The only Disney-made season of the franchise where all the main actors were all North American.
Trope-Attached
Acting for Two: John Tui portrays both Doggie Cruger and Sergeant Silverback.
Budget-Busting Element: The show crew infamously blew so much of their budget on the final battle between the SPD SWAT Megazord and Grumm’s fortress that they didn’t have any money to have an actual actor for the Omega Ranger to have an actual identity outside the suit.
Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: There was much confusion caused between Doggie Cruger and his Japanese counterpart for a number of media not doing proper research. This commonly resulted in them mistakenly using the Japanese Doggie Kruger's image to promote the series.
Creator's Pest: The creative team hated Sam so much that they tried to work around him as often as possible. If it weren't for the Sentai footage, they would have just written him out entirely.
Descended Creator: Makeup assistant Kevin Duffy portrayed Sam’s human appearance in the finale.
"Abandoned" ends with a friendly alien saying "Maybe I'll go to New Zealand. No one will ever find me there!"
Piggy gets teleported there in another episode.
Doing It for the Art: Greg Aronowitz designed a lot of alien makeup for background characters on his own time and dime.
Enforced Method Acting: In "History", the Dino Thunder cast was not allowed to see the Doggie Cruger suit until they actually started shooting scenes with him so that they really would be surprised by his appearance.
Executive Meddling: Disney wanted to save money and didn't want to hire a seventh starring actor, so it was written in that Sam the Omega Ranger, as a side effect of time traveling, was either stuck in his suit or transformed into a ball of light. This meant he was played on set by a stuntman in a bulky helmet and had his dialogue recorded later in ADR, making interaction between him and the other characters incredibly awkward. The crew was so frustrated by this that they tended to write around Sam as often as possible; they probably would have written him out entirely if not for stock footage constraints. (In the SPD episode of History of Power Rangers, Linkara's full synopsis of Sam is "Sam... has no character development. He is a ball of light. Moving on.")
Additionally, Jason David Frank was not happy when he was not invited back for the team-up episodes as a cost-cutting measure.
Fake American: Of the five main actors that season; Brandon Jay McLaren, Chris Violette, Matt Austin, and Alycia Purott were all Canadians, while Monica May was the only American.
Money, Dear Boy: According to Brandon Jay McLaren, there was a stigma around acting in Power Rangers around the period of filming, to the point where McLaren's agent outright advised him to rethink signing on. McLaren, a starving 25-year-old actor who had a day job as a waiter and was still living with his parents, explained his decision to join the cast with a simple, "I like money."
No Stunt Double: A downplayed version. While John Tui portrays Cruger both in voiceover and in costume, the Shadow Ranger suit is worn by a stunt performer.
A number of alien extras have been seen using parts of previous monster costumes. One of the most noticeable was in "Dogged", where a guy on Gruumm's ship had Deviot's head.
The flashback with Cruger wielding a Spiral Saber and wearing a similar cloak to Andros's.
The monster on Sgt. Silverback's planet aka Silverback, testing the Rangers by using a hologram is actually Beetleborgs monster El Scorpio.
Hey look, a bunch of furry suits we've never seen come to help us along those we do know! Yeah, they'll be immediately recognized by Dekaranger viewers. Two of them were replaced by redesigns, the other two didn't make the cut.
The A-Squad's duty uniforms are the jumpsuits worn by the Dekarangers, which presents an odd contrast with the much fancier uniforms worn by the rest of SPD.
Piggy's cafe is a treasure trove of this. Monsters from Time Force, Lightspeed Rescue and other seasons, along with a Tenga and a gatekeeper from the MMPR movie (which, incidentally, executive producer Greg Aronowitz worked on). Even an unused GoGoFive (Lightspeed Rescue's Sentai counterpart) monster made an appearance.
It Makes Sense in Context: Well, the premise for this series was that Earth had become a haven for many extraterrestrials by this time, so many of the aliens in existence from Morphin' on being around is actually plausible.
The usage of In Space helmets for the A-Squad and Time Force suits back when Sky's father was a cadet.
Parsnippity is made up of different costumes such as Lost Galaxy's Deviot, In Space's Tankenstein, and the unused Timeranger monster Boribaru.
Recursive Import: The show was dubbed in Japanese (And the 1st Disney-era PR to be dubbed in that language, Mystic Force would come later) — the last case of this was Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue. The Dekaranger cast dubbed their Western counterparts, save for Kat Manx, who was voiced by Rie Tanaka, and Broodwing, who's now voiced by Masami Iwasaki.
Executive Meddling led to a good chunk of the show's budget being placed onto the series finale, which had a major CGI battle with the SWAT Megazord. However, this led to them being unable to do several things, including hiring an actor for Sam, the Omega Ranger. As well, many episodes were taken wholesale from itsSuper Sentai counterpart Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger. When Canada accidentally aired the second crossover episode between SPD and Dino Thunder, ABC held back that part for a good length of time before finally letting it air. Speaking of that episode, budget problems led to them to not even consider bringing back Jason David Frank who was back in the States. Frank has stated he was never asked to return. He was never seen out of his suit, and his voice was shemped by Trent's actor Jeffery Parazzo, as they couldn't afford to bring in a specially cast voice actor and Parazzo was already available.
The first day of filming with the Doggie Cruger head nearly set John Tui on fire. Due to unfamiliarity with the equipment, someone put the battery in wrong and caused a shortage in the electronics which caused them to start smoking.
Being made at the same time as Dekaranger made Disney unsure how to handle the tone of the series, resulting in some more mature moments seeping through.
You Look Familiar: Kelson Henderson, who appeared as a one-time character in Dino Thunder, gets a regular role as not-quite-Ascended Fanboy Boom and the voice of Monster of the Week criminals Devastation and Bugglesworth. You'll be seeing him in every series for a while in both on-camera and voiceover roles.
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