Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Episode 15: The Dark Warrior

Trini’s world famous, invisibility potion-inventing uncle gets kidnapped by Rita and strapped to explosives. The Rangers have to save him before the timer reaches zero.

Episode Summary

In a science lab somewhere, a guy finishes an invisibility formula and pours it on a plant. Surprise, surprise, it turns invisible! Who is this man?

Billy’s Desire

At the Juice Center, Jason teaches his martial arts class. An envious Billy watches: “Sure wish I had Jason’s outstanding moves,” he muses. Ernie asks Billy to take some empty bottles to the recycling bin. On the way, Billy gets harassed by Bulk and Skull, who flip him upside down and steal the quarters that rain down.

“I’m always gettin’ picked on,” Billy complains to Trini. She tries to console him by saying her famous Uncle Howard’s coming. That must be the guy we saw earlier. This news doesn’t really cheer Billy up, though. Hey, what happened to his girlfriend?

Billy looks at Jason, “I know exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to re-enroll in Jason’s karate class.” We saw him in Jason’s class in the first episode. He must have quit shortly thereafter.

Rita checks Howard out. She has a new plan of course, and orders a monster from Finster that’s “both invincible and clever.” She should’ve asked for that a long time ago! Finster combines the speed of a panther (not a cheetah?), the wisdom of the ages, and the strength of ten angry octavian slime toads. Out from the Monster-Matic comes…a ninja-looking guy in camouflage.

Meet Uncle Howard

Uncle Howard arrives at the Juice Center with a jar of invisibility formula, which he absent-mindedly leaves on the front counter. I wonder if he’s the father of Sylvia, whom we saw in the clown episode.

Jason dismisses his class. Trini and Kimberly congratulate Billy on “doing great.” Too bad we didn’t see any of it.

Trini introduces Uncle Howard, who’s a world famous martial artist in addition to being a brilliant scientist. Trini thinks Howard will be the perfect tutor for Billy. “These are my friends, uncle,” Trini says, then goes to Billy and stands him up, “and this here is Billy.” Ouch.

Rita tells Dark Warrior and Goldar and co. to steal the formula from Howard’s lab, but they are unsuccessful. They move to Plan B and send Putties to kidnap Howard.

Dark Warrior

The Putties take Howard to a cave not too unlike the one in episode 5 and strap him to a bunch of explosives. Dark Warrior gives Howard an ultimatum: he is to give up the the invisibility formula in one hour, or he and the cave “will disappear from the face of the Earth.” Wow, Power Rangers is actually alluding to death for once!

At the Youth Center, Ernie delivers a bunch of black balloons to Trini, which instantly pop and a ransom note falls out: “If you ever want to see your uncle again, deliver his secret formula to me in Angel Grove Park. Signed, the Dark Warrior.”

The teens teleport to the Command Center, where Zordon tells them that Rita’s after the invisibility formula. The good news is that Zordon knows exactly where Howard is being held – an “abandoned” cave.

Rangers to the Rescue

The Rangers teleport to the cave entrance and fight the Putties stationed there, then they make it inside to Howard. Billy disarms the bomb and Howard is saved!

Zordon now tells the Rangers to go to the park and fight the Dark Warrior, who has a pretty cool sword and some cannons that slide out from under his arms. Rita almost immediately throws her staff to make Dark Warrior grow, even though he had the fight perfectly under control.

Jason summons the zords, but Dark Warrior, with his “wisdom of the ages,” starts attacking the Rangers before they can form the Megazord. Nothing comes of it though, so it doesn’t matter. The Rangers form the Megazord and cut Dark Warrior’s chain, and then Dark Warrior himself, into pieces. Explodey pieces.

Conclusion

Billy and Jason spar at the Juice Center as part of a test for Jason’s class. Kimberly and Trini talk about how awesome Billy is and Jason promotes him to yellow belt. “I really just needed to prove to myself that I could do it,” says Billy. Howard smiles and nods.

Bulk and Skull mess with Billy again. Howard finds the invisibility formula on the counter and drinks it. Now invisible, Howard pushes Bulk and Skull into each other.

Thoughts

Yet another episode with Billy in the forefront. This time, he’s a part of some half-hearted “believe in yourself” lesson that doesn’t have much to do with the episode. The same goes for the invisibility formula, the driving force of this episode, which only actually ends up being used as part of a gag at the very end. Oh well, at least it was used at all.

It’s inconsistent how Billy’s shown to still be a weakling in this episode after all he’s gone through at this point. It feels like this episode should have been placed earlier in the series.