How About That Thing?

This is Serpenterra. It’s not the only thing getting added to the Power Rangers mythos this week… But it’s probably the most interesting of the things that gets added.

Not only does Lord Zedd have his own zord, but it puts just about every other zord that’s come before it to shame. It’s hard to tell where the zord begins, and the battleship ends, and your planet will most likely be reduced to rubble by the time you figure it out.

The episode is a two-parter… But honestly, the first part is the only thing worth noting in my book. I’ll explain a little later.

The episode begins with everybody at Ernie’s juice bar hanging around the TV, waiting to hear who got picked for the world peace conference. This world peace conference isn’t something they pulled out of their ass. They’d been talking about it for a couple episodes prior to this one. All the same, it’s basically a token effort to get the youth interested in global politics, diplomacy, and the four-dimensional game of chess being played by America, and pretty much every other country on Earth that’s pissed off at us for varying reasons. Hell, even Angel Grove’s favorite dumbasstic duo is taking a break from figuring out who the power rangers are in hopes of getting nominated for this honor.

I’m not really sure why they’re dressed in silly outfits like that, outside of giving the viewer something to tee-hee about… But hey, you do you.

Sadly, Dumbass and Dumbasser don’t get the nomination. Instead, the three people are nominated are Trini, Zack, and Jason! The news is so huge, the others interrupt their regular game of basketball at sunset to share the news. I’m sure there’s a good reason they waited till sunset. And not because they’re hiding the fact Austin St. John, Thui Trang, and Walter Jones respectively had long since checked out at this point.

And so, the quest to find new red, black, and yellow rangers begins. And if you had no idea who the replacements were going to be prior to this episode… Well, you either showed up in the very middle of this saga, or you’re not very observant.

Who the replacements will be is the easy part, though. The hard part is the transfer of power. Because for reasons that stand in defiance of logic, you can’t just hand them your power coin, pat them on the back, and tell them “knock ’em dead”. No, there’s a whole ceremony involving an enchanted sword, which already sounds unnecessary, but fine, whatever.

The idiotic part of all of this, however, comes to be when it’s revealed the rangers have to go and retrieve the sword. They have to travel to “The Abandoned Planet”, find the sword in the hand of a statue, then bring it home to Earth so that the ritual can be performed. I am SOOO not kidding about this, either.

Even as a nine-year-old boy, who accepted so much and suspended disbelief to lengths most people would probably never do, this felt kind of stupid. Like, surely you’ve had to had to do this more than once. The current team of rangers are lucky they’ve survived as long as they have, considering how often they get cursed, or poisoned, or eaten, and so on. Surely, previous ranger teams have had some casualties in the past. Never mind how you plan on recovering those power coins from the dead for the moment, because surely, you’ve had to do this ceremony more than once in your time as the leader of a team. SURELY!

What, you had a seventh power ranger just hanging around in your basement that you’ve never needed till 1994, but a sword that can transfer power didn’t seem like something you needed to hang on to?

Ugh, whatever. Sorry for the rant. I know that’s ot what this article is about, but god damn it, that was always something that bugged me. I’m probably asking too much from a show full of rubber monsters and spandex-clad heroes in motorcycle helmets, but if YOU’RE not going to make the effort… Okay, rant done. I promise.

So yeah, the rangers have to go to The Abandoned Planet. The idea of a planet full of empty cities and villages and what not is probably the closest thing to a believable concept in this entire episode, but I’ve already gone on enough about that as it is.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Before heading off to this abandoned planet, Zordon introduces them to this guy.

Introducing Tor: the carrier zord, and the final component needed to make this season’s ultrazord. Admittedly, he’s no Tigerzord, but he looks cool enough in his own turtly sort of way.

Zordon sends the rangers to “The Deserted Planet”, where they must find the sword.

And yes, they use the same filter effect they did to make Edenoi on Masked Rider seem like a different planet. Though to be fair, Masked Rider hadn’t come out yet, so… Whatever. It’s still an eye sore of an effect.

It’s also right about here I have to remark on how lucky the rangers are. Considering they have to search through AN ENTIRE PLANET to find this sword, they actually ended up landing pretty close. Unfortunately…

It turns out Lord Zedd was originally going to send Serpenterra to Earth to thoroughly buttfuck Earth, but he instead decided to follow the rangers to the abandoned planet. And yet, upon retrospect, I ask why?

Seriously, man, Earth is a lot closer to his palace than this orange ball of abandoned dirt. If I were Lord Zedd, I probably would’ve just let the rangers fuck off to the abandoned planet, taken Serpenterra to Earth, and take a shit on as many people’s couches as I thought I could get away with before they got back, knowing nobody was there to stop me. The LAST thing I’d do is follow the rangers to another planet and fight them there. Even if my zord kicked more ass than all of theirs combined. Also, it’d mean I’d spend significantly less time sharing a cockpit with Goldar.

I understand not wanting to pilot your own zord on the grounds of “fuck you, I’m king!” and all, but yeesh. Those don’t look like very comfortable quarters if you ask me. Not to mention Lord Zedd probably smells like corpses, and Goldar’s B.O. probably doesn’t help matters.

But I guess there are worse things in the world than having to share a cramped space with Goldar. For example, you could be left with no choice but to put Squat and Baboo in charge of an assignment.

Jason opts to fight off Serpenterra with Tor’s assistance while the others find the sword. And I got to say, this fight would probably be a lot more appealing to watch if it weren’t for all this orange.

At some point during the battle, Zedd has enough.

That red button apparently fires Serpenterra’s doomsday laser capable of blowing up entire cities in one blast. The drawback is that, according to Goldar, it really does a number on Serpenterra’s power cells. And there in lies the fallacy. Serpenterra is the ultimate weapon, complete with city leveling death beams… But you always have to make sure the power cells are fully charged if you want it to be effective. And to give you an idea of things, Serpenterra puts my Samsung Zflip 3 to shame with how quickly it goes through battery life. One blast from its patented city smasher, and the people onboard will find themselves with only enough power to head home, and not much else. And that’s if they’re lucky.

And to add insult to injury, it doesn’t work. The rangers end up getting the sword at the last possible minute, and beam back home for the ceremony.

Goodbye, Trini, Zack, and Jason. Hello, Aisha, Rocky, and Johnny Yong Ba-uh-I mean Adam.

True story, the guy who made a career out of voicing the main character of Bleach, among countless other anime throughout the 2000s anime boom, got his start as the black power ranger. Because I didn’t have enough reasons to consider the black ranger the coolest ranger ever. At least out of the core five… But I digress.

From there, it becomes more of the same. Monster of the day shows up, Zedd makes it grow, new rangers get to see what it’s like piloting zords, monster goes kabooy, Zedd lets loose with another angry monologue… All and all, you’re not missing a lot when it comes to part two.

There is a second encounter with Serpenterra, but that shit battery life ends up becoming a factor again. By the time Serpenterra arrives on Earth, it has, like, five percent of its battery left, and the only thing Zedd can do is get it to fly back home and hook it to the charger for the night.

The rangers would have an encounter or two with Serpenterra throughout the remainder of season 2… But the shit battery life always ends up being the thing that bails them out in the end. Which, admittedly, takes away from its menace a tiny little bit. However, if Zedd could get a more efficient battery for the thing, it’d probably be the final boss it deserves to be.

Unfortunately, the damn thing running out of power at the worst possible time ends up becoming a sort of punchline. Not great, but even with this defect, Serpenterra was still a pretty cool addition to the awesomeness of Lord Zedd.