Recap: Power Rangers Megaforce, Episode 8 – “Guess we should’ve expected this.”

Recap: Power Rangers Megaforce, Episode 8 – Robo Knight

Up on the ship, Vrak reports to Admiral Malkor about two Earth mutants he’s discovered made of toxic sludge. With Creepox dead, they need new allies. Admiral Malkor gives him the go ahead to sway them to their side.

Down on Earth, Mr. Burley has his class on a field trip to collect samples in nature to study back at school. While Jake concentrates on getting close with Gia, Noah and Emma are completely interested in studying nature when they stumble upon the old factory that was closed because of emitting too much pollution.

They notice the nearby stream is filled with chemicals and sludge. Noah gets a sample of the water and Emma is absolutely distraught at the fact that people did this. Suddenly, they hear a bloodcurdling scream and head back to the group who find huge footprints. Bigfoot! Jake thinks it’s a hoax, but Troy isn’t so sure.

They head back to school and while Noah is studying the sample of the disgusting stream water, the others express how upset they are about the dirty air and dirty water. Troy’s concerned about Bigfoot.

Meanwhile, the Earth mutants, Bigs and Bluefur are underground, finding more sludge, proof that humans don’t care and turn a blind eye to the mess they created. They’re only making things worse! So now, it’s time to make them pay.

Vrak pops up and sells them the idea for them to form an alliance to stick it to the humans. Sounds good and they’ll even bring their friend Hisser on board.

Emma and Noah are stressing over the toxic chemicals in the stream water, Troy’s pondering Bigfoot still and Jake’s eager to follow Gia to Ernie’s. But instead of enjoying a possible date, they and the others get the call from Tensou.

They’re already morphed when they head to the coordinates Tensou has sent them and get surprised by Hisser who jumps out of the ground. Bigs and Bluefur join him and point out the negligence of closing up a polluting factory, but not even thinking to clean up the chemicals. Emma says they never knew how bad the pollution was, but they say them humans brought this upon themselves.

“Think of how harmful toxins and sludge are to you and then imagine how it’d feel to be made of it.”

(Got em.)

“Now we’ll finish what mankind started,” they say, “the destruction of your environment! You’re creating a toxic world, we’ll just speed up the process.”

The Rangers split up by tribe to take on each mutant, but they are completely overmatched. Bluefur says he never thought they’d be so much weaker, but Bigs says it’s not that the humans are weak, it’s that they are that much stronger.

Hisser spits sludge at them and they grow weak. They try to muster up some energy, but Hisser is too fast for them. Troy tries to rally the troops, but Bigs hurls a big ball of toxic hot fire at them.

Suddenly, a ball of light arrives and in pops a robot.

“The symbol! It’s just like Gosei!”

The robot speaks. He tells them to stand down, he’ll only give one warning. Because he’s Robo Knight, the protector of the environment and guardian of the Earth. Power Rangers, Wild Force!

Robo Knight talks about noxious elements and the Rangers are absolutely wowed by him. A Super Robot!

Admiral Malkor demands Vrak explain the meaning of this and tells him to destroy this disturbance.

The Rangers quickly wash off their sludge and are reenergized. Robo Knight continues spouting off RoboCop-style lines as the Rangers summon their Skick Brothers Cards to help out.

Bigs tells Blurfur they need to go back underground and bathe in more toxic ooze to reenergize.

Robo Knight. Vulcan Cannon. Knight Dynamic. Maximum Force.
Threat Eliminated.

“He used power cards!”
“Uh huh!”

Vrak sends the Zombats to embiggen Hisser.

“Guess we should’ve expected this.”
(No sh– Sherlocks!)

Robo Knight tells the Rangers to not interfere. Mission underway. The buttons on his phone fart and he morphs into a Lion Zord.

“Did you just see that?!”

The Rangers provide commentary as Robo Knight morphs into a full on zord.

“You think rocks can stop me?! I was buried underground for centuries! Now I must complete my mission to protect the Earth’s environment.”

Robo Knight finishes off Hisser and returns back to his smaller robot form.

It’s a Robot Ranger!

Troy takes the lead. He tries a flirty approach, We want to know all about you. Welcome.”

He extends his hand, but Robo Knights just looks at it and walks past him. Troy is profoundly offended.

Vrak vists Bigs and Bluefur and assures them he has a new plan.

The Rangers storm into Gosei’s lair, pissed. Why u no tells us about 6th Ranger, they complain.

Gosei goes into a long winded explanation about having created him centuries ago to protect the environment and has long been dormant until this kind of threat to the Earth. He instilled great qualities a knight should posses and the Earth itself awakened him. He’s invaluable to their fight, but after a long hibernation, he must have lost some memory. His computer brain (is that an insult!?) doesn’t compute that Gosei created him or that the Rangers are allies. He is a complex artificial intelligence machine, but he will need to re-learn his mission and the Rangers’ mission are the same.

The Rangers will have to teach Robo Knight and win him over. That is your challenge!

Episode Thoughts
lol at Gia’s b-tch face towards Gosei in that last cap, eh?

Well, this was an amusing episode. Like, maybe the episode I’ve enjoyed of Megaforce the most so far.

There was a lot to be amused by.

First, the Al Gore-ness of the “HUMANS BAD. DESTROYING THE EARTH!!!!111!” stuff from both the Rangers and the American Yuumajuu was hilarious. The best part though was Bigs and Bluefur making absolutely great sense in what they were saying. Yeah, humans have done this to the Earth and they should probably be punished. They were like a not-annoying version of Al Gore, really. I found myself agreeing with them and rooting for them. And I’m not a big Al Gore fan or huge green cheerleader and all that.

But they were hilarious. Bigs and Bluefur were relatable and believable in their disbelief. When the Rangers were talking about it, they were preachy and condescending. Fun!

Makuin in Goseiger, I actually loved. His random twirling about, his creepy headmouth, his weird eyes, his flipping upside down was all hilarious to me. But he was also all business too. So I actually like what they did with Bigs, they didn’t turn him into a loon like they did Octoroo in Samurai.

Now Robo Knight. Wow.
What was hilariously strange for Robo Knight’s lines was he starts out as, well, robotic then gets pretty chatty when turns into a zord. It’s an odd characterization or way to present his character. Is he a mere robot or AI machine?

But making him an Al Gore robot kinda makes me a little sad since GoseiKnight was awesome. GoseiKnight was less robotic and the big storyline for him was to accept humans are his allies and eventually the Goseigers and Nozumu his friends. I can’t see how they can do the same kind of development here the way Gosei explained everything to them.

Also, his farting phone is very unappealing. What is that?! It’s like it’s supposed to be some kind of joke, though I know it’s not.

How different is Megaforce from Goseiger?
Corresponding Goseiger Episode: Epic 17 – A New Enemy! The Yuumajuu and a few minutes of Epic 18 – The Earth Purifying Knight of Destiny

People melted into the damn ground!
Needless to say, Goseiger‘s episode was not as funny even though Megaforce used a lot of story points from the episode.

They explained why exactly Hisser’s sludge spit weakened the Rangers. (It melt people into the damn ground!)

And speaking of Makuin… just watching the episode again, this line still cracks me up…

Like I said, GoseiKnight was awesome and kick ass. And no better example than when comparing the embiggened zord battle between him and Hisser/ Tsuchinoko. He was definitely not a Chatty Cathy and just showed his kick ass-ness through his actions.

That snubbing scene at the end was copied from Goseiger. But with Alata and his happy personality, his disappointment was more of a, Why isn’t he friendly with us? With Troy, it came off as him being pissed that he wasn’t acknowledged. How dare this robot not acknowledge him, the Red Ranger. Plus their storming off to Gosei is completely Power Rangers since in the next Goseiger episode, Master Head explains who the Yuumajuu are, but also that he has no knowledge of a GoseiKnight.

Megaforce still hasn’t really explained Vrak’s different forms. In Goseiger, it was a nice little cliffhanger reveal to see Buredoran pop up and a familiar face for Makuin and Kinggon.

So overall, while this Megaforce episode was hilarious and amusing, it doesn’t necessarily mean it was any good. It was hilarious and amusing because of all the strange creative choices they made. Goseiger‘s episode served a completely different purpose or purposes. They introduced the next arc of the season and the new villains in addition to introducing GoseiKnight.

Megaforce‘s episode doesn’t come across as introducing a new arc even with these new mutants are replacing Creepox, a supposed general of the Warstar.

Special shoutout to Spongebob and his hilarious cameos…

Celebrate Power Rangers‘ 20th Anniversary on DVD!
The first 18 seasons, from Mighty Morphin to RPM on four complete DVD sets!
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