Monthly Archives: November 2022

Fanedits, Updates

Power Rangers Turbo-Red On Red [RIP Jason David Frank]

Growing up in the wilderness years without any new episodes of Doctor Who meant many of us young fans at the time had to grow up on alternatives since all we had home grown at the time was Red Dwarf and a bundle of one-off or niche sci-fi dramas on CITV and CBBC. The void was filled largely by american imports, one of which was a stateside adaptation of a Japanese format called Super Sentai. This adaptation began life, of course, as Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, and the rest is history.

It wasn’t long in the show’s run that one additional cast member joined the programme to challenge and ultimately befriend the core five characters, this was Tommy Olive, played by real life marital arts expert and champion Jason David Frank.

JDF was the real deal, with tireless energy and discipline, he raised awareness of his form of martial artistry and brought it to the small screen. Also, unlike many of the other Rangers, his character of Tommy had the most compelling writing of the series, as he gained and lost powers in conflict with Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd, ultimately his arc culminated in him ascending to the leadership role for the group, and from there he became the White, Red Zeo, Red Turbo Rangers from 1995 to 1997, before departing the programme.

He would return many times, in 2002 he guest-starred in “Forever Red”, the 10th anniversary edition of the series, where he led  a team of ten Red Rangers against the remains of the Machine Empire

The appearance proved such a success, that JDF was invited back two years later as a regular on the 2004 season Power Rangers Dino Thunder, where he became the Black Dino Thunder Ranger, mentoring  a then-new team of younger Rangers

JDF would appear a few more times after this, notably for anniversary crossovers and even cameod in the recent 2017 movie, and around this time he began making the convention circuit and dabbling a little in MMA fighting, he steadily built a goodwill reputation amongst convention goers, always spending time with the fans and engaging with them, he always had positive vibes. Sometimes his self-belief proved a turn off for more jaded, cynical fans however, but that’s to be expected when you have a lot of pride and confidence.

Jason died over the weekend at just 49 years of age, almost a week since the passing of legendary Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy. In effect, a large part of what defined the kids TV of the 1990s, have been taken from us. The cause of death was reportedly suicide, demonstrating you can command all the positive attention in the world, but it’s not worth much if you can’t command it within yourself. 

Please, if any of you feel trapped, cornered, isolated, reach out to someone you know, let them know you need their help, don’t refuse that help either. You are significant, you are special, YOU have the great power within you to make anything possible. You can change a life, including your very own

May the power protect you Jason.

To honour his memory, I have reuploaded one of the episodes of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Turbo, a project I worked on during the pandemic. This episode features Tommy taking on the Red Turbo Ranger. Several of the other MMPRT episodes are also in the midst of being archived, so feel free to check them out also if you enjoyed this.

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Comic Books, fanedit, Original Works, Updates

The Unofficial Amazing Spider-Man Newspaper Strip Trades!

With the year’s run of Unofficial Strips complete, I’ve put together PDF ‘trades’ of the first two arcs together

Head In The Clouds, Heart In The Stars

The Blood Between

fanedit, Fanedits, Updates

Centurions-The Feature Length Series Finale [Fanedit]

Towards the end of the one and only season of Centurions there are several multi-part adventures that serve as functional series finales. There is the epic five-parter Man Or Machine which reveals the origins of the Centurions, Doc Terror and Hacker and involves a battle to liberate Skyvault from Terror and stop an alien machine from destroying humanity.

Other candidates include’ To Dare Dominion which appears to kill off Terror and Hacker completely and wipes out their base of operations after they unleash a near universe-consuming Lovecraftian nightmare, and The Better Half, where Terror and Hacker’s robot halves combine to create an even more powerful and malevolent threat, forcing them to ally with the Centurions and destroy those parts of themselves. The story also resolves the Belligerent Sexual Tension between Centurion Ace and Crystal Kane, as the two finally kiss.

So I figured, why don’t we just combine all those potential ‘outs’ and see what we get out of it?

Changes

-Doc Terror and Hacker working on the continuum-crashing vortex moved to the start of the edit, so the audience is informed of what’s to come after the crisis with Gog is averted

-Entire Uniborg plot of “The Better Half” removed, we only use the Ace/Crystal parts

-Inserted footage from the early series episode “Operation: Starfall” after Ace is beamed back aboard Skyvault in rough shape, this sets up the Ace/Crystal romance later -Crystal is no longer shown to be embarrassed by Ace kissing her in front of his friends, doesn’t get her own back afterwards when Lucky kisses him (Lucy does eventually kiss him, but Crystal isn’t around to laugh at it) -Max’s response to Jake regarding the fate of Doc Terror removed. He is definitively dead to serve the purpose of this edit, which is to give us closure.

Use of the scene from “Man or Machine” where Rex and John are accepted into the Centurions now moved to the very end. Ace attempting to ask someone else out on a date removed, as he’s with Crystal now. Most commercial break fades have been retained for two reasons

1. Sheer lazyness on my part

2. Wanting to give it the feel of a first-run TV Movie on cable with plenty of ads in between (add them if you wish)

But, Really, mostly lazyness.

DOWNLOAD HERE