Power Rangers RPM – 17: Prisoners

Gem and Gemma are reporting to the other Rangers about four possible targets that could lead them to Venjix headquarters. They want them all to “Go Boom! Boom! Buh Bye!!!”

Enthusiastically, the twins point to one of them, a factory where human prisoners work under unspeakably brutal conditions to manufacture and build grinders. And they know this because they were prisoners there themselves and they want some payback.

Summer says if there are humans there, they must go and save them, but Scott says they aren’t going anywhere without a plan.

Later, Dillon opens his stopwatch. Summer comes and asks if he knows that tune. “By heart,” he replies.
Their moment is interrupted by the alarm. Dr. K says a giant ball of yarn has infiltrated the city through a garbage chute. Flynn and Ziggy argue over a cat and knitting needle zord before Scott knocks them back to reality and out to the location.

They search through garbage, but no sign of the attack bot. Suddenly, Tenaya 7’s familiar whistling begins and there she is with the generals in toe.

The generals wonder if they should spoil the surprise, but out jumps a saw bot. Tenaya digresses, “The surprise is not that you’re going to be fighting Venjix’s latest creation. The surprise is… that you’re going to lose.”

The generals say the saw bot (generation 15!) wasn’t built to destroy the city, nor its inhabitants. It was built to destroy the Rangers.

“Any final requests?” asks Tenaya 7.
Dillon answers, “Just one. Please stop talking.”
And the fighting commences. Dillon takes on Tenaya while the others handle the attack bot.

Dr. K tells Dillon to disengage from Tenaya and join the others. She then realizes the saw bot is instantaneously learning and adapting to their every move. She orders to cease all attacks.

“Then what are we supposed to do?” Scott asks.
“You’re supposed to be destroyed! I mean, duh!” Tenaya answers, but just then Gem and Gemma appear to blast and boom them up.
Tenaya says that was a cheap shot. They know and there’s more where that came from. “That’s okay, we won’t overstay our welcome,” Tenaya says and they blast out of there.

“They blew themselves up! Woo! Yeah!” the twins celebrate, but now they’ve lost them. Dr. K assures them though that because it’s purpose was to learn their moves, it will be back.

Back at the garage the twins seem to be baking something while humming. Ziggy thinks they’re making pancakes for breakfast and takes a little to taste, but…
Gem: “Oh, that’s not pancake batter.”
Gemma: “Silly! It’s neutronic…”
Gem: “…detonating putty.”

Ziggy blechs it out and Dillon comes in, “If that doesn’t wake you up, nothing will.”
He is about to go up to his room when he hears Gem and Gemma’s humming. They are humming the tune from Dillon’s stopwatch. He asks them where they learned it. (“Like it? Join in! Hum with us if you like!”)
They say they heard it in the factory and the other Rangers come in as they tell them about sharing a cell next to a girl who was always humming that tune. And now whenever they work, they hum it too.

Dillon asks what the girl looked like, but the twins say they never saw her. They only talked to her through a little crack in the wall. (“She was sooo nice!”) She told them the song came from an old family heirloom, carried by her brother. Dillon takes out his stopwatch to show them. (“Does that mean you’re her brother?”)

Dillon asks her name, but they say no one used their real names at the camp, leading to this awesome dialogue…

Gemma: “But there was…”
Gem: “…something different… She was bl…!”
Gemma: “Inhibited! In the…”
Gem: “…visual arena.”
Ziggy: “What does that mean? Was she ugly or something?”
*Summer and Flynn shoot Ziggy a look*
Gem: “She had a severe case…”
Gemma: “…of ocular impairement.”
Gem: “She was…”
Dillon: “Blind. She was blind.”
*The twins let out a sigh of relief*
Gem: “Blind.”
Gemma: “As in…”
Gem: “…not able to see.”
Dillon: “Then that must be her. And she could still be there now.”
Gem: “Uh, we were…”
Gemma: “…planning to just…”
Gem: “…vaporize the whole thing from suborbit.”
Gemma: “But sure, we could go…”
Gem: “…rescue your sister.”
Gemma: “That’d be fun…”
Gem: “…too!”

Dillon begins to walk to his car, but Scott stops him. He says he knows how he must be feeling, but they need a plan of attack before heading out.
Dr. K comes out of her lab and reminds them about the last time they went out into the wasteland to chase his past. “How do you know these memory fragments are real?”

Dillon holds up his stopwatch, “This is real, Gem and Gemma are real. My sister must be real too.”

Later, Scott asks Flynn to take the spark plugs out of Dillon’s car. Scott says he doesn’t want Dillon racing out into the wasteland against his orders. But it looks like they were beaten to the punch. The car revs up and Dillon heads out with Ziggy. Scott and Flynn head to their own vehicles, but their sparkplugs are missing.

In the wasteland, Ziggy mentions how things have changed since they first met. He says Dillon didn’t even know his own name or where he was from or where he was going. Dillon says he still doesn’t know any of that.

Dillon stops, thinking they took a wrong turn and asks Ziggy to look at the directions. He opens a map Gem and Gemma drew them, but he can’t make any of it out, the unicorn, the rainbows and flowers and balloons.

They’re in the wasteland, so naturally it isn’t too long until the grinders arrive. Too late for them to drive, so they get out and fight.
A grinder takes an interest at Ziggy, but in comes Summer and takes a bike blasting away at the grinders.

They meet up and they show her the map, she thinks they’re supposed to head to where the unicorn’s horn is pointing to under the rainbow.
Summer calls shotgun and Ziggy is relegated to the back seat.

Back in Corinth, Dr. K reads a note the twins leave on a little butterfly card…
“Hey Doctor K, we went out for a little while on a super secret, super fun mission. Don’t wait up, kiss kiss hug hug, friends forever.”

“Does anyone else want to flagrantly disregard my orders and go AWOL?” Scott asks. He pats Flynn on the back and asks him if he does.
“No I’m good,” Flynn says and just as he gets back to making his smoothie, the alarms sound.
“The Rangers who left might be the lucky ones,” Dr. K says. The saw bot is back in the city.

Meanwhile, the three arrive at the factory. “At least we know Gem and Gemma were telling the truth, but now what,” Summer asks. They see a line of workers walking into the factory, guarded by grinders. They decide to blend in to get inside. They find uniforms and sneak in with the line.

Inside, they see a door being guarded, they think it could be a control room. They settle on Ziggy to distract them as Summer and Dillon head off alone, together into the room.

Inside, they find some sort of control panel. Summer plugs it in, but the data on the screen is moving too fast. “Not for me,” Dillon says. Summer asks how he’s reading that.
Dillon: “I’m a machine.”
Summer: “Not yet you’re not.”
Dillon sees that it’s a record of all factory prisoners.

Outside, Ziggy takes in the fact that he’s Mr. Finesse and has been low key in distracting the grinders, but he pushes one button and that’s all gone.

Summer realizes they’re not just making grinders at the factory when the alarm goes off signaling intruders. But Dillon sees that there is a blind girl among the prisoners. Summer tries to pull him away, they can’t stay there much longer as grinders enter the room.

Dillon fights off the grinders.
Summer says they have to go. They are greeted by more grinders outside.

Ziggy makes shadow puppets and fool the grinders who follow the shadows outside. The three run back to the car.
They listen in to the radio and hear the transmission from inside the dome of Dr. K and Flynn and Scott fighting off the grinders.
Gem and Gemma come in. “Looks like its boom time Dr. K!”
“Roger that Gem and Gemma, you are go for boom time.”

They boom the saw bot away, but Venjix embiggens it and the Rangers call the zords as Summer, Dillon, and Ziggy arrive in the dome and morph.

Back at the garage. Scott reprimands Dillon for going out.
Scott: “There are rules for a reason. Look, you know what you’ve got?”
Dillon: “A sister. I have a sister.”
Scott: “I was going to go with attitude problem, but all right, I hear you.”
Dillon: “I need to go back there you know.”
This time, Summer interrupts their moment and says they all have to go back there. They have no choice. They need to go back there and destroy it immediately. Summer shows them what Venjix is really building at the factory. Ziggy calls it a blimp.

Dr. K says that blimp has enough firepower to blast through the dome and level the city. “This isn’t an attack bot at all. It’s a doomsday machine!”

POWER RANGERS RPM!

Episode Thoughts
Great episode. We continue to learn more about Dillon’s past and we discover Venjix’s new plan to eliminate humans from the planet.

Gem and Gemma, I don’t how everyone else feels after this episode (well, I can guess), but their characters are incredibly interesting. Them describing the concentration/POW/enslavement camp with enthusiasm was pretty crazy. That even after all that, they still can be happy, peppy people. Or as some people have suggested, that’s their coping mechanism.

RPM has been deep, but not that deep. Though it would be awesome if it was.
Still, their unicorn map and explosive pancake batter was pretty fun.

The Summer/Dillon and Scott/Dillon sexual tension is ever present. 😀
Honestly, a Scott/Summer/Dillon triangle would be an awesome subplot if RPM had the time to explore it.

Another week break until the next new episode. RPM is just flying by and I wish it wasn’t!

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