Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

Season 3 is definitely my favourite series of PR for a few reasons, such as: plot, pacing, Ninjor, Zords and nostalgia. But while there's so many things I love about that season, one thing always stood out: the damned ninja powers. They were supposed to be this halfway hybrid between civilian and morphed, but on analysis there's pretty much no in-universe reason for them to exist. As for real life, I don't think we ever got a confirmation from anyone who worked on the show, fans have pretty much assumed two leading motives:

1. They Existed To Sell Toys: Okay, this is the most believable reason why Saban would invent another suit for the rangers to wear, as it's another toy to sell. Especially as this is the season that gave us Shark Cycles, Alien Rangers and THAT metallic armour, it's almost impossible not to imagine it was done with toys in mind. Even if the toys did have badass weapons they never got in the show, but I digress...

2: They Existed To Tone Down Violence: Another very likely reason. Season 3 opened with a very much toned down version of Lord Zedd along with a new comic relief villain to cement it, but easily copied hand-to-hand combat was always the most controversial aspect of the show back in the day. Season 3 removing a lot of the punches and kicks in favour of dispatching enemies with "wacky hijinks" could very easily be seen as a move to please the soccer moms.

There's another possible motive I've been thinking of, but I've not seen discussed:

3: They Existed to Save Money:

So go with me on this. By the time Season 3 rolled around, Saban had burned through most of the Sentai footage, forcing more and more of the show to be American-made. Saban is not known for their (his) generous spending. The previous year, half the cast walked out over disputes about how little they were earning against the insane hours they were working. By changing the pre-morph fights to be stunt guys in ninja suits, Saban cut the workload of the main cast, meaning they'd essentially get paid the same for the less hours they worked. I've no evidence to suggest it was intentional, but the way it was done made the American footage cheaper to produce, as well as minimising any further contract disputes. It's a win win. The only loser is the audience who loved the kickass fight scenes.

I'm sure in reality the reason was a combination of the above motives rather than just one, but it's an idea that's only just occurred to me.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

Yeah. The storyline and writing of of MMPR season 3 improved over season 2 at the expense of the martial arts action.

A lot of the combat of season 3 is closer to 3 Ninjas than Season 1 Zyuranger footage. In the actual suit footage filmed the Rangers seem almost incompetent at times.

Season 1 Kim would have murdered most of the Season 3 MotW with a shot of her Power Bow. An option never considered in fights, the Rangers even forgetting about their blade blasters.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

They existed because they had them leftover from the movie. Same with the Tengas.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

Well, there kind of is. The Ninja suit is the ninja power, the ranger suit is the full Ranger power. Can't use the ninja powers in the Ranger suit and vice versa. It was an extra layer of power and a bit of a test as to whether or not changing up the suits was plausible.

1, everything on that show exists to sell toys.

2, not really toning down as much as making it more cartoony through special effects. Effects heavy violence was somehow okay because it was less realistic to the 90s mom organizations.

3, this is half right, as it saved money on paying the actors to do their stunts and action scenes which had become a bit of an expense at that point. But it was still all original footage, which was expensive to make though it turns out that it's super easy to cheap out on paying people who's faces aren't on screen, especially if they work mainly stunts.

Don't forget 4 though. 4 was "it was in the movie" and easy to bring to the show without having to pay Fox for suits/rights.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

I thought the in-universe reason was simple, that they couldn't fight Tengas unmorphed.

Granted, they could just morph, but why not play with your cool toys if you can? It was no different than the civilian powers of the Disney years which also would have been useless if the Rangers had just morphed first.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

I think it was something that was created for the movie and they continued this into the series..

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

And at least back in the day, there was always the deal with them no escalating things. They fought the grunts unmorphed because they could, instead of relying on their powers to waste time on them when they knew the monster was there.

Also at least in the beginning it was also the fact that it allowed the kids to see the american actors fighting the bad guys too, not just morphed suits. But when the direction started shifting by S3 we got the ninja suits as a kind of compromise. Not quite completely getting rid of the idea of them being able to beat the grunts without morphing, but allowed them to be masked for stunt filming purposes and with ninja powers it lessoned the 'violence' of the fighting. Now a days it feels like they followed the Sentai trend where the rangers morph to even just fight the grunts except for certain times.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

I'd heard it was something to do with cutting down imitations of violence by children- the ninja suits are a halfway-house morph that allows for grunt fights but reduces ease of imitation, because they're no longer just teenagers but magical superninjas. Hence why we also got no unmorphed fights in Zeo save very rare and brief occasions. Could be nonsense though.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

Maybe it was for the stunt teams' benefit. Those suits looked a lot more mobile than the standard costumes...

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

I don't think it had anything to do with violence because they went back to unmorphed fights in Turbo. It was probably just to sell more toys.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

I don't mean to sound facetious, but what's "half-right" about point 3? I literally covered the same topics you did: it saved money on not having to pay the cast to be there, and it was cheaper with stunt guys. So why am I only half right?

The Disney civilian powers were definitely a move away from violence and martial arts. Sometimes the in-universe explanations for their powers was better than others, but it's no coincidence nearly every Disney season had them.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

It's half right because it saved money, but wasn't entirely about saving money as they still had to pay for original footage to fill that time. The other points matter more to the end reasoning is what I meant, it still saved some money but wasn't a very cost effective means of saving money.

You know, it may have just been more of an intimidation game to the remaining actors too. Saban tossing a "we can cut your screen time down even more" heck, that season was filled with gutting their screen time. Just a shady "keep them in line" move especially after the movie should have given them room to demand more money.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

I go with the 'Made to Sell Toys' theory. Hell, Saban has been known to skip seasons of Super Sentai just because the toys didn't sell overseas (Go-Busters & To-Qger, anyone)?

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

did they ever explain why the alien rangers coincidentally had the same powers of the main cast?

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

They didn't have the same powers, unless you were meaning having the power the morph and become power rangers. But they were different rangers with different powers.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

you mean aside from the battleborgs looking like pretty much the exact same thing as the shogun zords but thinner? Also, didn't they control shogun and Ninja zord at some point?

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

The Alien Rangers weren't seen controlling the Ninja Zords at all. Falconzord doesn't count here since it was already shown to be compatible with the Shogun Megazord which the Aquitians did control. Yeah, the Battle Borgs were thinner Shogunzords that couldn't combine.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

Regardless of the Battleborgs looking similar to the ninjazords due to footage, in the show their powers were different. And the only reason they used the shogunzords was because Billy & Alpha rigged things so they could if needed, since they were there to fill in. Doesn't mean they had the same powers, cause they didn't.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

Yeah, the Falconzord was operated by remote control, not by the Aquitians. The remote was destroyed with the Command Center.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

The writers actually navigated that pretty well.

The Battleborgs were a gift to the Alien Rangers from Ninjor, and the Shogunzords were activated by Finster using technology taken from the Falconzord, which was obviously a gift to the Power Rangers from Ninjor. So that explained their similar appearance.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

Yes, I forgot to mention the remote. Thanks, Digifiend!! (you got it emoticon) The point is, if the Falconzord hadn't been compatible, they would've been screwed.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

true but that's not a decent enough excuse.

well mostly everything on the show is there to sell toys.
as for 4 I don't think that's quite right since the suits were the creation of 20th Century Fox meaning they had owned anything to do with that specific movie including the suits but not the characters that were made for the Power Rangers TV show.

it was something created for the movie but why and how they were able to keep on using it for the show is unknown.

I do think it had to do with violence they just didn't care by the time it went to Turbo since they weren't having soccer Moms complain since once MMPR was over most people left except for the diehard fans and as for the stunt team that wouldn't have made a difference since they would've switched into the stunt suits for stunt purposes they wouldn't wear the hero suits for stunt purposes unless it was the only version of the suit that they had.

yea I agree with you.

don't put the blame all on Saban since I doubt it's all their doing it's probably a mutual decision between Saban, Bandai and Toei.

I don't think so since while they tried to navigate it well you could still partially tell when they were stoned statues that the Shogunzords were their original forms and not rebuilt forms. Ninjor was used to activate them as a power source while the Falconzord was just used as a technological aspect to help with the assist in activating them due to how long they were probably stone statues.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

I wonder what would happen if the show had multiple minion types like both the American Tengas, and Kakuranger's Dorodoroos.

And one minion type could be fought in civilian mode while the other had to be fought in Ninja Mode.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

heads would probably fly and us fans would probably go insane. I've always thought Rita and Zedd should've done that with Finster's Putties, Finster's Super Putties, the Z-Putties and Tengas heck we barely even saw the P-trons and Chromites much in the same scene in fact we really didn't have an interesting season where they had more than one set of foot soldiers even in SPD they were all Krybots just the Blueheads and Orangeheads were a more advanced version of them.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

You're right on the Disney civilian powers.

Ninja Storm = a ninja-themed season, so the civilian powers were actually a part of the plot and integrated into the show.

DinoThunder = Dino Gems. Genetic-based civilian powers.

S.P.D. = The Rangers inherited them from their parents who worked for S.P.D. and Sam was established to be the last one to have them by getting them from his parents.

Mystic Force = Magic. An excuse for the Rangers to have civilian powers.

Operation Overdrive = Gene Randomizer. As in another version of Mystic Force's and DinoThunder's civilian powers.

Jungle Fury = The civilian powers were written into the season's plot like those in Ninja Storm, plus is was a martial-arts based season. So no need for an excuse for them here.

R.P.M. = Dillon was a hybrid, so his civilian powers were written into his own storyline. I don't recall other R.P.M. Rangers having any civilian powers, because we've actually had hand-to-hand un-morphed fights in that season.

Anyway, I liked the MMPR S3 Ninja Powers. I wish they could have the Rangers use them more so they could slowly ditching the Zyuranger suits.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

I think Eddie did away with the civlian powers for RPM. Dillion was a hybrid because it suited the story and probably would have been done that way if there were never any civlian powers.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

I agree , eventually using the Kukuranger suits would have made sense. Instead of doing the Alien Ranger Plot.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

Well they already had the MMPR suits for most of season 3. And had the Alien Rangers finish off the season. So I don't think thry were really ready to change suits until Zeo.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

no it made more sense to use the Kakuranger suits for the Aquitians due to the fact White was female and was the leader in the footage it would've made zero sense seeing Kimberly, Kat or even Aisha bark out orders especially over their leader Tommy..

yea I completely agree

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

They could have made Tommy Red Ranger. Red takes the lead in a lot of the Kukuranger footage.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

Since Amy Jo ended up leaving Aisha could be White Ranger.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

true Red took the lead a lot but there are still moments when White took the lead which wouldn't have made sense with any of the girls being over Tommy in the leadership position.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

Anybody know why the main Ranger Actors were written out during the storyline? It was odd David Yost came back earlier too.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

you mean the ones who played Zack, Trini and Jason? They knew a movie was coming up and thought they weren't replacable in their eyes so they demanded Haim Saban to go union to go union with the show but he wasn't biting so they were eventually replaced.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

I think the op nailed it. Those are three main reasons. They could sell toys. keep the parental advocacy groups happy, and save money on the cast.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

Actually I meant ...Why the season 3 Actors were written out of the Alien Ranger Arch.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

I would guess that the actors needed a break and it was a way of doing more episodes.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

I actually read somewhere that the cast has been filming season 2 and and MMPR:TM back-to-back and also season 3. They needed a break. They were constantly divided between Australia and America in order to get everything done and once S2 and the movie were done, they were busy filming MMPR S3.

For example, in the S2 episode "The Wedding, Part III", the Rangers are all present in the Command Center scene when Billy restores Alpha back to normal and Tommy says a line, but we never actually see JDF delivering the line on screen. I think we only seen Amy Jo doing a reaction to what is being said.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

Everything in "The Wedding" and "Return of the Green Ranger" was shot in Australia except for base and lair scenes. The majority of the Command Center and School scenes were stock footage even some Palace scenes was stock footage basically if it's outside then it's probably new footage with them being in Australia. They never went back to the U.S. until after they had completed the production of the movie.

Re: Season 3 Ninja Suits Theory.
 

I could see where the actors needed a break after that crazy schedule.