Power Rangers Reviews: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Season 3 (1995-1996)

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty good. I'm back with my review of season 3 of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and it's ten episode finale arc, Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers. Originally I was going to do separate reviews for each section of the show, but most people consider Alien Rangers to be part of season 3 and even back in 1996, it wasn't marketed as it's own thing, as even the packaging for the toys continued to use the original MMPR toyline logo, relegating the MMAR logo to the bottom left corner of the packaging. So I decided to just do this single review for the both of them. Without further ado, let's get into it. It's Morphin Time!

Season 3 is a pretty interesting season as it's the only season of Power Rangers as a whole to have multiple multi-part episodes. Other seasons tended to save multi-part episodes for season openings and season endings, or mid-season cliffhanger endings. But the writers and producers had experimented with this format in the tail end of season 2, mainly because the main cast was in Australia shooting the movie and they needed story to accomodate their absence during the three part episode, "The Wedding". Plus "Return of the Green Ranger" also didn't include the usual locations beyond the interior of Angel Grove High, specifically the classroom set. Even then season 2 had more multi-part episodes than season 1 had, and season 3 continued that trend. I'll get into why I think that when I talk about Alien Rangers.

This season took footage from the 18th season of Super Sentai, Ninja Sentai Kakuranger, which had a much lighter tone than Zyuranger and Dairanger had had. It wasn't as big of a deal as it would become two years later with the Sentai footage Saban used for Power Rangers Turbo, but it was still different from what Saban had used previously. The reason it isn't as big of a deal is because, well, season 3 didn't use a whole lot of Sentai footage to begin with. Like with season 2, the footage was primarily restricted to the Zords and the Megazord fights since the villains were made up of Zyuranger villains mixed with Lord Zedd, who had been created specifically for season 2 of Mighty Morphin. The only villains used from Kakuranger were Rita's brother, Rito Revolto, and their father, Master Vile. And Vile only appeared for a total of seven episodes before disappearing forever at the end of the two part opening for Alien Rangers, "Alien Rangers of Aquitar".

Alot more original fight footage was shot for this season as Saban decided that brand recognition was more important than story progression and kept the Rangers in the original Zyuranger and Dairanger suits from seasons 1 and 2. Not to mention the fact that they used the Tenga Warriors, originally called Tengu Warriors, from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995) starting in episode 5, "Ninja Quest Part II" with the Putties never being mentioned or seen again until Power Rangers In Space (1998) (Z Putty Patrollers) and Power Rangers Beast Morphers season 2 (2020) (Rita's Putty Patrollers), and in archival footage in Power Rangers Dino Thunder (2004) (Rita's Putty Patrollers) and Power Rangers Dino Fury (2021) (Z Putty Patrollers). 

Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers is where the most footage from Kakuranger was used because Saban finally used the Kakuranger suits for the Aquitian Rangers, which meant they could use fight footage from non-Zord battles unless they were in a place that was particular to Power Rangers, like the water park, or if Billy and the kid Rangers were involved. But I'll talk about that more a little later on.

Season 3 starts weirdly. The first three episodes of the season were used as a backdoor pilot for Saban's next Tokusatsu series, Masked Rider, which took footage from Kamen Rider Black RX (1988-1989), which was the most recent Kamen Rider series to be available for Saban to pull footage from as it was also the last Kamen Rider series to air until Kamen Rider Kuuga debuted in 2000, leaving the '90s completely devoid of Kamen Rider. Saban needed another series to capitalize on the success of Power Rangers as their previous attempt, VR Troopers, was already starting to run out of footage and would ultimately end in early 1996, around the time that Alien Rangers was wrapping up and Power Rangers Zeo was starting. 

While it had it's own toyline, Masked Rider was never as popular as Power Rangers was, and because Saban only had Kamen Rider Black RX to take footage from since Kuuga was still five years away, and Black RX only had 47 episodes to pull footage from, Masked Rider ended in 1996 though would remain in syndication until mid 1997. I'll talk about this more when I talk about Beetleborgs in my Power Rangers Turbo review, but one of the problems of adapting Tokusatsu series in the '90s is that many of them were one-offs or had gone out of production by the time Saban, and others, as we saw the previous year with Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, were wanting to create their own superhero franchises based on pre-established Japanese superhero shows. So the material just wasn't there for any of these shows to last more than a year or two the way Power Rangers had thanks to Super Sentai remaining in production throughout the '90s and into the 2000s, the 2010s, and the 2020s.

So even though "A Friend in Need" opened season 3 of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, it could still be considered part of season 2 as it continued to use the last season 2 opening introduced in "Goldar's Vice Versa", and the Ninjazords, Ninjor, Rito, the season 3 morphing sequence, and the season 3 opening credits sequence weren't introduced until episodes 4 to 7, "Ninja Quest". 

Season 3 is much more story heavy than seasons 1 and 2 were, as there's alot going on with the arrival of Rito, the destruction of the Thunderzords and the Tigerzord, the introduction of Ninjor, and the departure of yet another Ranger. There's still some great character episodes in the first half of the season, though it's primarily focused on Rocky, Adam, and Kimberly. In fact, Kimberly has the most episodes devoted to her throughout this entire season, though Aisha does have one solid episode in the two-parter, "Stop the Hate Master". But with the Green Ranger storyline concluded in season 2, Tommy doesn't have much going on this season and neither does Billy. Though he gets more to do in Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers as he becomes a mentor to the Aquitian Rangers during their time on Earth, and takes a leadership role while the Earth Power Rangers are children, being that he's the only one who was able to be restore to his original age before Rita and Zedd destroyed the Power Coins and transformed Billy's restoration device into a monster. Because of course Lord Zedd turns things into monsters.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect that Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers was done the way it was done because it gave the cast a chance to film the first few episodes of Power Rangers Zeo. The final episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season 3, "Rangers in Reverse" aired on November 27th, 1995. However Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers didn't start airing until February 5th, 1996, and finished up on February 17th. Zeo didn't start airing until almost two months later, on April 20th. So with the main Ranger cast, aside from David Yost (Billy), not being needed for Alien Rangers until the final episode, "Hogday Afternoon Part II", they could shoot some episodes for Zeo or finish up any season 3 episodes they had left over, depending on when Alien Rangers started filming. 

Season 3 had it's own toyline of course. An Ivan Ooze figure was released in the season 3 line rather than in the movie line that was out around the same time for some reason, and the Deluxe Ninja Megazord and Deluxe Falconzord were re-released as part of the season 3 line. The line also had Auto-Morphin figures for Tommy as the White Ranger, and Rocky, Adam and Aisha as the Red, Black, and Yellow Rangers, but no figure for Kat as the Pink Ranger. They also had talking toys for the six Rangers and Lord Zedd. I don't know about the Rangers but Lord Zedd says, "Earth will be mine!" when you press the red button on the back of his neck. The Talking Lord Zedd is the only figure from this line I ever had and I still have it in my collection today. Also, the five Aquitian Rangers and their Battle Borgs were made, but they were released as part of the season 3 line, rather than their own dedicated toyline. 

By the time season 3 debuted on Fox Kids in 1995, the comic book license for the franchise had transferred over to Marvel Comics, who had a ton of big franchise licenses at the time, including Star Trek and Gargoyles. They produced two series based on season 3. The first had the Rangers in their regular Ranger suits, though occasionally the suits would look more like their movie counterparts rather than the versions from the TV show for some reason. This series only lasted for seven issues from 1995 to 1996.

The second series, which was published concurrently with the first series and ran for only five issues, was called Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Ninja Rangers as the Rangers are in their Ninja Ranger suits in the entire series for whatever reason. This series is notable for having Lord Zedd rebuild the original Power Coins and the destroyed Thunderzords to use for his group of Dark Rangers in issue #3. All through season 2 Lord Zedd planned several time to have his own dark heroes who would destroy the world, rather than save it, but, aside from the lame looking Dark Rangers, who showed up very briefly in "Green No More Part II" and never actually did anything, none of his plans actually came to fruition. Unfortunately the story comes to a cliffhanger conclusion and the story was never continued in future issues as the series was canceled only two issues later. The two series combined had Marvel publishing this series well into Zeo's airing in 1996. Ninja Rangers was a flipbook series, that was combined with a comic book series based on VR Troopers.

The Ninja Megazord, Shogun Megazord, Falconzord, and Ivan Ooze were all featured in the SNES game Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Fighting Edition.

Unlike the previous two seasons, which had alot of VHS releases, season 3 only had two. The first was "Ninja Quest" which was part of the All-Time Favorites Collection. The other was "I'm Dreaming of a White Ranger" which was actually a direct-to-video special first before airing on TV as part of the season. The video version has an extra scene where Kat calls the Rangers from Australia on the Viewing Globe at the Command Center to wish them a Merry Christmas. So timeline wise this episode takes place between scenes in "A Different Shade of Pink Part III" as Kat is good, she knows the Rangers's secret identities, but Kimberly is still there as the Pink Ranger. However, in the aired version Kat's scene is removed and it aired between "The Potion Notion" and "A Ranger Castrastrophe Part I", which was Kat's introduction in the series. So not as many VHS releases as previous seasons had.

a compilation of scenes from the last five episodes of Alien Rangers was released on VHS with the first two episodes of Zeo, "A Zeo Beginning", on Power Rangers Zeo: Zeo Quest, which was one of only two VHS releases that Zeo had.

Like with the previous two seasons, season 3 and Alien Rangers were released in Germany sometime in the late 2000s. 

Then in 2012 Shout! Factory released individual DVD sets for both season 3 and Alien Rangers. While I saw all of Alien Rangers in reruns on Fox Kids leading up to the premiere of Power Rangers Zeo in April 1996, I didn't see the majority of season 3 until I got the complete series DVD set in 2014. I saw the final episode, "Rangers in Reverse" just before Alien Rangers reran in 1996, and I saw "A Different Shade of Pink Part II" on CHRO sometime in 1997 or 1998, around the time I stopped watching Power Rangers entirely, but I didn't get to see the full season until I did my first watch through of the series after I got the complete series set.

Speaking of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Complete Series DVD box set, the Alien Rangers disc was included in the season 3 DVD case rather than it's own separate set within the bigger box, even though Alien Rangers had had it's own separate release when the individual season sets were released. This set is how I saw all of season 3 for the first time.

Overall season 3 is a pretty good season of the show. It's shorter than previous seasons, but there's also alot going on in this season too. And unlike previous seasons, the Zeo Crystal, which was introduced in the final multi-part episode, "Master Vile and the Metallic Armor", would become the crucial element for the Rangers to become the Zeo Rangers in the next season, even though things like that would've been one and done macguffin items in seasons 1 and 2. Next time we'll be going Zeo when I review season 4, Power Rangers Zeo. 

That's it for me for today. I will be back tomorrow with the next installment of my DC Comics's Star Trek overview series, and I've got a special review coming on Thursday or Friday. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.