How About That Thing?

Before I go too far into this article, I need to make a correction. A couple weeks ago, i mentioned that Squat and Baboo had been reduced to glorified lawn gnomes in season 3. As I go through season 3 over on Tubi, refreshing my memory and reliving nostalgia, , I’m finding that actually isn’t the case. Squat and Baboo found themselves with a lot more to do in season 3 than they did in season 2. By contrast, in season 2, they were only ever used, like, once the whole time. Meanwhile, someone must have heard this complaint before snarky nostalgia sites like mine existed, because with the arrival of Rito Revolto, they suddenly find themselves with all kind of things to do. So… Yeah. My mistake. Sue me: it’s been ages since I watched season 3. Anyway…

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Today, we’ll be talking about Katherine.

God, I wish. Maybe we’ll save that one for Valentine’s Day.

Also, I spelled Katherine with a K. As in THIS Katherine.

I may have spoiled this a couple years ago when I covered Power Rangers Zeo’s Chrimstas special, but Katherine is the girl who’d eventually replace Kimberly as the pink ranger.

Within the mythos of MMPR, Kimberly was training for the “PanGlobal games”: an event that’s TOTALLY not The Olympics, and there’s no way you can sue us over it. She practiced so hard, that for several episodes, she’s actually not with the others.

In reality… Well… It gets a little interesting.

Part of it had to do with Amy Jo Johnson apparently not wanting to do the show anymore.

Another, much more complicated problem, was that Ninja Sentai Kakuranger only had five rangers, and none of them were pink. It wasn’t really a problem with the ninja zords, since there were six of them, so they started with the ninja zords and then moved on to the shogun zords for season 3. We’ll get into my thoughts on the shogun zords in a minute, but for now, let’s just say they really had to make the best of a difficult situation on this one.

There were nine episodes that covered the transition from ninja zords to shogun zords, and from Kimberly to Katherine. And as far as this article is concerned… Yeah, I’m not going to be covering all nine of these episodes in any particular depth. I will say, however, it was a long, tedious road to get from A to B.

The epic saga begins when Kimberly and Aisha find a cat.

This little white ball of fluff eventually gets the super clever name of Park Cat. Because it’s a cat, and we found it in the park, you see. I’d remark on how uncreative it is, but considering the labrador retriever mix my parents had when I was, like, four years old was named Brown Dog by yours truly… Yeah, I’ll shut up now.

It is here we jump to Rita and Zedd’s palace, and here where we learn two important bits of information.

• 1. Lord Zedd hates cats. So yeah, minus another couple points off the already hemourhaging coolness score.
• 2. That cat is actually a spy that Rita just now decided to emplament into her schemes.

Which gets me to wondering: just how long was she hanging on to Katherine, anyway? She clearly wasn’t around ten-thousand years ago, but when did Rita find the time to recruit a minion like her?

Ugh, whatever.

As a minion of Rita, it’s apparently her job to attempt to steal Tommy’s affections, and get into a love triangle with Kimberly. And suddenly, I’m starting to remember ANOTHER reason I hated season 3.

As a nine-year-old boy, I obviously wasn’t interested in the love life of Tommy. As an adult… I don’t know, something about love triangles just irritate me. It’s such a cliche that it’s officially obligatory for every novel or novella in the young adult genre to have them. And every single one is just sooooo fucking DUMB!

“Well yeah, you’re a forty-year-old loser writing for a glorified nostalgia blog for a living. Of course it isn’t going to appeal to you. Also, weren’t you talking about Power Rangers a minute ago?”

Right, sorry.

So yeah, Katherine makes her first move by asking Tommy to help fix her car. And I can’t help but feel like this would be a fucking CRIMSON flag right here if the genders were reversed. Once the car is fixed, she convinces him to take it for a drive. Tommy tries to say no, but either Katherine has some sort of black magic at her disposal, or Tommy is a fucking dope who can be talked into just about anything. I mean hell, they DID talk him into becoming the white ranger after all his green ranger power went away.

Once they turn the ignition, though, the trap is sprung, and…

They remain trapped in the greenscreen dimension for a while, only for Tommy to eventually black out, and find himself in a foggy room with Goldar. And like I said in the Rito Revolto article: Goldar actually proves to be somewhat of a match for Tommy for the first time in ages.

Meanwhile, Katherine, AKA: Park Cat, gets a THIRD transformation.

So Katherine ends up being the monster of the day. Except despite blowing up after receiving the usual double punch, she comes back. Not just as Katherine, but as Park Cat later on.

Then, the changing of the zords commences. In the process.

• Kimberly loses her power coin.
• Tommy loses the falcon zord.
• Ninjor ets kidnapped.
• Kimberly also gets kidnapped.

Interestingly enough, losing one of Ninjor’s power coins is a lot more detrimental to your health, and Kimberly spends most of this mini-series in a coma.

Also, Tommy delivers the absolutely cringeworthy one-liner of “One Goldar with anchovies coming up!” while we watch Katherine somehow materialize right behind him. Though in Tommy’s defense, I’m sure we’ve all said something embarrassingly stupid when we thought no one was listening in on us. Especially in front of a bathroom mirror. But yeah, one Goldar with anchovies?

And then, there’s Kimberly getting kidnapped. And unlike Ninjor, who basically spends the rest of the story arch inside a bottle, Kimberly is hooked up to this monstrocity.

It’s an interesting machine. I confess, the fact Kimberly is rotating the entire time she’s being drained of her power seems kind of unnecessary. It kind of seems more like she’s being microwaved… But what do I know?

Of course, the rangers end up reversing things on Zedd and Rita, and end up hijacking the shogun zords.

Oh, and there’s also this guy.

This is Fangenstein. Or Incisorator. Apparently, no one can decide, because Zedd calls him one name, and Zordon and the rangers call him another. It’s an astonishing continuety error that I’m surprised nobody caught.

Stranger than that, Fangenstein disappears entirely after his one and only appearance. The monster Zedd and Rita conjure up to fight the rangers in their spiffy new shogun zords is a whole other creature. And in this battle, we get to see The Shogun Megazord make its debut.

I got to say, the Shogun Megazord kind of feels like a step down from the Ninja Megazord. Granted, I still like it better than that ugly-ass Thunder Megazord, but if I were doing that obnoxious putting everything in tiers meme everybody on my YouTube feed has been doing for the last year or so, Ninja Megazord would be A-tier, and Shogun Megazord would be lower B-tier.

In any case, monster goes kablooy, rangers have new zords, and the day is saved. Mostly. Zedd and Rita still have the falcon zord and Ninjor, which is kind of a pyric victory on their part, but hey, take what you can get.

then we get this episode.

Oh yes, this block of episodes includes the legendary Crabby Cabby. Good god, how I want to cover this in more depth. But I’m crunched for time and resources, so I’ll just say that this episode is legendary for two reasons:

First off, it’s famous for giving us some much-needed backstory on Katherine.

Apparently, our little Katherine was actually quite the good sumaritan before Rita got her claws into her. We also see that Rita’s spell over her is a lot more tenuous than even Rita is willing to admit.

Unfortunately, this episode will probably be a lot more fondly remembered for this.

This is the episode that debuted “the shark cycles.” My god, the glorious stupidity. This deserves its own recap in of itself! But let’s move on.

We finally get to the final episodes that begin the transition from Kimberly to Katherine. And it all starts when Kimberly falls off the balance beam, bonks her head, and goes unconscious.

Now on one hand, I’ve seen some gymnastics routines go askew. Hell, in the 2024 Parris Olympics, I remember seeing someone faceplant while attempting something on balance beam, and frankly, I’m amazed they were able to get back up and finish.

On the other hand… Yip, Kimberly’s unconscious again.

But while she’s out, they manage to recover her power coin, and Kimberly decides to hand it over to Katherine. And apparently, if you willingly GIVE your power coin to someone else, they inherit the ninja power from you with no strings attached. They don’t even have to travel to a distant planet to pry a magic sword from the hand of a random statue like they had to with the original coins.

NO! I’M NOT LETTING IT GO!

Unfortunately, the best resolution they could come up with for how to handle the six rangers but five zords problem is that Katherine has to share the cockpit of the white shogun zord with Tommy. It’s not ideal, but once again, the best of a difficult situation.

And that’s how Katherine went from Rita’s spy, to the new pink ranger. And if you ask me, it was kind of a bumpy road.

Good on them for actually introducing a character with backstory and dimension, and good on them for actually attempting to make the new ranger process more natural than just going “Hey, we had a spare ranger hanging out in the basement” like last time.

On the other hand, armchair booker me feels like they could’ve addressed this problem a lot sooner. The plan I had in mind was Ninjor gives the rangers new power coins, but unfortunately, there’s only five that he can give away at the moment. Meaning that one of them will have to step down. Kimberly, being the one with the dilemma of do I stay a ranger or do I become a royalty-free olympic gymnast, steps down, and the issue is solved.

However, that’s an idea they’d end up using for season 4 with The Zeo Crystal. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Was Katherine a better pink ranger than Kimberly? Honestly… I’d say they were competitive. But in terms of new additions to the team, Katherine was fine. I mean it’s not like they created a time paradox by bringing her into the future from the past and making her a power ranger or something.

Good on them for not just throwing some rando into the rol