Recap: Power Rangers Dino Charge, Episode 5 – "You can't change the past, but you can learn from it."

Recap: Power Rangers Dino Charge, Episode 5 – Breaking Black

Dino Charge 5

Not only is Chase on his phone while manning the grill, he even leaves it to go flirt with a girl. That’s definitely a no-no as the burgers burn up and almost cause a big fire.

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He promises to pay more attention next… “Moana!”

Chase recognizes the woman, Moana, who walks into the cafe. She needs his help as she’s had a vision that someone will be stealing something very valuable from her shop. Chase explains to the others that Moana is a matakite, a Maori fortune teller from New Zealand.

Moana asks Chase to guard her shop for her. She knows he has special powers, referring to his Energem. He agrees to help.

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They head to Moana’s shop. She reminds him to stay alert at all times. She’ll be back tomorrow.

Chase settles in, but eventually falls asleep. That’s when Spellbinder, another of Sledge’s furloughed prisoners, enters and takes some kind of pendant in hopes that he’ll be released.

Spellbinder’s laugh wakes Chase who demands he put the pendant back. But it’s too late. Spellbinder is already wearing it and uses it to send some kind of beam at Chase before running off.

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Chase feels funny, but hops on his skateboard to try and chase after Spellbinder. He morphs along the way and follows the alien to a warehouse. They fight, but Chase is still feeling weird.

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The others arrive, but just get thrown around. Chase aims at the pendant on Spellbinder, but Spellbinder uses Tyler as a shield.

But Chase’s weird feeling has him losing control over himself. He drops his morpher and Koda and Shelby help Tyler break free from Spellbinder. Riley shoots at Spellbinder who escapes.

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While Spellbinder is able to plead his case to Sledge, everyone’s back at the command cave where Kendall shows the Rangers the new Dino Spike Charger which should be able to harness the power of all five of their Energems. But it takes all five Rangers to activate it.

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Keeper is examining Chase and sees there is indeed something wrong. Chase feels like he is losing control of himself, but he remembers feeling okay when he got on his skateboard. Keeper says they need to find the origin of the pendant to find a way to break the spell before it grows even more.

The others decide to go ask Moana. Chase gets up, but Keeper tells him to stay put. Chase regrets not having stayed focused at the shop to allow Spellbinder to take the pendant.

Keeper says you can’t change the past, but you can learn from it.

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At the shop, Moana finds info on the pendant. It was forged from an evil heart in a dark corner of New Zealand. They’ll need to destroy it or Chase will turn against them. Tyler tells her they have a weapon that can destroy it, but they need Chase.

Moana says if Chase can focus, he can push the spell out of his mind long enough for them to be able to use it. Riley and Shelby chuckle. Chase, focus?

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But Moana tells them a story. Chase showed her long ago that he can focus even in the most dire of situations. One day as she was closing her shop, her stroller rolls off on its own. Chase hops on his skateboard and tries to go after it.

The stroller rolls all the way into the middle of the street as a huge truck comes right at it. Chase jumps, flips and grabs the blanket inside the stroller before the truck hits it.

Chase manages to return Tabitha… a cat, back to Moana.

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Moana invites Chase into her shop to give him something for his bravery. For his courage, she hands him something very precious. The black Energem!

“So easy for him. I froze in glacier for thousands of years.”

Moana says when Chase is on his skateboard, he is able to clear his mind. Kendall calls the Rangers and tells them Spellbinder is back and that Chase is missing.

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The four Rangers find Spellbinder with Wrench and Curio.

They try to fight them, but the Rangers get tossed around.

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Spellbinder then hits the guys with the spell as Shelby hides behind a crate. Chase arrives and Spellbinder orders him to destroy her.

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While the other guys are struggling, Shelby has to think quick. She rolls a dolly towards Chase who hops on like it’s a skateboard. That allows him to focus out of the spell long enough to use his morpher to directly hit the pendant.

They are all free of the spell and they morph.

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They activate their Dino Steel and take care of Curio and Wrench before focusing on Spellbinder.

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They use the Dino Spike Charger and Tyler unleashes a Dino Spike Final Strike.

Sledge activates his beam and Spellbinder embiggens. Chase calls on his Para Zord. Tyler suggests they combine their zords to form the Dino Charge Megazord ParaRaptor Formation.

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And with a Para Zord Fireball Finish, the Rangers make Spellbinder extinct.

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Up on the ship, Sledge is upset he basically threw 20,000 space bullion away with Spellbinder defeated. Wrench is sorting through Spellbinder’s body parts and Sledge sees the pendant is glowing. He tells Wrench to keep it, it might come in handy someday.

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Back at the cafe, Moana apologizes to Chase for causing so much trouble. No worries, Chase says. At least he was able to show the others he can focus when he needs to. They hug.

“Until we meet again.”

Moana leaves. Koda comes to tell Chase that today is his day to clean the museum floor. Shelby says she’ll do it instead. The last time Chase had floor duty, he left halfway through.

But Chase says he’ll take care of it. He hops on his skateboard and rolls through the museum.

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Wait a second, Shelby sees the clipboard Koda is holding and it turns out it’s his day to clean the floor.

Koda says maybe Chase should concentrate on schedules too.

Episode Thoughts

“You can’t change the past, but you can learn from it.”

Indeed! Thank you Keeper. We certainly can’t change Samurai or Megaforce, but let’s hope that everyone involved with Power Rangers has learned what not to do from those seasons as well as learn from successful seasons of the pre-Samurai past.

Like RPM for example. How about more babies in peril! lol That was hilarious, especially when it turns out not to be a human baby at all.

And also like Koda explaining how he was frozen in a glacier for thousands of years. That was a hanging question from his episode last week and they were able to explain that in just one, funny, line. That’s something that Megaforce definitely needed, but of course, we didn’t get it. (Say hello to the New Powers!!!)

This episode was pretty good overall. The spells and stuff were kinda meh, but Moana herself was great. And overall a solid look at pre-Ranger Chase.

The Dino Spike also got a good introduction. I wish we knew more about where Keeper goes when he doesn’t just pop out of nowhere.

How different was Dino Charge from Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger?
Corresponding episode – Brave 4: Fire! The Gaburevolver of Courage

Another episode, another week to say how much I love how much NZ footage we’re getting. It really is like back in the Disney Era where we’d have almost entire episodes of original New Zealand-filmed scenes. Even if scripts were directly translated, they’d still film new scenes so things would flow better and things would actually fit with the Power Rangers characters and not the Sentai characters.

One example is seeing all those Kyoryuger scenes where Daigo is jumping around like a crazy person. That’s definitely not Tyler. But I guess that’s the trade off from all the original footage we got of Sledge’s ship and new scenes of Spellbinder, Wrench and Curio and those flying cat scenes.

It was great to see them take an episode where Ian has to deal with guilt over his friend’s death and turn it into an episode where Chase can’t focus on anything but girls or skateboarding.

This was also a better introduction to the Dino Spike than Kyoryuger as well as that whole “we need all 5” teamwork theme.


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10 thoughts on “Recap: Power Rangers Dino Charge, Episode 5 – "You can't change the past, but you can learn from it."

  1. Something off about this episode. I would have probably like seeing a scene where Chase was now fuly under the control of Spellbinder. Parang bitin kasi ako na dinaan na lang sa pagtawag gamit ang gumaganang comms (FINALLY) na biglang nawala sa base si Chase.

    Perhaps they may have filmed such a scene but time constraints caused that scene to be left at the cutting room floor.

    Ngunit, beyond that, I was fairly entertained. One thing’s for sure: I think we know now how Chase got his name. Hahaha!

    So fearless forecast: The pendant that was left could be used to control Fury, just in line with the Kyoryuger story involving Dogold (but with newly filmed footage with all things considered). That or use it to get another ranger fall under its control. 😀

      1. Yes. I think it’s “realistic” in a way that communicators don’t always work. And someone was smart enough to use a jamming device to prevent them from working the previous episode. 😀

  2. Another great episode. I just love original footage of the Rangers fighting the big baddies, it also showed some evolution of the Rangers, now stronger, they did put up more of a fight compared to what they did in Episode 3. I was hoping to see how Chase and Koda met, but I guess we’ll see that later. Oh, and I gotta say, this season really likes to use the “inside the helmet” shots from RPM 😀

      1. I think the earliest we got with seeing them inside the helmets was back in Ninja Storm, or even as far back as Lightspeed Rescue with Titanium Ranger, where they can willfully slip open their visors to show their faces.

  3. Very well done episode! Not a dull one yet. Please keep it up, Chip! Don’t you ever stop!

    I love the unmorphed fight scenes here. I’ve really missed those the past four years and it’s great to see them again. Also, a megazord battle NOT in the middle of the day and happening at dusk (or maybe night in future episodes)? That’s rare in Power Rangers! I don’t think you see those very often. Also, I hope they actually go somewhere with that pendant Spellbinder dropped. I’d hate for it to just go nowhere.

    “You can’t change the past, but you can learn from it.” A very legitimate lesson on Power Rangers? When’s the last time that happened? Thank you, Keeper! Zordon would be so proud. I do agree that I wish Keeper would show up a little more often, as well as where he goes when he’s not on screen, but I’d rather have him show up randomly and give legitimate help/lessons than someone who’s there more often and doesn’t help very much. I’m looking at you, Gosei!

  4. I like the title of the episode, where it’s obviously a play on the show title “Breaking Bad”. lol
    Great job Chip! Very clever and creative.

    Before I want to discuss about this episode, I want to share my brief thought on season; even though there’s only 4 episodes.
    I REALLY like the direction where it’s going, thanks to Chip.
    The story are excellently written, likable & relatable characters, great original footage (where it doesn’t rely too much on sentai footage), pacing is very fluid, great new original characters (Sledge and Keeper) etc.
    Not only this is improvement in Saban Brands era, but it’s a HUGE improvement compared to its sentai counterpart, Kyoryuger (or KyoryuJERK!).
    It maybe the best toku/live action kids show this year IMO (personally, I like it more than Ninninger and Kamen Rider Drive).

    Having said that though, as much as I love this season so far, this episode was the weakest compared to previous episodes.
    It wasn’t terrible by any means (far from it!), I still liked it for what it was, but it felt somewhat short IMO.
    As much as I hate to admit, since I love the season, before I watched the episodes, I didn’t have much expectation, since this episode focused on Chase (Black), where it would show his origin of how he became ranger.
    As an origin story, it was fine, but it felt weak compared to others IMO.

    I think I’ve mentioned before on Episode 3 review, that I personally think Chase is the weakest among the team, in terms of character.
    Don’t get me wrong that Chase is the WORST ranger/character in the franchise (far from it!), but I just think he’s a step back compared to previous Black, Jake (Megaforce Black).
    Say what you want about Megaforce, but I personally think Azim did such a great job as Jake (Black), where he was very well written and memorable character among the team.
    IMO, he’s probably one my favorite Black Ranger (Top 5) of franchise.
    Don’t get me wrong; I still like Chase as the character and James Davies does a great job, but I personally think Azim would have been a better choice IMO. I may be minority and probably the only person in the world who think this way, but that’s my honest feeling.

    I found Moana, the fortune teller, to be somewhat of an annoying character.
    She wasn’t terrible, but I wished it was written better.
    Despite the problem, I still like the character.
    It’s been a while we’ve seen fortune teller in the series.
    The bond between her and Chase was pretty nice though.
    I can’t imagine that with Ian (take that Sanjo!).

    Nice skateboarding Chase!
    It’s nice to see ranger gets to ride skateboard (both unmorphed AND morphed).
    It’s been a while since we’ve seen ranger riding skateboard (IIRC, Kou (Dairanger) is the last time we’ve seen ranger riding it).
    It was very cute that he rescued kitten.
    That would never happened with Kyoryuger, where Ian would be like:
    “Kitten? Meh, who cares. I rather save hot chicks.” or something. lol

    Keeper giving Chase an advice was pretty nice, but I wished he had more screen time though. Still a better mentor in past few years.
    I want Keeper figures!

    It was nice to see Curio fight against ranger, where in the sentai counterpart, Luckyro didn’t fought ranger. I still don’t like his voice though.
    Poisandra was missing from this episode. Interesting.

    I didn’t know Parazord was from Hogwarts. lol

    Nice job cropping out top and bottom for Dino Charge Megazord ParaRaptor; in the sentai counterpart, it had “Kyoryuzin” sign on the top, and called it Kyoryuzin Wester.
    Personally, I would have preferred to edit the sign with “Dino Charge” and call the megazord, “Dino Charge Western” IMO.
    I liked the name “Western”, and ParaRaptor sound bit awkward IMO; then again, it could have been worst where it could have been called “PaRaptor”. ugh.

    I’m curious what would Sledge do with SpellBinder’s pendant.
    Hopefully, it would be possible hint to Talon (Deathryuger).

    Overall, while it wasn’t as good as previous 4 episodes, it was still pretty good and enjoyed it for what it was.
    It just felt bit short IMO.
    I still like Chase, but I wished he could have been better.
    Hopefully, it would improve in next few episodes.
    I was upset that Poisandra was abscent!

    Take care.

    1. Yeah, I didn’t point it out in my recaps but we get no explanation where the zords come from. The others have been okay. But Parazord coming from Hogwarts (lol) was the most random and noticeable. I did notice the cropping and slowing down of footage when the Megazord finished combining hehe.

      And great point about Luckyuro! I’ve still only watched up to 26 I think and I definitely don’t remember Luckyuro ever fighting. I kinda wish his voice was more childlike though. I know his voice actor is the same as Wrench I think and sometimes this epi, they sound exactly alike.

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