Part Three MMPR Q & A - Secrets Of The Morphed Mode Question: Why those costumes? Why the "Morphin" ? What happens to make you Power Rangers? Answer: If only they were! Our Power Ranger suits are not costumes, infact they are an integral part of us, just like our own skin. It can get pretty dangerous if a suit is damaged or "eaten through". (Zack) The suits are not clothes at all. We cannot take them off or put them on. They are regenerated around our bodies when the morphing process is complete and act as proximity deflection fields. The harder a foreign object hits them, the harder the force is repelled back into the object, like a well inflated football. We can't wear anything on top of them, or the proximity effect is nullified. (Billy) We don't think of them much as suits- they are us! When I'm morphed, I don't feel- well- it just has no description you would understand. It's like our bodies are totally different. There's a whole heap of things I don't feel, but some of my senses become really sensitive and- well- really weird. It's the only word I can use for it- being morphed, I mean. (Trini) As for the color scheme, it's so cool, and this is the '90s you know. Zordon might be dry, but he's a great artist. I've been thinking of getting him to redesign my bedroom. (Kimberly) They are really weird inside! I've been the Green Ranger for nearly a year, and I've never got used to it. You need to remember that there's alot more to morphing than putting on a fancy outfit. There's a stack of internal changes which the morphing system makes to our innards- I can't believe what it does to my body. When activated, it feels like my whole skeleton is turned really heavy for just a second and then compensated- it leaves me totally out of air and gasping. My whole body tingles for a few seconds afterwards, like I've run out of blood, or something. Occasionally I get wondering if the morphing process was ever designed with our human anatomy in mind. I still don't know what planet Zordon comes from, but he's not Human. (Tommy) Sometimes I still become really scared about the morphing process- I've sat here discussing it with Zordon, sometimes for days on end. If the morph was ever to fail during a battle, the morphing grid frame would instantly rip us apart. There are safeguards to prevent this happening, but with the Green Coin we're not sure of it's long lasting abilities anymore. Maybe we should get danger money. (Billy) It's really painful if you have to morph back out of suit by force, it's happened to me twice, and I was aching in bed for days afterwards. My doctor got all suspicious and sent me to a specialist. The old folks made a real fuss, fortunately by the time the specialist saw me, it had healed itself. (Trini) It's clear that our normal human anatomy seems to cease functioning while we are morphed. I spent days and days in morphed mode in Rita's dark dimension but never felt hungry, thirsty or anything. Once I de-morphed back to my normal state, I was starved! I went into town and ate everything in sight- almost as much as that pig at the juice bar that time. Ernie had never seen me eat so much. Even Bulk gave up watching. (Tommy) I didn't mean it about that danger money thing by the way... (Billy) Question: How did you learn to be Power Rangers so fast? Answer: The first time we morphed, stacks of stuff happened, it was like we had taken a crash course in 2 seconds. Suddenly I knew all about my abilities in morphed mode. The same thing went for driving the Zords. (Zack) Most of the superpower abilities available to us in morphed mode are either controlled by thought or by "pose", i.e. a particular feature will be activated by taking up a certain position - that is the reason why we often strike all those weird poses in morphed mode. Our martial arts interests have really helped all of us with this. (Jason) Question: What's your favorite function in morphed suit? Answer: JUMPING! (all) The jumping function is the coolest. You can jump nearly 600feet into the air off a solid surface, but you have to be careful not to leave a hole in the ground where you jumped from. (Kimberly) Megazord is 165 metres high when it's assembled. We have to jump off the ground right up to the top sometimes. You just bend down, spring up and off you go. It's great. It looks even better on the TV news. I can't believe it's me. (Billy) I almost wish I could go outside one day and just jump all day in morphed mode. But Zordon won't allow us to train in suit at all outside the command center, and you can't jump far in here! Fair enough I suppose. It took four of us the best part of a whole day just to convince Zordon to let us turn up at that "power rangers day" thing last year in morphed suit without having Rita there aswell. As it turned out, she was there uninvited anyway. (Trini) I still can't believe the jump function in morphed suit. You can actually fly if you try hard enough- Jason has to hover in the air for about 5 seconds when we assemble the power blaster and he does it using the jump function, like a pause button on a video. It's pretty morph'nominal when you come back down to earth too. If you're not careful, you just leave a huge hole in the ground. I've found it's actually best to fall down on my back, especially on a concrete pavement, otherwise it gets smashed up. (Zack) Zack gets a kick from going back to the fight scenes in town and looking at the cracks and holes he leaves all over the place..(Jason) Yes, and of course such damage done by us power rangers does NOT revert to it's former condition when the monster is destroyed! So we have to be very careful when in the city in morphed mode, let alone in the Zords. (Billy) Question: When you morph into suit, where do your normal clothes go? Answer: They are removed by teleportation and stored- well that's not quite right, there are some left underneath. Our power morphers have a cavity inside them which acts as a "storeroom" for items like our clothes, and our combat weapons, which are teleported in and out of the cavity as a suit function, also being shrunken or expanded accordingly. It's all extremely high tech stuff using the thought dimension and morphing grid system, and it operates outside our time domain which makes it seem as if it happens instantly. I still don't really understand it myself, It's one of the most difficult parts of the process to understand- but it sure works! (Billy) The way they come back out, I sometimes wonder if my clothes haven't been to hell and back. But I'm not complaining, we just got a new ironing press at home. (Kim). Question : Where does your power source come from for the suits? Answer : A construction known as the Morphing Grid. I know we say it comes from the ancient dinosaurs, and I suppose in a way this might be true when you consider the thought dimension calculations required for our morphed mode. The Morphing Grid was built by ancients - Zordon refers to them as the Morphing Masters. It's like a huge power grid which can be accessed anywhere, and again exists in our universe outside the time dimension, which means you can't measure it using Earth technology. But it is energy - just like electricity or anything else. It is possible to wear down the store of power in the grid- it was not designed to supply large amounts of continuous energy. (Billy) Energy is actually channeled using the coins, which are the heart of our Power Ranger suit system. The energy can be transfused from there to anywhere else in our morphed bodies, even our human muscles and parts which feels weird when we use it because it makes our bones feel really heavy when we start using it. (Tommy). The coins can be transformed into special crystals. In this form they can carry the signature of our own selves as an entity represented only in the thought dimension. It's the security system for the Zords which enables them to draw energy from the morphing grid. (Billy). Question: Is there anything else you can do as Morphed Power Rangers? Answer: Stacks! We're still finding functions that even Zordon knows nothing about. Like the Natural Electrical Earth! Last week I was thrown against one of those big power line towers near the junkyard at Lakemba (northern suburbs of A/G) and reached up and grabbed a bare 300,000 volt cable. I was glad to be in morphed mode then I can tell you! There were sparks absolutely everywhere, it must've looked way cool. (Zack) Next time there's a blackout, find Zack! (Kimberly) We can usually heal ourselves of most diseases by just coming here and morphing in and out of suit once- although Zordon thinks that's using the power for our own means. I quickly reminded him of the sickness which I was forced to endure at home in bed because my suit failed that day last year- caused by me being a power ranger. Tit for tat, that's what I say. (Trini) Apparently they work quite well as spacesuits, with oxygen supply and everything. We haven't tried that yet. They also have full communications systems between us, although for most normal comms we use Billy's communicators. We can work fairly O.K. under deep water when morphed in suit too- that's a weird experience because unlike in air, where the suit protects against all temperatures and heat loss, underwater the suit gets physically wet and very cold. Definitely a design point for the next model... (Jason) Jason- in our morphed state our bodies do not rely on the energy released when hydrocarbons are oxidized. All our energy to exist is supplied from the morphing grid. (Billy) What? (Jason) He means that when we're morphed, we still breathe- but what we breathe is irrelevant. (Trini) I remember the time we caught Billy panelbeating the Rad Bug in his garage last year- His mom and dad were out, the door closed and here was Billy, in full morphed mode, smashing chunks of steel with his fist to try and bend it behind the old engine bay. You could feel the vibrations down the end of the street, and it was like an earthquake outside his house. Inside his kitchen there was smashed china everywhere, and the microwave had fallen off the shelf and smashed. He didn't know about the vibrations.. Zordon was not impressed. Billy tried to explain that it was "power rangers" business.. but I don't think it went down too well. Since then there has been a strict rule- no morphed mode outside the command center unless it's a battle. (Trini) I might just remind you Trini that it was your Zord which fell on the Rad Bug in the first place trashing the back! We needed the Rad Bug running as soon as possible because we were having trouble with the teleporter at the time. The bug was so badly damaged it took days just to get it back home without Dad finding out. There's no way I could have bought it here to the command center to work on it. (Billy) You could have rolled it down to the workshop at School - it's been there before and noone ever asked any questions. They've got all the gear there you need without using your hand as a sledgehammer! (Trini) I didn't have time for that! It would have taken days, not to mention cost a significant sum of money- you know- that green stuff.. (Billy) (Zordon bought the Power Rangers back to order at this point, being strangely silent for the rest of the interviews, even the comments that directly concerned him.) Question: Who designed and built the Power Ranger suits? Answer: Zordon designed them, but I'm not sure who constructed the power morphers, which are really the only physical item which has been manufactured as such. You'll have to ask Zordon that one. (Billy) The Power Morphers were made under contract to the organization Zordon was part of, last time he faced Rita's wrath. I'm not sure exactly where. However Rita had the Green one until he used it on Tommy. (Jason) They're made of the same materials as this command center- they regenerate themselves perpetually using teleporter replication sequences. That's why each time we morph into suit, it looks brand new. (Billy) Question: What are some of the other functions you can do in morphed mode? Answer: It depends, we're still discovering things. last time Me and Kim worked out this great acrobatic move at the Gym. The others there thought it was great, but we knew it would probably give us the ability to take out three putties at once. What we discovered is that when morphed, we could jump sideways and run up trees and walls- this is something the putties can't do, and it confuses them like crazy. They vanished as soon as they saw it! (Kimberly) We can transfer power around the group if necessary. Any one of us can assume the power of the whole group. This can be especially useful where a single combat is the only way out. (Jason) We have also improved our various martial arts skills over the years, especially Billy, who was hopeless at the start -sorry Billy. (Trini) I just remembered another aspect of the morphers too- did you know that they are age independent? That's right. It would not matter if I was 10 or 60 years old- when I morphed, my body size would revert to the same size as the others. I think that's pretty weird. Zordon was telling me one day that he was once considering that he should recruit younger people as Rangers- around 10 years old. The system is designed to expand a smaller body during the morphing process to match the "desired durability". (Billy) It's a quick way to grow up! Nah! I would've missed all those cool years..(Kimberly) No! The recipient returns to their original size during de-morphing- apparently. Trini thought we should try it on Jason's cousin.. Zordon however, did not. Anyway, our power coins cannot be transferred without alot of fuss and bother. (Billy) Question : What about those explosions? Doesn't the shockwave affect you? Answer : Well that depends on what you mean by "affect" doesn't it? (Kimberly) We don't feel them much- the suits see to that. But we definitely HEAR them! They are deafening. Glad I'm not a heavy metal fan. (Zack) Question: Do you find the helmets obstruct your vision and senses? Answer : That's another really weird thing. I know I've got the helmet on, but I can't feel it at all. It gives us a full view just as if wasn't there. We can hear everything, too. (Kimberly) The helmets are part of our head- They are our head- when morphed, that is. (Jason) Just like the suits, we can't take the helmets off in morphed mode. But Zordon has been working on a modification which may allow us to do just that- or at least appear as doing it. It's his belief that it will help to confuse the putties, especially when Rita has them impersonate other creatures. There has been one time when she changed her putties to look like us Rangers- I'm sure you remember it. Zordon says it's a common tactical approach from Rita, and that we should expect it again. (Billy) It'll be a blast to see what our heads look like when they're morphed- we've never seen any part of our own bodies while we are morphed. We used to make a game of working out what we would look like morphed but without the suits. For a while we all thought our skin turned jet black, or silver or something. We still don't know. (Kimberly) I must disappoint you Kimberly. Zordon says that what you will see when we remove a helmet is only an illusion of our unmorphed head- in fact the helmet will still be there, and it will be the removed helmet in our hand which will be the fake. I told you before- it can't be done, unless you want to end up looking like a horror movie, that is. (Billy) COPYRIGHT OCTOBER 1994- PAUL MATTHEWS, SYDNEY AUSTRALIA UNLICENSED DRAFT NOT FOR PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION OR SALE TERMS AND LIKENESSES COPYRIGHT TO SABAN ENTERTAINMENT INC. USA