Worse, half the time, there's no good explanation for why they have civilian powers ("SPD" or "Operation Overdrive," anyone?).
• Word of God in Saban claims that, not only are any of the Disney-era seasons non-canon, but all seasons are in their own canon. A few things obvious with this: the seasons can't be in their own canon, nor can the Disney-era ones be non-canon, since many of them make references to past seasons, even outside of the team-up episodes, and if this Word stands, how in the hell are they going to translate Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger into Power Rangers? Especially with God's (in this case, Executive Producer Jonathan Tzachor) obsession with making Power Rangers as close to its Sentai counterpart as possible?
  • It's a bit more complicated than that. Jonathan Tzachor's views on cannon are unique to say the least. Details here
• Another instance of Word of God that painted a few walls red. Disney never really liked the Rangers franchise. Depending on who you ask about Disney, their description of Disney's feeling toward Power Rangers range from "confused" to "apathetic" to "ashamed" to "disgusted." However you slice it, Disney apparently felt that the violence in Power Rangers clashed with their ultra-wholesome image. However, after a few years of lackluster and unimpressive seasons, which the more cynical might call "running the show into the ground," they decide to turn around and buy Marvel Comics, which is considered to be the more gritty, cynical, and violent of the two major comic-book houses.
  • Even worse, the Disney years have left a ripple effect. If you believe the rumors, Disney tried to push back against the violence in Super Sentai, which infuriated the Japanese creators. This led them to basically saying "Adapt this! and creating Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, a season heavily based around samurai and Japanese legend. This has forced Saban, who are trying valiantly to resurrect Rangers stateside, into something of a "Square Peg, Round Hole" situation by making them have to adapt a very, very Japanese season into something palatable for mainstream American audiences.

Mighty Morphin

• In "Fourth Down and Long", when the monster Centiback is destroyed, Rita and Zedd blame Finster for it all. But, wait a minute, aren't they forgetting something? Finster didn't even create that monster on purpose! Although it was his idea alone to just create a centipede monster, he accidentally dropped the monster mold on the football which caused it to become Centiback. In fact, Zedd himself had pointed that out, so why pawn it off on Finster for something that he didn't even intentionally make, let alone the failure of it?
  • You mean besides the fact they're the villians of the show, and they blame their underlings for everything?
• In "Return of An Old Friend," both the villains and the rangers consider the villains' theft of the Dragon Dagger (and by extension the Dragon Zord) essential to the villains' plan to make the rangers surrender by kidnapping their parents. That's right - apparently, the rangers would have been willing to leave their parents for dead if they hadn't lost the Dragon Zord.
• The Movie Ninjazords. And the movie Ranger suits. They spent a goodly chunk of costume budget on making the Ranger suits look more like sci-fi space armor than spandex. The result was too flimsy to do proper fight scenes with and looked... off. Instead of that, they should have spent the money on making new helmets to match the Ninja coins. But no.

Zeo

• The infamous scene where Kat and Tommy are married with grandchildren, not for the fact they are married, but because their son is using a Zeonizer when they knew they were getting rid of those powers next season and the implications of the communicator going off.
• The Dear John letter Kimberly wrote Tommy. The least they could have done is not have it come out of left field.
  • Made worse by the fact that Kimberly sent the letter to the Youth Center. That's right, a letter that deeply affects Tommy's life wasn't even sent to his home where he could read it in privacy.

Turbo

• Divatox was really not very threatening- yet suddenly became competent at the end to accomplish more than Rita and Zedd did. Also, she wasn't acting like a pirate, but a conqueror, despite explicitly being a pirate captain.
• The shift from Zeo to Turbo was incredibly clumsy and ill-explained, with the changing of Zords and powers being entirely unremarked upon.
  • Worse yet, the change wasn't even necessary; there was nothing wrong with the Zeo powers. The crystals were supposed to be growing stronger over time, and in the tie-in transition movie, the Pink ranger even attempts to morph with the Zeo powers.
• Rita and Zedd's absence was a wallbanger at the time, but ten years later one of the writers explained that they had taken the time off to go on their honeymoon after beating the Machine Empire, a bit of a wallbanger in and of itself considering that it would make a lot more sense if they had taken a week or so to take over Earth first.
• So, why did Zordon select Justin as a replacement for the injured Rocky? Because he stumbled upon the secret of the team's identity? Heck, was there ever an in-universe justification for it? This is made worse by the final arc of Season 3. There, the Rangers were de-aged by Master Vile. They retained all their memories and fighting knowledge, but lacked the age-appropriate bodies and any powers. Zordon explicitly stated his opposition to giving the de-aged Rangers powers out of concern for their safety, leading to the Alien Rangers defending Earth until things could be restored. So, de-aged Rangers with experience aren't fit to have powers, but a bonafide kid with zero training or experience is? Maybe Zordon wasn't counting on Justin coming back from that island.
  • Or he didn't expect Rocky to turn around & decide to step down as Blue Ranger. Either way, it's still stupid.

In Space

• A giant asteroid is heading for earth, what do the rangers do? Send the newly Heel Face Turned Karone to the enemy base to send it off course before trying to push it out of the way with Megazords, which they end up doing anyway.

Lightspeed Rescue

• The secretary in "Trakeena's Revenge" who claims there is no such thing as monsters, ordinarily a stupid line, but the episode in question is likely the worst to use it in 1:The rangers are public knowledge in this season 2.It's the annual crossover, so at least it should remember that Earth has been you know, invaded by monsters regularly for the past few years. Maybe she was just in denial, but that is the best case scenario.
  • No, the best-case scenario is she was a Ghoul disguised as a human who was deliberately obstructing Heather.

Time Force

• When Alex comes to the past in order to stop a Humongous Mecha built by Frax, because it is such a big threat, what does he do? He uses the same zords the team was already using in order to try and Attack Its Weak Point instead of taking a purpose built weapon to do it.
  • Alex is also a considerable Jerkass to everyone (including his beloved Jen), which runs counter to his previous characterization. It's not even explained why - he's just barking orders and blaming the others when things go wrong.
  • Also, considering Alex is Wes's descendant, he seems... rather okay with the fact that his ancestor "didn't make it." And then he tries to erase the team's memories as some sort of "rehabilitation." Mindwiping is apparently SOP for Time Force. Sooo... what's the point of traveling through time if no one's going to remember anything about whenever they traveled to? Especially since there's no real way to prevent any memories from coming back...

Wild Force

• Cole becoming leader immediately, just because the lion chose him. While the same thing happened in Time Force it made sense then because it was a gradual shift, and no one said "the new guy is in charge".
• Um...does anyone want to explain how Zen-Aku came back at the end of the series? Or why he's suddenly wanting to redeem himself? What, did his bromance with Merrick become so strong that it transcended death and evil?
• Continuity issues in the otherwise excellent episode "Forever Red".
  • Jason getting the Mighty Morphin powers back, and T.J. getting the Turbo powers back. These could have been explained in 2 lines of dialog (each) but instead were ignored. (Word of God did provide an explanation, but not having it clarified in the actual episode obviously doesn't help.)
  • Serpenterra getting taken out in less than five minutes by Cole's new toy... er, new bike. The official reason is a little more complicated than "We need to advertise a new toy," but it's still idiotic.
  • Yes it is. It's a pity they didn't remember to not break the bank on the Time Force teamup so that they'd have a better budget for the 10th Anniversary episode and not have to beg Bandai for funding. Hell, why not Take a Third Option and use toys? They're bricks but it would work if you used the ones that shoot coupled with Stock Footage, and went with Japanese releases or customs for certain Zords. Seriously, it wouldn't have been that hard. Dino Ultrazord, Shogun Megafalconzord, Super Zeo Ultrazord, Astro Megazord, Zenith Ultrazord, Supertrain Megazord, and Wild Force Megazord all join forces to blast Serpentera out of the sky, having it die a Technicolor Death akin to Cyclopsis'. If they hadn't been so insistent on CGI, they could have done something great. Plus, having the Wild Force Megazord (or possibly one of the other Megazords of the season) would still allow them to advertise a new toy, maybe by having the Wild Force Megazord deal the final blow or something.

Ninja Storm

• Every other ninja and ninja student in the various academies has been captured by Lothor at the start of the season. The Rangers proceed... to do nothing about it. They did lack the means then, but they never even spoke of it, nor did they seem to care about their comrades.
• The Thunder Rangers believed that Sensei murdered their parents. Their source? Lothor. Problems:

1. 1. Lothor offers no proof; they just take his word for it.
   2. The Thunder Rangers know that Lothor wants to conquer the world. They are Rangers and ninja students, and thus probably should be made uneasy by this plan. Instead, they don't seem to care much about his or his army's stated intention to conquer.
   3. It is later stated that they knew that their academy was attacked by Lothor when the attack took place. These Rangers just accepted the word of a would-be conqueror who attacked a place that was like a second home to them.

Dino Thunder

• For 15 episodes, Tommy Oliver's actor, Jason David Frank, had to go on hiatus. So Tommy, as the Black Dino Ranger, gets frozen in amber by the White Ranger. Okay, fair enough. But then he was thawed out during the next episode, only to get stuck in Ranger form. This lasts twelve whole episodes. Every misfortune that happens to Tommy from here on out is stated to be caused by his morpher being on the fritz. So where's his assistant, the one who made the morphers? Working on other gadgets for the other Rangers. She doesn't even try to fix things until Tommy finds some slime in episode 12 that she confirms could undo his morphing. Shouldn't she be able to diagnose and fix this problem easily? More than that, shouldn't Tommy be able to fix this? After all, it was his machine that was used to encase him in amber, in the first place.
  • When they use the slime, it does allow Tommy to demorph...but also turns him invisible. Why? He's already suffered two indignities in a row; why add a third one?
  • His assistant finally helps by using a machine she invented that drains power from his morpher to undo the problem. Why didn't she use that gadget earlier -- oh, wait, it landed him in a life-threatening coma. But why didn't she take the time those twelve episodes Tommy was stuck in Ranger form to make it safer?
  • He was in that coma so a Battle in the Center of the Mind could be staged there with Tommy and his past Ranger identities, which gives him his spiffy new Super Mode. Um, yay? Tommy may be a God Mode Sue, but his character arc was full of Deus Angst Machina this season.
• In the final episode, a combined blast from all the zords fails to kill the Monster of the Week. This wouldn't be so bad, but the monster starts to die, complete with the traditional PR/SS death effects, and then comes back from the brink completely unharmed.
  • After that, the Rangers immediately assume that their only option is to kamikaze the Zords even though there were 2 megazord configurations they hadn't used against it yet.
• In "Bully for Ethan," Ethan gets on the bad side of a Jerk Jock and is challenged to a fight. Given his reputation as a computer geek, everyone at school expects Ethan to get creamed - including Conner and Kira, who really should know better. They even make a point of saying that Ethan can't win without using his Dino Power. Never mind that Ethan is a Power Ranger, meaning he's in much better shape than one would expect. And never mind that by this point in the season, he's (morphed or not) already fought foes far more dangerous than the average school bully and didn't always have to use his Dino Gem Power to do so. To the episode's credit, Ethan is absolutely against using his powers (perhaps in accordance with Zordon's old rules) and instead relies on his intelligence to prevent a fight altogether. The problem is that Conner and Kira so severely underestimate their friend and think he can't handle himself without special help. Their thought process comes across as them being more concerned about Ethan facing a Jerk Jock than with him facing Mesagog's latest terror? Ridiculous!

SPD

• Sam the Omega Ranger condenses into a ball of light while in the present (even the real-world reasons for the decision to make him like that are worthy of slamming someone's head through a wall...).
• Originally, Doggie's supposed to be The Last of His Kind. His kind had been wiped out by the destruction of his home planet. But the Sirians had space travel -- they had the original Space Patrol Delta!
• Assuming the Troobian Empire could drive all but one Sirian extinct, why would they deliberately spare exactly one other Sirian? Worse, it's a she who can be used for an Adam and Eve Plot, but the series ends before we see it followed through. Worse yet, the person who ensured her survival had no reason to. We have an enemy who saved a single member of Doggie's species from genocide for no reason, and we're supposed to accept that she's the only other. And to put the final nail in the coffin, Doggie's rival, the only one who could benefit from the survival of that one Sirian, has no idea she's even still alive, or if he does, is forbidden from mocking Doggie with it. Doggie's entire backstory just had a huge Plot Hole ripped open. No wonder the Furry Fandom keeps making him a Hard Gay in Fan Works.
• One caused by Adaptation Decay: "SWAT". Oh, god, "SWAT". Your treatment of the team Super Mode is so bad, it's laughable. in the show's Super Sentai counterpart, SWAT mode is cracked open in response to a new battle armor that the bad guys develop, and the Rangers are sent to boot camp to ensure they know how to use it against the new threat, just as anyone given a new form of defense should handle it. Here, though, SWAT Mode is given arbitrarily, with no immediate danger, and it's only when the bad guys steal the plans that the Rangers go to boot camp...as punishment for blaming each other for letting the theft happen. That's right, instead of being treated as the next line of defense against a growing threat, SWAT mode is instead treated as a reward that the Rangers can only get if they're good, and if one of them misbehaves, they all get denied it. Since when did SPD become a day care center?
  • And even if you can forgive that, let's point out the obvious; SWAT mode was stolen and reverse-engineered by the bad guys before they were given to the Rangers, yet they use them after their boot camp training. The bad guys now have access to all of the secrets to this new technology, and how to disable it, yet the Rangers are forced to use it anyway against those same bad guys. That's like equipping your house with a security system that has already been successfully cracked by burglars.
    • It becomes really stupid when you remember that Red Ranger's Battlizer had debuted in the two-parter immediate before this one. When the Battlizer had immigrated to the source material for the Magiranger vs. Dekaranger crossover, it had been treated as an upgrade given to Ban after he was promoted to the Fire Squad, and got a MUCH better treatment than where it actually originated from!
• In "Recognition," a monster switches bodies with Sky in S.P.D. headquarters. Sky is locked in a cell (but soon escapes), while the monster searches for the Deltabase Megazord cockpit to unleash havoc. No one else knows the monster is in Sky's body, but the other Rangers ignore what appears to be increasingly unusual behavior for most of the episode. Even worse is the final confrontation where they all try to find out who is in which body, where they rely on R.I.C. the robotic dog to do so. The problem? Bridge has the power to read auras, yet he and no one else thinks to make use of it.
• In "Perspective," the monitoring equipment briefly fails, so the five Rangers relate to Cruger the events of their most recent mission. Each version builds up the one telling the story, while short-changing the others. This is a problem because they're not doing so in the context of telling a story for entertainment value. Remember, they're law enforcement cadets reporting to their superior. They each essentially tried to falsify a police report! And in the end, when it's revealed a certain white orb had a hand in the victory? Well, instead of awe over a new factor in the fight for Earth, the Rangers are still arguing over who deserves credit for the day's victory.
  • There's also the fact that the use of the stock footage was very poorly done, basically repeating the same few minutes over and over, with the only real change being the ADR changing to reflect who was being praised.
• Speaking of the Rangers as law enforcement...why in the bloody hell are they fighting an Evil Empire?! SPD is supposed to be an intergalactic police force, but Grumm is the emperor of another sovereign power. This is like calling in the FBI to defend the US from a full-scale invasion by North Korea.

Operation Overdrive

• It doesn't affect the plot or derail any characters, but it's so overwhelmingly stupid that it deserves a place here. Tyzonn, the Mercury Ranger, and Crazar, an alien cat beast, are grappling in a desert when Crazar throws a handful of sand in Tyzonn's face, which is currently encased in a helmet with a full faceplate and no visible openings. Tyzonn inexplicably reacts by yelling and clawing at his visor, just as if he had just gotten sand thrown in his eyes, as opposed to having some grains bounce off his helmet. Head, meet wall. What makes this worse is that the beginning of the episode featured Crazar trying to split up the team by trapping Tyzonne in a fantasy that he was still on his home planet with his fiance and had never left - his adventures on Earth and career as a Ranger were nothing more than a hallucination. This is a great idea, except Crazar doesn't remove the morpher, attempt to turn it off, change the volume, or anything like that. The attosecond the other Rangers call for Tyzonne, the whole scenario falls apart. There is a reason Crazar earned the title 'world's dumbest Fear-cat', and her messy destruction later on is thoroughly deserved.
• If you want one that does derail the characters, you want Just Like Me. Ty fanboying Will, Will suddenly being Mr. Teamwork, and Mack acting like a general leading his army (yeah, Red is usually the leader, but nobody put Mack in charge; and for the first half of the season, they made a point of giving everybody a turn to initiate the Transformation Sequence - a typical Red privilege) is all kinds of wrong. For tropers who aren't familiar with Power Rangers, imagine Luke Skywalker circa Return of the Jedi suddenly being Han Solo's biggest fanboy, taking it to a "lovesick puppy" level. Now imagine Han acting like your average character from a 1980s-to-early-1990s cartoon, all about teamwork and The Power of Friendship, And Knowing Is Half the Battle. Now imagine Lando (post-Heel Face Turn, pre-Generalship) acting like Qui-Gon. And top it off with everybody acting like all this has always been the normal state of affairs. Head, meet wall. Preferably Bruce Kalish's head.
• Oh, Operation Overdrive is a gold mine for these, isn't it? Well, "Pirate in Pink" brings us the oh-so-logical and coherent sight of our heroes protecting the ghost of a pirate from being hit by attacks or smashed by buildings. Yeah, because they were afraid the ghost would... die... harder?
• In the finale: after Flurious goes all One-Winged Angel on the Rangers, he Evil Gloats: "Now that I have the Corona Aurora, no human can defeat me!". After hearing that, the Rangers start shaking in their boots and panicking, until Mack steps in and declares that he isn't human -- that, despite the fact that at no point the Corona Aurora was said to have a "anti-human shield", nor nothing of the sort. Mack then proceeds to fight Flurious while the others don't help. Oh, and for extra fun: Tyzonn, you're not human either. So join the fight, you stupid alien.
• The whole thing about Mack not being human came completely out of nowhere, with little to no build up... near the end of the series. Thus, we had next to no time for Mack to develop as a result of this sudden shift. And then, at the end, the Sentinel Knight makes him a real boy, rendering this plot twist entirely pointless.
  • After finding out he was an robot, Mack starts to whine. Like a 5-year-old: "boohoo my daddy lied to me, so I'll act like I didn't know him and call him "Doctor Hartford" and stare angwy at him". He compromised some missions because of that as well. Apparently we were supposed to be on his side; even after Mr. Hartford gives him the "You're still my son regardless of what you are" speech, he still acts like an Jerkass and doesn't even apologize for his previous behaviour. Yeah, real Red Ranger material. And of course, in the end, all the "accept yourself" Aesop we were hammered with was broken by the aforementioned "becoming a real boy Deus Ex Machina" thing. What was the purpose of any of this?!
• When all the Rangers aim their weapons at the main villains, Adam (the Black Ranger, the only Mighty Morphin Power Ranger whose weapon doubled as a rifle)... puts his hand on Mack's shoulder. After he'd been saved by Sentinel Knight, who effortlessly killed Thrax, who Adam had been fighting almost on-par with. Adam's sudden and unnecessary Badass Decay in the space of perhaps one minute of screentime is jarring, considering how awesome he'd been for the rest of the team up.

RPM

• A monster can manipulate the field that gives the rangers their powers (allowing it to deflect the energy from the rangers ranged weapons back at them). A logical plot has Dillon and Ziggy separated from the group ambushed by the monster during the fight the two rangers attack it with their combination weapon, which they already knew wouldn't work.
  • Another thing that is just short of a wallbanger is the other rangers arrive and finish the monster off with ranged weapons off. It makes sense (the reflected energy from the first shot hadn't hit yet) but it is a total Ass Pull.
• This season finally fixed the civilian powers, but instead gave the Rangers special abilities as part of their ranger powers...except they also uses up the rangers power supply, extremely quickly. And to further the absurdity, when the RPM Gold and Silver rangers appear, it turns out that their powers are prototypes and, thus, have none of the power-draining anemities. Oh, and they prove far more useful than the other Rangers combined.

Samurai

• The Unfortunate Implications of the season. Being a direct translation of the Sentai show, there's some HUGE Values Dissonance regarding the female characters. Did someone not point this problem out to Tzachor? To list a few:
• "Forest for the Trees:" Mia (Pink Ranger) gets the Beetle Zord, part of the newly acquired Samurai Battlewing. Mike, who wanted the Zord for himself, becomes a huge Jerkass and costs the team a battle when he tries to take the disc for himself. At the same time, we have Mia feeling sorry for getting the disc over Mike, and later on relents the disc to Mike, with Jayden agreeing to the choice.
  • What really makes this a wallbanger is that...they had absolutely no reason they had to do it this way. If they were using the Sentai footage, it would make a bit more sense; but all Samurai cockpit footage is brand new, made specifically for Power Rangers!
• In "Room For One More," Ji confiscates Antonio's morpher because he wasn't properly trained as a Samurai and Jayden agrees. Aside from the fact that he has already proven himself in battle, Antonio built that morpher on his own. The Zord was one thing, but the powers were by all accounts rightfully his. What the Hell, Hero? doesn't even begin to describe the way Jayden and Ji behave.
  • It makes some sense. Jayden for the most part is staying out of it as he's the reason for Antonio's actions. Also remember that Antonio's powers were based on technology from the Zord. As a result Ji took the morpher as the tech belongs more to the Rangers, and to insure Antonio doesn't hurt himself by using it again. Not that it helps.

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