Recap / History of Power Rangers Dino Charge

After Megaforce failed to live up to expectations, Linkara hopes that Power Rangers Dino Charge can redeem the franchise after hitting rock bottom.

Tropes:

• Almost Kiss: Linkara got pretty miffed that Koda interrupted Tyler and Shelby's kiss.
  Linkara: Koda, you cockblocker. We could have had the first proper kiss in this franchise, in twenty friggin years!
• Alternate Character Interpretation: invoked
  • He theorizes that Lord Arcanon was a relatively small fry who came into some power but eventually got in over his head, as he seems fearful and tries to bargain with Sledge for his life in the end.
  • Linkara believes that Kendall has an elitist attitude at the beginning of the season, as shown with her hostility to Shelby, also believing (in a joking manner) that she's jealous that a waitress became a Power Ranger.
  • Linkara also believes that Tyler's excitement and adventurous personality are in part due to his dad's disappearance, and wanting to live life to its fullest.
• Artistic License – History: Is confused by the concept of a Christmas-themed monster existing on Sledge's ship from millions of years ago; as in said monster existing in a time long before Jesus Christ was born. He expresses this again in the Ninja Steel review when Koda invites the titular rangers to spent Christmas in the Stone Age with cavepeople.^note Perhaps Koda introduced the idea to his people after his experiences in the modern-day?
• Author's Saving Throw: invokedFeels that Dino Charge is a direct counter to all the problems of Megaforce; likable characters that get time to shine and develop, interesting villains in reasonable numbers with unique personalities and designs from each other, the mentor actually being someone who helps and advises the team, and new zords and power-ups are given in natural flow with the developing story.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Theorizes that Lord Arcanon is actually this.
• Call-Back:
  • The "That is not a plan!" clip shows up for the third consecutive time in the reviews of the Neo-Saban era. Linkara even notes how strange it is that he's able to keep using it.
  • About Kruger in his SPD review, he asks how a bird-human like Xenowing can fit into a ranger costume.
• Cool vs. Awesome: How he views the best lead villains. Sledge is good, but Heckyl is a delight!
• The End... Or Is It?:
  • He talks about Dino Charge, saying that it was a pretty good season although at 22 episodes it was pretty short... and then comes the Snide stinger.
  • Notes that the finale isn't actually the final episode of the show, but rather the second Christmas episode, Here Comes Heximas.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: Notes that Sledge has the gravelly villain voice that he typically finds generic, but feels that it works for Sledge given that he's not a supreme overlord, but a thug with too much power on his hands.
• Flat Character: Laced with Generic Doomsday Villain. These are his final thoughts on Arcanon, and he was glad that he wasn't around for very long because of it.
• Fridge Logic:invoked Struggles to wrap his head around Heximas, a villain from 65 million years in the past who happens to be based on the traditions of modern Christmas, let alone that he's based on a holiday for an entity who wasn't even born yet by millions of years!
• HA HA HA—No: Linkara's reaction to Keeper declaring order is restored after the Rangers stop Sledge's plans from the start of the series.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: invoked Linkara notes that after all of the jokes he made about Serpentera running on AAA batteries, there is actually a Zord (the Dino Charge Ptera Zord when it was under Fury's control) that suffers a similar problem.
• Hurricane of Puns: He uses soundbites from Mr. Freeze anytime Iceage crops up.
• Jekyll & Hyde: He finds several interesting things about the Heckyl/Snide dynamic. Not only do they have 2 different ways of doing evil, but Snide's aggressiveness gives Heckyl's acting an extra psychotic edge.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to Megaforce, Linkara doesn't have an angry vibe in this review (except for the first 5 minutes, and even then it's directed at Megaforce rather than Dino Charge), and feels more relaxed. Also, the review only contains two parts compared to Megaforce's five.
• The Load: Subverted. While he points out that the Keeper wasn't a particularly good fighter, he could still fight, so he never came across like this.
• Mind Screw: Declares the finale will "make your head explode if you give it any amount of thought". He then spends several minutes discussing how liberally the Timey-Wimey Ball is tossed around, including Set Right What Once Went Wrong being pulled on multiple events in history even though some of those "Wrongs" caused other ones, so the Rangers go back to change events that shouldn't even have happened because of other events they changed. Also, ya know, the whole idea that the dinosaurs didn't go extinct and are still alive in modern times.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Rangers destroy the Dark Energem! Hooray! Then it creates a black hole and sucks the Earth in, wiping out the entire human race. Oops.
  Linkara: Good work, guys, I was worried about the gravitational stresses before, but holy crap, you made it a billion times worse!
• Official Couple: He notes that despite Tyler and Shelby being a couple, the show does not actively mention it, not even in the finale when it is so blatantly obvious.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The first five minutes are basically one long one to Megaforce/Super Megaforce, or to be more precise it's directed towards Jonathan Tzachor whose handling of that season and Samurai were the key reason for their lack in quality.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: invoked Linkara believes that Dino Charge is the answer to what Megaforce failed in, and is pretty happy that after two mediocre to terrible seasons, he reviews a season that while not groundbreaking, improves on the problems and fixes them (minus the finale of course).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: invoked
  • Isn't too happy that the plot about Heckyl working at the Amber Beach restaurant with the Rangers ended by the third episode of Dino Super Charge, but does considers Heckyl an excellent villain, even after his Heel–Face Turn.
  • Is a little disappointed that Albert didn't stick around longer, as it would have been a good dynamic for a senior Power Ranger to interact with the young adult members.
  • States that he wishes that the Halloween clip show's premise was the plot of an actual episode, noting that it could've been a Power Rangers version of The Thing (1982). However, he doesn't hate the episode, since at least they have a good premise this time around.
• Timey-Wimey Ball:
  • The finale, where the Rangers go back in time and stop the asteroids that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs from hitting Earth, thus returning to the present to find dinosaurs alive and kept in zoos. A major part of the season wrap-up is spent dissecting the many ways this finale basically sets fire to the entire continuity of the season and the series as a whole and bringing up Fan Wank theories to try and reconcile those consequences.
  • Expresses confusion regarding Sledge and his crew's forced departure from Earth and then their re-arrival some 65 million years later, in just what they were all doing during that time. At the very least, Linkara states shock Sledge had not married Poisandra out of sheer boredom, if for nothing else.
• Troubled Production: Lewis briefly brings up interviews about the behind-the-scenes of Samurai during this review that had surfaced in the interim between Megaforce and Dino Charge. that wound up proving him right on some of his suggestions (namely that the Child Soldier aspect of the Samurai Rangers was deliberate and that Tzachor was planning on having them live isolationist lifestyles in the Shiba Manor, to the point where he was allegedly horrified at the idea of an episode where the Rangers played video games). invoked
• What Could Have Been: invoked Much like with the proposal for Hexagon, he mentions Power Rangers Cyber Corps, the proposal Amit Bhuamik made for a Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters adaptation ^note  It would have also retconned RPM by saying the events took place on Mirinoi, the planet featured on Lost Galaxy . He notes that while it would've been awesome for people who were into Continuity Porn like him, it wasn't for the younger audience, which is who Power Rangers ultimately is for.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: When the Rangers claim to Prince Phillip that a robot doesn't have the same abilities or wisdom of a human, Linkara needles the show by noting Mack from Operation Overdrive (who was a robot and was basically indistinguishable from normal humans, not to mention was the Red Ranger).
• World of Weirdness: Linkara notes that due to the Power Rangers universe being one of these, he isn't sure if Shelby was lying or not with her excuse for delivering food to people who hadn't ordered yet being that she read their minds. He then uses the fact Koda has Super-Strength as an example of why he feels this way.