Weekly Ranger Review: Dino Charge Episode 09, “When Logic Fails”

Power Rangers Dino Charge is back from the hiatus and Riley must use his smarts to save his friends from a chilling puzzle in Episode 09, “When Logic Fails”.

Synopsis

The episode begins with Riley analyzing a children’s marble maze for an unknown reason while the rest of the gang mourns the loss of their precious E-Tracer. Riley states that no matter what is going on with the enemies, all paths lead them to a lab where Fury could recharge the Ptera Charger. Fury is already there with the monster known as Puzzler, along with Wrench, and begins charging the Ptera Charger.

Chase, while trying to get pizza to the other Rangers, finds the Puzzler monster. The others arrive at the lab and go after him. Puzzler shifts the lab into a never-ending maze, trapping the five Rangers. He also mystifies the thermostat to make the temperature below zero– somehow.

The Rangers continue to get lost while Koda does his best to get a cookie out of a vending machine.

Fury, using the mysterious gold mass in his body charges the Ptera Charge enough to become active. Riley sees this, but continues to escape. He meets Fury and Puzzler on the roof, remaining undetected. Riley decides to ignore Fury to save his friends, masquerading a game with Puzzler as a means of throwing marbles down air shafts to alert them of the path.

All five Rangers meet on the roof and take down Puzzler. Meanwhile, Fury summons the Ptera Zord. The Rangers combat it with the Dino Charge Megazord Para-Raptor Formation, but are interrupted by a grown Puzzler. They quickly take him out with help from the Ptera Zord, who thought it was being attacked by the monster.

Review

“When Logic Fails” is one of those odd episodes of Power Rangers that is “just okay” at the core. It does progress the overall plot of the show, despite being rather dull.

In terms of the overall plot, “When Logic Fails” continues the story of Fury and the Ptera Charger, reaching a climactic conclusion of getting his hands on the Ptera Zord. However, with the Gold Energem still missing, Fury would have to return to the lab to recharge the Ptera Charger every time. This means, Fury is still relatively out of commission, and the hunt for the Gold Energem begins again.

While the scenes involving the core three villains is short, I still adore the interaction between Sledge, Poisandra, and Fury. In particular, the rivalry between Poisandra and Fury is wonderful, as that’s a plot point that wasn’t present in the source footage. Poisandra fights to put Fury down, striving for the love of Sledge, while Fury fights to show his capability, also striving for the love of Sledge, metaphorically speaking. With Fury’s successful capture of the Ptera Zord, Poisandra is again on the outs.

This was obviously a Riley focus episode which gave him a moment to shine. This hasn’t really happened in a few episodes, but once it has, everything just seems off. Riley has always been portrayed as a very serious, by-the-books person. He wants to train constantly to prove himself, and does everything in a logical manner, as shown in “The Tooth Hurts”.

However, Riley’s genius-level intellect wasn’t really explored or extensively acknowledged previously. So, it seems out of nowhere that Riley has insane intellect and mathematical ability which includes being able to mentally calculate curves, angles, and velocity; and predict exactly where air vents will lead inside a building.

To be clear, I don’t mind Riley having these traits, but to have them suddenly pop up in this episode is odd to me. This is the same character the Rangers found stranded on the side of the road because he couldn’t figure out why his moped broke. While mathematical genius doesn’t necessarily line up with mechanical prowess, the way the character is handled seems unstable. It is something I can look past, however, if this intellectual trait continues to be highlighted for the remainder of the show.

Jumping into “suspension of disbelief” territory here, the entire building scenario with Puzzler was odd. Puzzler is a monster capable of shifting his surroundings into a maze. Somehow he had the ability to break a thermostat. Using real world logic, a thermostat can’t make an entire building freeze, especially in the middle of a bright sunny day. If Puzzler was known to have ice powers, I can see it, but that monster has already long since past. Maybe Puzzler has the ability to turn the entire building into a walk-in freezer. Why didn’t Chase just morph and jump out of the building when he opened that door?

I suppose the episode title was right. Logic did certainly fail.

Let’s wrap up with a discussion about Koda and how amusing his entire plot was.

Koda was the start of this episode’s B-Plot. Koda was hungry. One of the first lines in the episode established that he was starving, and he remains starving throughout the first portion of the episode, ultimately getting stuck in a room with an oddly still working vending machine with one lone cookie inside it. While I’m sure Koda could have just punched the glass with his caveman strength, he was determined to be as fair as possible, as far as to find change on the ground to try and get it. Yoshi Sudarso’s performance as Koda continues to impress. I felt more invested in Koda’s plight to get a cookie than I was in the rest of the episode.

That’s not to say the episode was bad. Like all Dino Charge episodes thus far, “When Logic Fails” was fully enjoyable, even with the suspension of disbelief I was feeling at the scenario at hand, even using Power Rangers logic. It was great for Riley to get some focus, albeit oddly structured, and the side plot with Koda and his hunger was nothing short of adorable. The villain’s plot has progressed even further, and I eagerly await to see what happens next.

There was some bumps in the road, but I’m glad to have you back Dino Charge.

VS. Kyoryuger

“When Logic Fails” is an adaptation of Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger’s “Brave 08”.

Well, adaptation isn’t exactly the right term here, but it at least uses the monster footage from it.

“Brave 08” is a Nossan (Blue) focused episode in which he, along with his sister and niece, attend an amusement park. Citizens at the park begin experience hallucinations in which they see a deceased love one. Twists and turns lead them to different dimensions. Being a Kyoryuger, Nossan is uneffected. Trapped in a maze, Nossan must fight against the puzzle-based monster while the others work to break open the barrier leading to the park.

He breaks his sister free of the illusion, transforms, and injures the monster enough to break the barrier. The five unite to take down the monster. Dogold (Fury) has gained control of Pteragordon (Ptera Zord) and attacks Kyoryuzin (Dino Charge Megazord). Fortunately, it runs out of power and the Kyoryuger defeat the puzzle monster once and for all.

As evident, the plot of the episode was pretty much ignored in “When Logic Fails”. The overall plot with the Fury character gaining control over the Ptera Zord was an overall plot in both shows, and thus was really the only thing directly pulled– though the means of powering the Charger was vastly different between Dino Charge and Kyoryuger.

Again, I’m continually impressed with how great the Dino Charge staff can pull together some footage and make something completely original. Speaking of, until they morphed, there wasn’t any Kyoryuger footage used at all in “When Logic Fails”, so bravo to that. Being able to watch what is essentially the same footage twice and get two completely different results is one of the most amazing things about Super Sentai and Power Rangers as a whole. It’s definitely fascinating.

Next Week

Next week, the Rangers must don a royal disguise as the hunt for the Gold Energem continues in Episode 10, “The Royal Rangers”.