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YMMV / Power Rangers RPM

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  • Adorkable: Dr. K, due to her more stoic personality clashing with her age and awkward attempts at being more social. And her bunny slippers.
  • Awesome Music: The final battle in "Doctor K" foregoes the usual rock music in favor of a more thematic violin theme, which is played by K throughout the episode. The music in question is Paganini's Caprice #24 in A Minor, which is notoriously difficult to play solo.
  • Broken Base: The season is a fan favorite. The theme song, on the other hand is very polarizing, especially considering that there was a contest to see which song would be used, and this song was the more popular choice and the song used wasn't even one of the choices. (Although the actual theme song did arguably better fit the theme of the series).
  • Captain Obvious Reveal: Multiple people guessed that Tenaya 7 was Dillon's sister long before the show even started hinting at it. Funnily enough, that supposedly wasn't going to be the twist precisely because it was so obvious. But the fact that Judd Lynn brought that in, and had used a very similar twist for Power Rangers in Space meant fans could telegraph it.
  • Complete Monster: Venjix is a sapient Computer Virus who was created by Dr. K and became rogue after being unleashed on the world's computers, creating an army of robots and using them to exterminate 99% of the human race. When the last elements of humanity hole up in the domed city of Corinth, Venjix makes repeated attempts to destroy the city in order to wipe out what is left of humankind. To this end, he enslaves people to work in his factories to make his machines and forcefully roboticizes them, even brainwashing Dillon's sister into becoming Tenaya 7. After Tenaya goes against him, he has her forcefully turned into his loyal slave Tenaya 15. It's eventually revealed he's taken over the minds of half the city in order to force them into compliance with his orders. Returning as Evox on the prime Earth, he makes copies of two potential Rangers, leaving the real ones in comas. Taking over the body of Mayor Daniels, he would use him to make a series of Morph-X towers around the world, before attempting to use them to wipe out all human life across the Earth.
  • Crazy Is Cool:
    • Dr. K keeps a laser cannon in the fridge - not stored, but primed and ready to fire. She also made an experimental weapon which turned out to blast clothing off, and can control the base's ventilation systems with her violin. And yes, all of these get used against bad guys multiple times. She also once simply plugged her violin into an amplifier to create an impromptu sonic cannon at one point, and is so lacking in social skills that most of her statements come out as so bizarre they're awesome.
    • Gem and Gemma, emphasis on CRAZY, but still awesome in their own way.
  • Fan Nickname:
  • Genius Bonus:
    • The first time the Megazord is formed, Scott says "Vectorscope, online!" A vectorscope is a monitor for television signals that measures the color saturation. Since the 'eyes' on the Zords are stated to be high-powered cameras, the vectorscope lets them monitor how much color the camera signal has.
    • The piece that Doctor K plays in her eponymous episode? Niccolò Paganini's Caprice No. 24 in A minor, which is considered to be one of the most difficult for a solo violinist. And Doctor K uses it to control her computer and send Tenaya flying.
  • He's Just Hiding: Back when the show was first airing, a lot of fans assumed that certain characters who'd died in the Rangers' backstories - Scott's brother Marcus and Summer's butler Andrews - would return as Venjix hybrids since they were only implied to have died. They were ultimately proved wrong.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Gem is played by Mike Ginn. Which was the catchphrase of the silver Tiger zord back in Go-Onger. Hmm.
    • The space-shuttle dagger Gold and Silver use was called Rocket Dagger in Go-Onger, but renamed in-universe to Rocket Booster in light of a recent fatal stabbing incident in Japan. RPM takes it in a different direction by naming it the Cloud Hatchet.
    • One of the demo themes contained a certain line that, at the time was quite sad, considering the show was facing cancellation. But now that the show's been renewed, the line "Don't they know we'll find a way / Power Rangers are here to stay", seems almost prophetic.
    • Mike Ginn starred in this Mazda ad. Now take the theme of the current series...
      • ...and the PaleoZord's glowing dragon motif making it intact from Go-Onger in 'Ancient History.'
    • When James Maclurcan visited the set of Go-Onger in Japan, taking pictures with the actors while posing with his helmet◊ from Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, people were expecting a formal Sentai-and-PR collaboration - instead, we get that very helmet being dug up from the ruins in 'Ancient History.' This could be Harsher in Hindsight, if that's something left over from other Ranger teams' attempts to stop Venjix.
    • The little-known Kiwi show Maddigan's Quest, starring Rose McIver and Olivia Tennet, with a guest appearance by Milo Cawthorne, has several examples:
      • The show had an episode in which Rose McIver's character had to rescue Milo's and Olivia's characters from an underground toxic waste dump. Guess who rescues Ziggy and Dr. K from the cave in "If Venjix Won"?
      • Even earlier in that episode, Milo's character Bolek throws a tomato at Olivia's character Lilith. It seems that the two actors have experience giving each other's characters a difficult time.
      • In another episode earlier in the series, the traveling circus troupe stay overnight at a place called Greentown. The tunnels look exactly the same as the Alphabet Soup complex Dr. K, Gem, and Gemma grew up in. And, yes, a character played by Olivia Tennet spends some time in that complex.
      • Rose's character Garland falls in love with a tortured and mysterious boy from the future named Timon who, like Dillon, has been infected by the Big Bad.
    • A couple of Olivia Tennet examples:
    • This wasn't the first time a parody Super Sentai series was adapted into a Darker and Edgier plot. But this one was much better received.
    • Turning an Engine modeled after a chicken into a falcon is just amusing now that Sentai actually has a falcon Engine.
    • You know how Dr. K would always say "It's not spandex!" when referring to the Rangers suits? Three years later in the Sentai, this is actually the case, with the suits for Tokumei Sentai Go Busters using leather.
    • In Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters, Messiah has the same origin as the Venjix Virus, being a rogue artificial intelligence. Fast forward to Power Rangers Beast Morphers and Messiah's counterpart, Evox, is revealed to be Venjix, the same Big Bad from this season.
    • In "Ranger Blue", Dr. K tells Flynn that if he wants justice, he should read a comic book. Now, thanks to Boom! Studios' Power Rangers comic book series and its Shattered Grid storyline spanning every generation of Rangers, she now appears on a cover of a comic book◊!
    • Also, producer Eddie Guzelian was dismayed when he pitched his "set after the apocalypse" idea— dark and action-oriented, only to find he had to adapt a bright, cutesy Sentai series around that. He had, only two years prior, done the same thing to a certain Disney film.
    • Dillon, the Black Ranger, is shown in an orange prison uniform.
    • Dillon is a Cyborg is a post-apocalyptic world who is suffering from amnesia and is revealed to be an infiltration unit for a corrupt A.I. villain. Terminator Salvation, a film part of a franchise which RPM clearly takes some inspiration from, used this exact same story for the character of Marcus Wright.
    • Scott Truman is the badass Red Ranger, a former Ace Pilot and leader of the Power Rangers - and while RPM is Darker and Edgier, it's still very family friendly. Eka Darville's next role was Spartacus: Blood and Sand, where he's the Non-Action Guy in a gladiator school, and not only is he perpetually shirtless like the rest of the cast, he gets one of two sex scenes. And Anna Hutchinson from Jungle Fury would later join that show too.
    • Tenaya 7 fighting the memetically-Scottish Blue Ranger would count as this for Adelaide Kane when one of her later higher-profile roles would be one of the most notorious Scottish monarchs.
  • Ho Yay:
    • Scott and Dillon. Particularly in "Dome Dolls", notice where their hands are after succumbing to the "XY sleep agent"...then again they did spend an episode chained to each other so it's not that surprising.
    • If the pool stick in the "Dome Dolls" scene were a little bit more to the left...
    • Dillon and Ziggy. Notably in the finale when Dillon leaves the group, he shakes hands with the others but hugs Ziggy.
  • Hype Backlash: The series is revered as one of Power Ranger's greatest seasons ever, so its not unheard of to have fans disappointed. Some fans (though a minority) also felt that it didn't feel like a Power Rangers season.
  • I Knew It!: That Meta Origin bit in the introduction? People have been trying to figure out how the Morphing Grid works for years. After all was said and done, someone has to owe someone else internet drinks.
  • Iron Woobie: Andrews, the butler to the Lansdowne family, was an eternal Butt-Monkey for most of his life; both having to get beaten up by Summer for her martial arts practice and still waiting on her hand and foot. He also has to carry her on his back across the desert. But he never complains, and even Summer's Heel Realization has her wondering why he even puts up with her.
  • It Was His Sled: Doctor K created Venjix is often brought up as one of the franchise's most daring plot twists for bringing some appreciated moral ambiguity to the series.
  • Memetic Mutation: Say it with me now: "THAT IS NOT SPANDEX!" Or, if you prefer, "AH'M SCOTTISH!!!"
  • Misblamed: Judd Lynn, coming in to replace Eddie Guzelian midway through the season. Even before the episodes he actually created had aired, some fans had him pegged for stuff he could possibly do to screw up the season.
  • Moe: Dr. K in spite of being an Emotionless Girl can actually be quite endearing and huggable from time to time.
  • Moral Event Horizon: See examples here.
  • Narm:
    • Dillon's first morph. Slow motion does not instantly make things more dramatic. It doesn't help at all that his lips are clearly making an "O" sound when he says "gear".
    • Due to Engine Sentai Go-onger being a comedy series, some of the stock footage doesn't match up with RPM's much more serious tone (which may partially explain why so little ground battle footage from Go-Onger was used). Probably one of the biggest examples is how the Zords have cartoon-like designs, due to them being the sentient Engines from Go-Onger.
  • Portmanteau Couple Name: The list includes Diggy, Dummer, Kiggy, and Flemma.
  • Retroactive Recognition:
  • Shocking Moments:
    • The season opens with the entire world being destroyed by a sentient computer virus and the last major battle in a Robot War. Although other planets may have been destroyed by villains in past seasons, the near total destruction of Earth has never happened before on Power Rangers.
    • Then, in "Ranger Green", we find out why Ziggy has a problem with the Scorpion Cartel: He took a bus filled with black market medicine and, instead of driving it to the designated location, he risked his life by delivering the supplies to an orphanage of children struck with gamma sickness.
    • Then, in "Ranger Red" and the "Ranger Yellow" two-parter, we find out that Scott and Summer lost people close to them in the war. And they don't come back.
    • In perhaps the biggest example, in "Doctor K", we find out that Dr. K, the creator of the Ranger Series technology, was captured at a young age by a government organization named Alphabet Soup, and was made to work on experiments for many years. Then, we find out that she was the one who programmed Venjix in the first place while she worked in Alphabet Soup. And she released it when she tried to escape captivity, along with her friends Gem and Gemma. Worse yet, Alphabet Soup did absolutely nothing to stop it and contributed to its spread by not allowing her to install the firewall that would have kept Venjix inside the compound. The handlers even tried to assassinate her when she tried to escape again after Venjix forces began attacking in order to cover up Venjix's origins.
    • Then, in "Blitz", Dr. K mentions to Dillon and Summer that the Sat-Bot triggered an initiation code which activated the Venjix virus previously dormant inside of his robotic parts. It is slowly taking over, and there is no way to reverse it.
    • Then, in "Brother's Keeper", Dr. K enters the base code for the Venjix virus before Dillon falls completely to its control. Then, to everyone's horror, she drops the bombshell revelation that she was the one who wrote and released Venjix.
    • Post-"Belly of the Beast", Dillon gets flashbacks of his time as a Venjix captive, including one in which he woke up in an operating table next to his sister, along with a dozen or so other people—all of them having received robotic upgrades. Human experimentation. On Power Rangers.
    • Then, in "End Game", we find out Venjix's true plans: Remember all of those attack bots which attacked Corinth? All just a distraction. Venjix has been sending hybrids into Corinth. In fact, over half of Corinth is comprised of hybrids. Then, Tenaya 15 activates them, allowing Venjix to walk in and take over Corinth.
    • Finally, in the "Danger and Destiny" two-parter finale, Venjix "deletes" Gem and Gemma...only for Dr. K to gain them back later, thus letting them drop a giant building on top of Venjix in the second part's climax. At the end of the episode, we see a glowing red light as a familiar tune plays in the background...
  • Special Effect Failure: They had PR-exclusive Zord cockpit footage for the first time in a while this season, and as usual the mismatch between that and the Go-Onger cockpit footage is obvious, primarily in the lighting (which is much brighter in the Japanese footage; by contrast, the New Zealand cockpit interiors are more dimly-lit with a color wash depending on the cockpit) and in the cockpit detailing (which is much less elaborate in the NZ version of the sets).
    • Every so often, the team "G" symbol is displayed in the garage monitors...upside-down.
  • Spiritual Adaptation: As a series with a sentient machine as the Big Bad, and with one of the central characters as a black-clad, brunette with robotic parts tied to the Big Bad (though a cyborg instead of an android), this is basically the Power Rangers equivalent to Terminator.
  • Take That, Scrappy!: When exploring ruins, Tenaya 7 finds a battered Operation Overdrive Red Ranger helmet and, without too much thought, tosses it aside. Now, this can be seen as a Mythology Gag, using old props to demonstrate prior iterations of the project. But you gotta wonder if this was deliberate: out of all the 15 previous Power Rangers teams available, the one they explicitly showed was the one from the most reviled season of the franchise at the time (or at least one of the most viable contenders, considering the fandom is fairly split on the issue).
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • A common criticism of the series is that Flynn is wasted and receives little development or focus episodes. Which is a shame, as he had genuinely good chemistry with Gemma. While not something uncommon in Power Rangers (there have others with even less development or character), considering how well nearly every other character did, it's disappointing that they were unable to do more with Flynn.
    • Gem and Gemma, partly due to them appearing right as the Dillon/Tenaya plot kicks in. Gemma would get some time to shine by herself in Power Rangers Ninja Steel, but Gem unfortunately is largely neglected outside of a single focus episode he shares with Scott.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • Dillon had his Venjix virus surpassing 50% of infection level and we didn't get a Black vs. Red (or Yellow, or Green) battle.
    • Several later Go-Onger monsters were completely unused, likely due to the show's small budget.
    • The final battle of Go-Onger was pretty dang epic for how comical the series was. Venjix doesn't even grow himself to giant size at all and gets blown up by a building getting dropped on his head. (This probably had something to do with the aforementioned budget issues.)
  • Tough Act to Follow: This is one of the most well-received Disney Era seasons, not just alongside Dino Thunder and SPD; but also In Space, Time Force and Dino Charge. This is also reinforced by the disappointing reception from the next two seasons, Samurai and Megaforce. And despite Disney's attempt to screw it over by giving it an abysmal timeslotnote , the season stood the test of time and managed to garner a large dedicated fanbase.
  • The Un-Twist: It took twenty-five out of thirty-two episodes to confirm that Tenaya is Dillon's sister. Everyone Knew It. No, Everyone knew it...The fact that this particular subplot was done before made the whole thing completely obvious. Even the characters don't seem all that shocked.
  • Vindicated by History: Fan reception to this series was initially quite rocky, in large part from the idea that the Grand Finale to the Power Rangers franchise would be so far removed from its initial concept. When the series got Uncanceled fans became more receptive to the show's Darker and Edgier nature and could appreciate its characters and narrative better now that it was no longer shackled to being viewers’ final impression. This was compounded by the crossover with Power Rangers Samurai confirming the world of RPM was its own self-contained universe, meaning this show didn't cause all prior series to be All for Nothing. Finally, the negative reception towards the majority of the Neo-Saban era and its restrictive Executive Meddling increased appreciation for this show's risks.
  • What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: This series begins with a Robot Apocalypse that wipes humanity out down to a single city. That already sets itself apart from most Power Rangers series. It only gets worse from there, featuring blockade running, organized crime even in the face of the apocalypse, side characters dying off, humans losing their free will and identity because of a rogue virus, a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds who destroyed the world on accident, rediscovering humanity after being forcefully converted into a cyborg, and even government oppression in the backstory. This season was initially pitched as something aiming for a slightly older audience than before, and it shows.

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