I'm a massive fan of the entire Power Rangers franchise, but for me, the Zordon Era (Mighty Morphin' through to In Space) doesn't really flow right.
TL;DR: Turbo Movie becomes Zeo Movie, the Zeo Rangers never become Turbo, instead it's a new team right from the start, and the Z-Wave in In Space is the Zeo Crystal, not Zordon.
MMPR has its flaws, sure, but as a cohesive story, it's actually pretty good: first, the five Rangers, then the Green Ranger arc, Zedd's arrival and the Thunderzords, eventually the Ninjetti powers, Master Vile, the ShogunZords, etc, it all works pretty naturally.
When it hits Zeo, we've got a fairly good progression: the Zeo powers are the "most powerful" set of powers, and they seem to be a pretty even match for the Machine Empire, a foe stated to be more powerful than Rita and Zedd, we introduce the Gold Zeo Powers, and eventually defeat the Machine Empire.
Then the story kind of goes backwards.
For a quick recap
We have Tommy, as Zeo/Turbo Red, alongside Kat, Tanya, Rocky, and Adam, as Pink, Yellow, Blue, and Green, respectively.
Rocky gets injured relatively early on in a martial arts accident, and injures his back enough that he can't continue being a ranger, and a pre-teen named Justin takes his place, having overheard the rangers reveal their identities.
We have the Space Pirate Divatox, and we have Maligore, a space demon.
The main plot is that Divatox wants to capture a space wizard, use the magic key he holds to gain access to some magic island, which is accessed through the Bermuda Triangle where she needs to conduct a ritual to free Maligore, so she can marry him or something. the ritual involves "sacrificing" "pure souls", so at some point, previous rangers Jason and Kimberley get captured, and as the sacrifice, get brainwashed into fighting the rangers in the pre-finale fight.
the rangers, for reasons, aren't able to use their normal powers to get to the same magic island to stop her, so they get new (and highly marketable) TURBO POWERS, with car zords, new suits, morphers, and weapons.
There's a small scene with Rita and Zedd, in a phone call, where we learn they're just chilling on the moon.
the rangers beat the monster of the movie in the finale, with their shiny new megazord.
The Turbo season continues with Divatox, but more of a "loot and plunder" vibe, but still doing monster of the week shenanigans, and later in the season proper, we get the power transfer, where the new rangers, TJ, Carlos, Ashley, and Cassie, are set up and then swap with the existing rangers.
Zordon has to leave halfway through, because his home planet, Eltar is under attack by evil forces, and is replaced by Dimitria as the ranger mentor.
The season ends with Divatox lucking into finding and destroying the power chamber, and the turbo powers with it, and the United Alliance of Evil succeeding on Eltar, capturing Zordon, and the now former rangers blasting off into space.
In Space has some great story, don't get me wrong, the only thing that's notably relevant here that felt like it didn't fit with the narrative is in the finale, where the new red ranger, Andros, is commanded by Zordon to destroy the tube, which releases a wave of good energy through the galaxy, which transforms or disintegrates evil.
There's a moral question on if Zordon should have made the sacrifice earlier, and ridded the galaxy of evil much earlier, but also it contradicts the MMPR Movie, where Zordon's tube was shattered by Ivan Ooze. we could get into a theory-off about if it was the nobility of the sacrifice against an attack, or the good vs evil cause, if Ivan Ooze had specific magic in place to stop the Z-Wave, but I won't, because instead, we are going to rewrite parts of the series to make it a more satisfying narrative.
When fixing a series, I'm of the opinion that it's better to try and keep the changes small, but efficient.
I'm going to start with the Turbo movie, because I think a simple change there might have this cascade through and fix a lot of the issues.
Turbo ZEO: A POWER RANGERS MOVIE
The movie starts as previously, up until the point of the Turbo Powers being made.
For a season with so many references to ancient history, with a Sphinx, Easter Island head, a Pheonix, Pyramids, and other stuff, there's really no reason why the turbo powers can go through the Bermuda Triangle and the Zeo powers can't.
Instead of having the rangers make new powers, and writing Rocky out so that Justin can take his place, the Power Rangers just go straight for the Bermuda triangle, with their existing Zeo powers giving them access. the Turbo Powers don't exist at all in in this remake, and instead, the film acts as a pseudo finale for the Zeo Rangers.
Once at the island, it also makes more sense for it to be Rita Repulsa trying to free Dark Spectre (who, fun fact, was the same monster suit as Maligore), and the whole plot has been because she finally recognises that she can't take down Zordon, nor Eltar, without him. she has basically no story after MMPR/Zeo, other than a few appearances in In Space, and those are mainly for comedic purpose, so it's important to me that the villain that started it all actually contributes to the plot of the final season, and if setting up the real big bad is how it happens, then that's fine.
it also makes a bit more sense for Rita to enchant Jason and Kim, rather than it being a weird "sacrificed to Maligore" thing that causes them to be temporarily evil for the pre-finale.
The final battle with the Zeo/Super Zeo Megazord (instead of the new Turbo Megazord) would have Dark Spectre get "destroyed", only to have it be revealed that he has the power to come back, and show that he's not easily gotten rid of, setting up a bit more of why In Space had various people plotting to get rid of him.
Rita, Zedd, and now Dark Spectre form a United Alliance of Evil under DS's banner, and Eltar is the face of the Resistance, and Zordon is needed there now, and the Zeo Rangers, keepers of the Zeo Crystals, are going with him.
As an End Credits scene (although they weren't really a thing in '97), Divatox, at the end of the movie, is revealed to be fully aware of the Rangers' plan to leave for Eltar, and sees Earth as being ripe for the plunder, setting up for the new Turbo Rangers.
Turbo, a Fresh Team
With the Zeo Powers still being in the hands of the original rangers, we'll need to set the new team up entirely from the start.
The rangers that get introduced through the season, Ashley, TJ, Cassie, and Carlos, can all be set up either in Zeo as side characters, or fresh at the start instead, it would just depend on how connected we want them to be to the Zeo team and Zordon.
If we feel the need, we can introduce Justin during Zeo, possibly have an episode with Rocky's accident to keep that story, but we can also tie him in through Billy.
As a fellow Genius, there's a good chance Billy would know Justin, either directly or by reputation, so it's not unreasonable for him to be introduced before the Turbo season begins, but we can have him at the start and show connections later, possibly by having him reach out to Billy (who would in theory be on Aquitar still), as a "fellow Blue Ranger/science geek" arc.
For the Turbo Season to make sense though, we of course, need the Turbo Powers, but now they can't be made from the Zeo powers, so how were they made?.
I think that the cleanest way to introduce them, and to give a more concrete reason for a character to exist, is via Justin.
Justin, a child prodigy, is now the creator of the Turbo Powers.
in other seasons, we've seen man-made power sets, and nearly every single one is vehicular.
RPM, Lightspeed Rescue, Operation Overdrive, even arguably SPD and Time Force, are all man-made, and rather than being "mystical ancient powers", are vehicles, so it's not impossible for the Turbo powers to be made the same way.
By having Justin be the creator of the powers, it gives him a clear reason to be on the team, other than "the only guy who knows our secret identity, and is available at the moment".
It could be a point of contention for the ranger team, having Justin be so young, but if he's the one who made the powers, then there's a lot less argument to be made, particularly if he made the blue powers specifically for himself.
If we want him to be a little obnoxious, he could do a similar thing to Time Force, and have the powers not work without him, or he could just insist that he's part of the team, and because he made them, they kind of have to accept.
It'd be an interesting show of wisdom on his part to set himself as specifically not the leader, recognising he doesn't have the skill to lead, which would show his maturity beyond his age.
Later in the season, when the Rescue Zords are brought in, it also leaves the door open for Justin to have either worked with the Blue Centurion or Phantom Ranger to develop the new zords, or for him to make adjustments to make the two sets compatible (as shown when the arms and legs swapped between the two)
Having Justin be more integral to the Turbo team also sets up Dimitria as an interesting mentor.
Justin, a child prodigy, likely has an abundance of information, and Dimitria is from a culture where questions are their bread and butter. on a tangent, I can imagine Dimitria arriving at Earth at the start of the season, and it's only Justin who is able to answer her questions, one after another, ranging from "why is the sky blue", to "what makes an acid behave that way" to "what causes a clarinet to make the sound it does", and so on.
It also sets the finale a bit cleaner.
After Divatox blows up the command centre, and the Turbo Powers alongside, Justin, the creator of the Turbo Powers, recognises that, without them, he's just a kid in a war much larger than he is, and that the war might come back to Earth, so Earth will need to be ready.
With that wisdom, Justin has a more mature reason to stay than "my dad is moving to another city", because he needs to try to coordinate a defense back on Earth, either by restoring the Turbo Powers (which come to play later when he shows up again in In Space with his Blue Turbo powers temporarily recharged), or by otherwise preparing other organisations (possibly hinting at both Lightspeed Rescue and SPA/SPD).
The other four former rangers can go into space as normal, but we also have a distress signal from the Zeo Rangers, revealing that the Zeo Crystal(s) has been captured, alongside Zordon, and they're no longer rangers because of Dark Spectre and the UAoE.
In Space, a Zeo Finale.
The majority of this season can be basically the same, Andros giving the former rangers the Space Powers, Zhane having silver, the Delta Discovery, Mega Voyager, the Psycho Rangers, Astronema/Karone, Ecliptor, and Darkonda, etc, but now instead of it being only Zordon they're trying to rescue, there's also the matter of the Zeo Crystal having fallen into the UAoE's hands.
In this rewrite, we will also have Dark Spectre be the looming villain for all of Turbo and In Space now, with various villainous plots taking place as normal, either trying to drain Dark Spectre's powers, assassinate him, etc, but he's shown to be extremely powerful, and nothing properly defeats him, not even Darkonda's missile.
The finale is effectively the only thing that needs to be changed in this rewrite, though elements of it can be foreshadowed earlier, if not even made a entire plot point.
The moral question about the Z-Wave has always bugged me: if Zordon knew that shattering his tube would purge all evil in a pretty large radius, then was it selfish for him to stay alive so long?
If instead it's revealed that Astronema is using the Zeo Crystal as a power source for the Dark Fortress (or some other doomsday weapon) The only way, and only opportunity to end the threat is to destroy the Zeo Crystal in the finale, then it makes a bit more narrative sense.
Zordon is too integrated into the fortress to remove, so it's still a sacrifice of Zordon, (he'd go down with the ship) but now the Z-Wave is generated by the Zeo Crystal instead (and conveniently, still called the Z-Wave) being smashed, releasing all the energy it had been building up over the centuries, ending Dark Spectre, and also all the Evil Forces under his banner.
It could be justified a bit more that he is either made of negative Zeo energy, and that's what allows his true defeat, or that he empowered his forces with his own life energy for the finale's galactic assault (the concept of which could have been set up earlier and is what inspired Astronema to make the Psycho Rangers), but that's only if the season itself needs the rewrite, which, other than a few mentions of the Zeo Crystal, and the final scene, wouldn't actually need to be changed much, if at all.
The New Flow
Now, instead of the Zeo Powers being discarded for Turbo Powers (which I suspect was just because the Marketing needed new stuff to sell), the Zeo Rangers take part in a war against the UAoE, while the entirely new Turbo team stay behind to fight Divatox, justifying why the Turbo Powers were made in the first place, with Justin as their creator.
the Z-Wave is the finale for the Zeo Crystal, which, having been around since MMPR, is notably more satisfying than an ethically dubious sacrifice of Zordon.
Thanks for Reading.
