"I WISH THE OLD RANGERS WOULD COME BACK!"
Sound familiar? It's the battle cry of 90% of the fandom- and that's a lowball estimate. What "will you be releasing the old G1 molds, and give them out for free" is to Transformers fandom, this is it for ours.Obviously, as a whole, this is probably never going to happen. And that's being nice about it. It's just not. Some things you do as events, others you do as stunts. Short of an exceptionally good plot- that would be a stunt. Judd doesn't do stunts a lot.
I've spent just about two months working on this column- and objectively, I still don't really think I'm ready to do this. What do I know about writing an editorial? What the heck have I got to say? But this topic has finally irked me sufficiently to get me off my lazy duff, and get me a-typin'.
This article is about learning to accept PR for what it is, and what it has become over the years. Obviously- PR no longer NEEDS to go about referencing even the most minute details about itself anymore. And to some degrees, this is a loss. And in others... A victory. Depends on if we're looking at this from a sentimental standpoint, or a storytelling one. My own feelings on this matter do tend to fluctuate a lot, which I think is to be expected when my heart and mind don't always say quite the same things.
PR as written by Doug Sloan was a particular tapestry. Lord Zedd was Rita's superior officer, each villainous force was successively more powerful than the last, most of the stuff in some way or another pertained to the existing continuity, expanding on what was known. The Zeo Crystal was hidden by monks from the galaxy Master Vile ruled, where Rita grew up as a young girl, the Gold Ranger came from an alien world which had in its possession a staff emitting another Zeo wavelength... I think the best example of "Sloan Writing" in PR would have to be the planetary alignment which allowed Trey to regain the Golden powers. It's always three KNOWN worlds. New stuff that gets introduced appears because it's relevant, in some way, to what we already know.
Events, things- they tie into the past. Jason and the others will fax the remaining cast after their departure, from Geneva; or Aisha will send Tanya the Auric Key. Ninjor made the Power Coins, and later was revealed as the creator of the Aquitian Coins and Borgs. Auric's "all who fight for good know the name of Zordon" is a GREAT example of this. Everything is incredibly FAMILIAR in the original PRU, under Sloan's supervision. Which is for both good, and for bad. T:APRM and PRT played havoc on Sloan. It was so clearly not want he wanted to do- and admittedly, this goes back to Zeo being rewritten out from under him, but even so... Turbo is when the fecal matter went airborne. The random elements were so random, it didn't, like- WORK.
Enter Chip Lynn. Judd approaches PR in a totally different way than Doug did. If I might be allowed a horribly fanboyish metaphor- Doug is Kurt Busiek, always working in the familiar. Judd is Grant Morrison. Occasionally random and incomprehensible, but always trying for something new or exciting. And both do what they do VERY WELL. But Kurt, IMO, works best in a rich and nuanced continuity. And the PRU... Is dependent on its writers to MAKE new things.
Lets look at a particular facet of the fandom relevant to the Sloan regime, which partially explains why so many "MMPR Fascists" in fact left right about the time Judd took over. The uber-fic. Prior to Turbo, you could basically explain the PR universe reasonably well in a single story, and tidy up ALL of the plotholes. As a good example, Joe Rovang's "Titanus Speaks." And now? That story barely touches the tip of the iceberg. There is just SO much more that we know now that... Titanus now seems to be LEAVING THINGS OUT in his summary of events to Billy.
Once Turbo hits, things begin to change. The nature of the PR universe is always being resettled, adjusted and tweaked. We don't know anything for certain, and that SCARES a lot of people. Casts can be punted out the door, for better or worse. HUGE new elements can just suddenly be dropped in, whole and otherwise preexistent. Fans get miffed. Before- PR is a circle of friends. A small arc built around individuals coming in and out of a tight-knit family group. And now? It's a multigenerational science fantasy EPIC. PR has become the sort of things fanfic writers used to imagine in their own tales, only now it's... Canonically that. And the fanfic writers LOST CONTROL OF THINGS. When PR's quality improved- their work decreased in specialness. They couldn't just point to things anymore, and say "look at my work." Their work was just- speculation, now. Subject to invalidation at a mere moment's notice. How many fic series' have really endured since then? Those which borrow those elements of the show they like and make a concentrated effort to DO THEIR OWN THING. That, or "plausibly in canon." Me, I tend to favor the latter in my own work.
Back to Judd.
I don't think, at this point, it can be debated that nobody else in the world is probably as totally "PR" as Judd Lynn. The man works within crippling restrictions, as a writer, and still produces astoundingly good work, week after week. This is a guy who gave up an on-credit title AS story editor specifically so he could pen eight out of ten episodes. (story editors are, as a union rule, only allowed to write so many eps per season.)
Judd is, more than anything else, a good writer. And a versatile one, at that. He's dabbled in a little bit of everything, and isn't above treating PR LIKE A FICTIONAL UNIVERSE when he has to. All too often we can lose sight of the fact that, much as we love PR, sometimes drastic, unexplained things need to happen to get a plot rolling. Judd will introduce huge new things that fit in the existing universe. Lets look at Dark Specter's Alliance of Evil. Mentioned, in passing, in a single Sloan episode. Now- I doubt Sloan intended us to take the existence of an allied force of villains SERIOUSLY. It was a title, not any sort of real agency. And then... Judd ran with it. And took the "successive villains are more powerful than the previous" to a LUDICROUS level. You can't, like, get much bigger than Dark Specter. I mean, maybe Lokar or Bansheera might be, at their full power, but- neither ever WAS, either.
If something isn't working in PR, Judd will cast it aside and do something else. Dana in season one PRLR was basically a proto-Jen. A stone-cold business oriented jerk. And by the next season she was... A giddy moron. That can be jarring as all heck, but... It does actually suit Alison's portrayal a lot better. Phantom Ranger can't get his identity revealed; since the actor won't bite? NEVER reveal it. Judd will put in random elements, other empires, vying forces... It's fun, since nothing is especially set in stone.
Judd knows enough to put in references the fans will get that are vague enough the target audience will never notice. The whole Bansheera/Lokar thing. King and Queen of Hell, in each of their respective sentais. They both, initially, take on the form of giant angry heads in the sky. Who the heck ELSE would they be? Not to mention the nice touch of dropping in "Lokar ascends" footage as Bansheera begins to regain her bodily form- and while that same footage had been used for Erutan, and Leo monkeying with Terra Venture's weather controls, prior- doesn't it MAKE SENSE, now? There was perfectly useable GoGoV footage available. That's a wink.
Doug would have had Andros' Astro Morphers be Ninjor's secret project, and the reason that he left so soon on the heels on PRZ beginning. Judd- just has them be technologically oriented powers from another alien civilization. Less cute continuity refs, but a broadening of the base of what the universe can do. Again- "huge new things."
And Judd isn't above pants-wettingly cool moments. He will pick up old elements, if he can spin an entertaining yarn out of them. The living cars, in "True Blue to the Rescue." Who, out of any of us, expected to see them again, still enslaved by Divatox? Adam's damaged Mastodon Coin? All the known forces of good rallying against evil, against the final push of Dark Specter's Alliance? Runtus popping up when circumstances warrant?
Judd does subtle references, that work on two levels- cool for the kiddies, and deep and rather reasonable for the older audiences. PR is not Robotech. Robotech's US-produced (and incomplete) "Sentinels" series contained sequences featuring Macross and Southern Cross characters, or Southern Cross "Robotech Master" mecha battling with Mospeda Invid vehicles. Sentinels went so far as to address the strengths and weaknesses of the various series' vehicles, creating Mospeda-influenced mecha to "clear away" resistance before the actual Invid ships we had seen in Japan moved in.
Robotech could do this because it had three major "arcs," or seasons. Each adapted from a particular anime, and all united by common bloodlines or settings. Robotech had about as much to work with as PR did up until Zeo. When you have US elements introduced- you can work with what you have. You can make it a "close-knit arc." But lets assume Robotech had continued, drawing on MORE anime programs. How long before that becomes unwieldy? Carl Macek has already said he never plans to adapt ANOTHER anime into the Robotech series, choosing instead to do US continuations of the existing continuity. Carl works like Doug does. I'm sure Doug, given the choice, would have stuck it out with Zeo and MMPR elements when it came time to start using Carranger elements. But if Robotech had continued on- it would NEED a Judd there, in order to survive.
I'm not saying Judd is a better writer than Doug. Both does what he does very well. But Judd can keep the series, as a franchise, alive longer, and through more changes. PR can get NEW audiences now, it can grow and mutate. Take on the best elements of itself, and of its source programs by Toei, and mingle them together. PR does a lot of things well, and sometimes you can put them all together in a blender, and hit "puree." The return of archetypical characters in PRLR seemed like a peace offerring there. Lightspeed really was heir apparent to MMPR. It was Judd resting his laurels between two major "arc-based" programs, and seeing if the audience would like a bone thrown to it. But the response he got there wasn't exactly... Great. Judd can DO what Doug does, and while I liked PRLR a good deal at times- it wasn't JUDD.
Do I miss the sense of things carrying over, year after year? Of, outside of a teamup, really CEMENT evidence that we're still in the same old PRU we know and love? Of getting some great Rito/Goldar hijinks? Sure- and then Judd goes and does something silly like saying "I love you." Wait, no, I mean, he has an Aquitian do a cameo in the PRTF premiere. Sorry, Sideshow Bob karaoke memories confuzzled me.
I think Judd knows that there are things about his work which some fans dislike, and I think he does try and do things to change those perceptions. Thanks to him, PR has become much more mature, and I think in a LOT of ways it has improved immeasurably, even if at times it no longer FEELS "PR." And look at PRTF- the quality level is astounding, the work is great, none of the actors are phoning it in... I've seen more fans who I had previously written off as losses, circa PRLR, or even out and out MMPR Fascists, return to our folds. PRTF is what we needed. The genesis of, what I hope, is a next phase for PR. PR as, what we all always wanted- a reasonably mature SF series.
And so, whenever you ask, loudly with possibly with bad grammar, when all of the old Rangers are going to return- just remember. Tolerance, for an expanded universe.
Here's to hoping the next column doesn't take two more months.