scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/2tmwkr.md

Rational power rangers?

• Author: u/jldew *

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2tmwkr/rational_power_rangers/

• Score: 4

• Created: 2015-01-25T18:46:47

Post:

Is there any fanfiction that explore this?

Comments:

u/cae_jones [+6] (2 hours later)

My headcanon for Power Rangers focuses on seasons 1-6; continuity gets weird afterward, but some details from later seasons may or may not be useful.

I've thought about this ... ur... quite a lot. I can probably ramble even more, if you'd like. Actually writing it might prove harder.

Reposting my thoughts on this from the doodles/daydreams thread:

Power Rangers. Options include the rationality-focused approach (pick smart rangers, give them enhancements), or the "make the universe coherent and the characters non-stupid" approach, which is more fun but runs the risk of turning into a "dissect how the magic works even though it probably isn't that important" ramblefest.

First and foremost: the US Military is not going to ignore heavily armed aliens conducting combat operations on US soil, let alone near a heavily populated area. Rita does not repeat her Bicycle Ride of Doom from the first episode, because people with ICBMs tell her not to, and amost of her monsters move their battles into the desert/mountains on the grounds that they're looking for Zordon's Command Center.

Likewise, Zordon does not ignore the benefits of a high-population, heavily militarized species that is likely to side with him over his enemies. (Canon hints that he did not ignore the US military as a resource: see "Chase into Space"). However, his trumpcard is the power coins, and it turns out that the morphing technology is designed for meat brains (no morphing Alpha, who is not a superintelligence in this fic), and can have nasty side-effects if the rangers are too physically mature (hence, teenagers instead of the Navy Seals). The entire reason the Rangers have secret identities is so Zordon does not need to deal with the fallout of recruiting child soldiers from a population that is being very kind by not bombing him into oblivion. Rita could defect, here, and give this information to the public, but without Zordon as her excuse for invasion, she'd have to actually try something a little more subtle (like spreading her religion or something*).

The Machine Empire has long since conquered the majority of their light cone, and part of Lord Zedd's motivations is to not get converted into paperclips (or Cogs, whichever the ME needs most at the time).

Canon portrays Zedd as skeptical of Rita's religious beliefs (She invokes spirits such as Lokar, the Wizard of Deception, and the Ghost of Darkness; Zedd refers to them as her creations, and there are subtle differences in their approaches to conquest/destruction that hint at different value systems). I bring this up because there is clearly something interesting at work with monster creation (Zedd explicitly requires an avatar for one of his creations at one point, and Scorpina once created a rock golem with a snap of her fingers), but also because The United Alliance of Evil revels in nominal "Evil" (The Machine Empire is explicitly part of the UAE, but the UAE contains numerous other aliens, monsters, and giant lava demigods). So, I have no idea how I'm going to handle that, but I'm guessing there is a (somewhat justified) religious aspect to it, and "Evil" is a mistranslation.

• But if anyone wants to write the version where SMART! Rita defects, gets Zordon in trouble for making child soldiers out of US civilians, and becomes a cult leader, much to the chagrin of Zedd when he comes back to check on her, go for it. It sounds like it could be hilarious, awesome, or both.

u/jldew [+2] (2 hours later)

See, I would write it, but I've got enough on my plate with school, and work.

u/None [+2] (9 hours later)

runs the risk of turning into a "dissect how the magic works even though it probably isn't that important" ramblefest.

Yeah, I'd tend to take the magic as given for the most part. Perhaps the rangers have to report to a science team for experiments periodically, but that's about it. Usually, people are the interesting thing, and the laws of physics or magic aren't. Even when the laws of physics are intended to be interesting, you still need the people to be interesting.

Case in point: the Orthogonalverse series by Greg Egan. It's split roughly into social issues, alternative physics, and saving the world. The social stuff takes up the plurality of the story, and saving the world (and the involved logistics) is barely a quarter of the first book.

Rita does not repeat her Bicycle Ride of Doom from the first episode, because people with ICBMs tell her not to

ICBMs don't even reach orbit, and her base is on the moon. It's the people with Saturn V rockets and nuclear warheads and some idea where on the moon her base is that she's worrying about. Of course, the US has the necessary items and is reasonably likely to identify her base, given enough cause.

But why doesn't the US immediately react to an interstellar incursion by locating and destroying her base? It's the American thing to do.

u/Rouninscholar [+1] (20 hours later)

A cloak, obviously. One that we could beat but have no idea where to look, or too much of A reason to suspect.

u/failed_novelty [+6] (31 minutes later)

Hard to do, given the large number of series, the fact that the rangers powers are never truly explored, and even a semi-intelligent antagonist would simply flood a different town/state/country with monsters...

They bad guys have no motivation beyond 'EEEEEEEVIL' and no real checks on their power, which would make it a poor choice for a rational rewrite.

u/DaystarEld [+5] Pokémon Professor (55 minutes later)

On top of all that, every battle could/should be solved by just summoning the megazords, combining them, and then using the finisher attack right away. I loved Power Rangers as a kid, but even at the age of 5 I was annoyed by how pointless the individual zords were, and how infrequently they fought on their own (let alone actually won a fight that way).

Now I know that the reason they did that was they were just using recycled footage from a japanese show, but a rationalist fiction would have to introduce some downside to combining and using the finisher attack, not to mention making the villains stronger/more dangerous.

u/cae_jones [+6] (3 hours later)

I don't have a generalized response to this issue, but my current model of a Mighty Morphing Rational Rangers is as a delicate political/military situation moderated by the fact that Zordon set up base in California before the United States took over the territory. (Someone more familiar with the laws and treaties concerning Indigenous Californians might have a better idea of how this might go down in practice, since, Alien though he may be, he'd probably count as such for purposes of the law.)

So, battles tend to move progressively further from populated areas and into the deserts/mountains, because the US can bomb the moon if Rita/Zedd get out of hand. So the villains conduct "tourism" and "research" missions inside the city, carefully draw out the rangers, and hope to complete their mission before the obligatory display of force from one of the three sides.

And, of course, pulling out giant monsters or giant robots without serious cause would qualify as conducting military operations in US territory, which would quickly escalate to "And then Goldar and the Megazord both took tank missiles to the face. The end."

The mere presence of the US Military would wreck the plot formula pretty quickly, but early on, it'd be a way to have a Rational version that halfway resembles canon.

(Anyone who wants to write this probably wants to consult someone who knows a thing or two about the relevant laws. Would Rita need a passport for every one of her monsters, so that they don't provoke a military response? How long before the constant skirmishes get Power Rangers and Monsters alike banned from the city limits? Might the Command Center be on the outskirts of a Reservation, scrwing with legal matters even further? Would anyone have the audacity to point out that a glowing Aquamarine head in a tube from the Planetoid of Eltar is decidedly not a member of any federally recognized tribes? Would the exact location at which a zord battle begins make a difference as to the possible military responses?)

u/Geminii27 [+3] (11 hours later)

Did the glowing aquamarine head in a tube already negotiate with one (or several) of the local tribes in the past to be considered a legal member?

I'm reminded at little of the Whateley Academy universe, where the titular Super-School (for heroes, villains, neutrals, and the undecided) is deliberately located on reservation land so that they have quite a lot of legal leeway when it comes to policing their own students. A plot point is that even the supers who set up, run, and oversee the place haven't managed to get complete autonomy from the US government, leading to some nasty shocks along the way.

u/None [+5] (8 hours later)

On top of all that, every battle could/should be solved by just summoning the megazords, combining them, and then using the finisher attack right away.

In canon Gekiranger, GekiTohja (the base megazord) is insufficient, even with the standard finishing move, to defeat some of the large versions of the Venom Fists. The rangers needed to use a specialized form of GekiTohja, such as GekiElehanTohja or GekiBatTohja, for certain enemies, and no specialization was sufficient to defeat each of the Venom Fists. So two or three of them together would likely be able to defeat GekiTohja and any variation.

Of course, what typically happens in those situations is another ranger shows up with an individually powerful GekiBeast. But if Ryu-sama and Mele joined in along with the five Venoms, that would probably suffice even so.

So why don't the rangers immediately form GekiTohja? Because it wouldn't do any good. Rinjuken Akugata is powered by people's screams, and Ryu-sama needs to collect a certain amount of them to achieve his goals. So Gecko-Fist Moriya, for instance, would stay small, climb the walls of buildings, dodge GekiTohja, and terrorize people. Or he'd distract GekiTohja while a score of faceless Akugata fighters attack people.

This would result in Ryu-sama accomplishing his goal faster. So the Gekirangers are forced to fight on the same scale as their opponents.

In some Super Sentai shows, the rangers have an ultimate weapon in addition to a megazord. In these cases, there's no reason to bother with individual combat against the main enemy of the encounter, though it may be useful to clear out the footsoldiers so they're not fighting you while you unlimber your GekiBallista. (That said, they could deploy three hundred meters away, then destroy the main bad guy, then mop up.)

Similarly, there's typically no point in fighting with individual mega beasts -- but at least here, the rangers typically go straight for the combined mode.

u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (9 hours later)

Interesting, thanks for the insight!

u/Geminii27 [+4] (11 hours later)

It would mean that an author would have to set up a (possibly complex) background situation which produced something close to the result we see on screen, similar to what Worm did for superhero/supervillain battles.

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