| Open with the Dino-Riders' back story in order to answer the nagging question that is on everybody's mind: Just how in the hell did these dinosaurs wind up with laser weapons mounted on their noggins?
(Cue manly narrator voice)
After years of peaceful existence on the distant planet Valoria, Questar and his people were forced into battle. The power of their S.T.E.P. crystal ripped a hole in the fabric of time sending them backward to prehistoric Earth, unaware that at the same moment the evil Emperor Krulos was plotting to capture the S.T.E.P. crystal with his own grotesque Rulon forces...and so the battle continues in a new place in time.
Just why Questar and his gang would be projected back to a prehistoric Earth is unclear. I mean, just how many planets in the universe are there? But hey, you know, dinosaurs, right? Right.
Open with the Valorian ship hurtling through space, as space ships are wont to do. Laser beams flash across the screen as the eeeeeeeevil, lizard-like Rulon emperor, Krulos, gives chase with the entire Rulon armada, which consisting of approximately 20 ships as shown on a radar screen. Impressive.
After a few direct hits, Captain Questar (Oh brother! Questar?!) has no choice but to engage the ship's "Space Time Energy Projection" crystal in order to save the crew. Ship's Engineer Turret informs Questar that the STEP crystal has been damaged but Questar insists on proceeding because that's just the kinda kick-ass Space Captain he is. (Pay no mind to his leather leg chaps and immense kevlar crotch protector.)
"We might not have the power to make it!" Turret insists using his best Scotty imitation.
Questar gives a direct order to activate the crystal. Turret wordlessly complies.
With a sizzle of electricity, the STEP crystal (disappointingly drawn as a transparent dome and a few blue sparks) comes to life and the Valorian ship attempts to escape. (And yes, Turret gives that tired old space-engineer's complaint: "I'm giving her all she's got, Captain!")
Meanwhile, on the Rulon ship, Krulos' Number 2 Man, er, lizard, Rasp, warns that the Valorians are accelerating to "gamma" speed. (Wow! That sounds FAST!)
Krulos just laughs, and keeping his cool, orders the Valorian ship to be zapped with the tractor beam. (Hey, Krulos wasn't made Emperor for nothing, eh?) Immediately, the Valorian ship is engulfed in a blue, sparkly, light...so, hey, this can't be good.
"Tractor..beam..has..locked..onto..us," Questar grunts, as if the beam is locked onto him.
"We're getting a power surge!" Turret nearly squeals with delight, "we just might make it!". So, yes, the power from the Rulon tractor beam somehow combines with the STEP crystal in order to give them Just Enough Power to do what ever the hell they were trying to do in the first place. (This so-called "power surge" is indicated by adding some red spots to the otherwise desultory looking blue-sparks in the STEP crystal.)
To make a long story short, the Rulons are also sucked into the time warp because, well, the writers needed it to happen or else this series wouldn't go very far, now would it? As luck would have it, out of all the planets in the universe, everybody winds up crash landing on Earth during the time of the dinosaurs.
(Looking back at this, I'm really wondering just what in the hell the STEP crystal's function really is. It's written to be some sort of escape device...but an escape device that flings you into a random point in time and space?! Well, maybe we'll find out more about this McGuffin later, but I doubt it. )
"Not bad for a crash landing," quips Yungstar, the charming , optimistic, overly-boyish crew member as everybody lies strewn about the bridge groaning in pain. (I'm hoping at this point that Turret would reach over and slap him for being such a smart ass. Oh, and what, they haven't discovered seat belts?)
As luck would have, the ship's sensors have been damaged by the crash. Questar, in his infinite wisdom, simply opens the main airlock with everybody inside in order to see what the planet is like. Holy crap, Questar, I guess you're kinda lucky that the planet had a breathable atmosphere, you idiot!
After opening the ship's main doors, without even an atmosphere check, Questar and the others marvel at the primitive world's unspoiled beauty.
"I wish you could see it," says Serena to her blind grandfather, Mind-Zei.
Excuse me a moment: her WHAT?! Blind grandfather?!
You mean to tell me the roster of a Valorian battle ship includes not only somebody's grandfather, but somebody's blind grandfather?!
What the hell purpose does he serve? Well, looking at his uniform (and I use that term very loosely since everybody's 'uniform' is different) he does appear to have a bull's-eye shaped belt buckle, so maybe he's to be used as a diversion while the others beat feet.
"I sense we are not alone," Mind-Zei solemnly notes.
Oh, I get it. He's the blind spiritualist. Mind-Zei. Get it? "Minds Eye." Yes, I'll be vomiting now. Oh, and wow, you'd really need a spiritual advisor on a freakin' interstellar spaceship. That's why everybody hated that psychic character on the new Star Trek.
Llahd, an 8-year old kid who is also inexplicably one of the crew members, but at least he can see, stands in the doorway and shouts. "Look! Over there!"
"Those look like dinosaurs!" Yungstar gleefully answers. Yeah! Whew! Now that's certainly going to make life easier for you all.
Furthermore, how in the hell would people from Valorian know what terrestrial dinosaurs look like...or even what they are called? It's just so stupid I can't wrap my head around it.
And hey, I know the target audience for Dino-Riders isn't bitter, beer-drinking men in their late 30's, but still. Give me a break here.
"If those are dinosaurs, " Questar intones, "then this must be prehistoric Earth!"
Why yes, I guess everybody at the Valorian Space Academy was required to study Earth paleontology before they got their wings. It just all makes so much sense now.
"Bring everyone out, but keep close to the ship!" Questar orders. (Oh...so now you're going to be responsible, Questar, after joining the ship's entire command staff in an airlock and simply opening it so you could see what the planet was like.)
Despite direct orders, Yungstar and Llahd idiotically run off into the jungle and give chase to a baby brontosaurus. As anybody might imagine, the baby dinosaur's mother sticks here head out of the bushes and scares the crap out of the careless crew members.
"We mean you no harm," Questar telepathically says to the irate mother. (Uh...mental telepathy with a dinosaur?! How in the world would somebody telepathically communicate with something that has a brain the size of my left testicle? On second thought, please don't answer that.)
Anyway, dino-mama realizes that Questar is cool and now they're all friends and blah blah blah. In fact, she's so enthusiastic about this new bond that she puts Questar on her head (!) and lifts him up into the air so that he can triumphantly proclaim:
"Valorians! Welcome to Earth!"
Meanwhile, we discover that the Rulons have crashed in a murky, volcanic area populated by tyrannosaurus rexes instead of a lush jungle filled with friendly herbivores, because, you know, Rulons are mean.
"It's been two days without a response" Rasp whines as we see everybody still sitting around on their asses in the wrecked control room instead of, oh, I don't know, repairing the freakin' ship.
A few curious T-rexes come sniffing around the ship but are quickly driven away by a hail of laser blasts.
"Dinosaurs...everywhere!" Rasp exclaims.
Once again, why anybody from a remote planet would even know what a dinosaur was is beyond me. Krulos grabs the binos from Rasp and quickly scans the horizon. After about 2 seconds, he spots the wrecked Valorian ship, which apparently crashed about a mile away. (And the Valorians are unaware of the Rulon's proximity ...after 2 days? Haven't they even began to explore while the Rulon's sat around on their asses inside their ship?)
Whatever. Krulos realizes the only way to return to their own time / dimension is to take the STEP crystal from the Valorians.
And there, folks, is your plot device for the next 14 episodes.
So yeah, the Rulons decide to destroy the Valorians not by simply ambushing them and killing everybody in their sleep, but by the much more complicated method of capturing all manner of 'mean' (i.e., carnivore) dinosaurs and placing brain-control devices ("brain boxes") on their noggins so they can create a dinosaur army.
Yeah, that makes a whole lot more sense to do it that way.
In order to capture the dinosaurs, a bunch of Rasp-like crewmen (Raspoids?) using their laser guns to blast the hell out of a group of T-rexes. We also see a bunch of Raspoids using laser bull-whips (!) to corral some triceratops so they can be "brain boxed".
Meanwhile, a group of Hammerhead-oids (Hammeroids?) have created a weird device that grabs the hapless dinosaurs by the throat (!) and clamps a brain-box onto their heads. (Just how many Rulons were on their ship?! And how in the hell did they manage to manufacture so many dinosaur-head custom fitted brain boxes so quickly?) Once the dinosaurs are subdued by the brain-box, they're made to look even more kick-ass by mounting an immense laser-gun array on their backs
Back with the Valorians, Yungstar and Llahd are having fun racing around on recently tamed velociraptors. (!) Unfortunately, their boyish hi jinks are interrupted by an irate T-rex. As Yungstar stays to fend off the beast (yeah, right...good luck!) Llahd hurries back to get help.
Well, gee, it looks like Yungstar's ingenious plan was merely to ride like hell and blast his laser gun at the gigantic pursuing reptile. This all seems to work well enough until he happens to ride up to the edge of a giant cliff, fall off his mount, and dangle from the ledge.
What an idiot.
Despite the fact that in any realistic universe Yungstar would be making his way through the T-rex's digestive system by now, he manages to keep the beast back with, yes, a barrage of red cartoon laser beam blasts.
"Yungstar, are you all right?" Questar moronically shouts upon arriving to see Yungstar standing on the edge of a cliff with a T-rex about to bite his head off. Boy, that Questar is one sharp cookie.
As Questar and Gunner open fire with their ineffective laser guns, Serena activates her telepathic powers and enlists the help of a friendly pterodactyl that just happen to by flying above the action.
So, why couldn't she just use her telepathic powers to communicate with the T-rex and tell it to go away or stop attacking? Because they're 'mean'? What the hell? They obviously tamed velociraptors to the point that they use them as ersatz horses, so what gives here?
I know, I know. I'm reading waaaaaaay too much into all this.
Back at Camp Rulon, the laser-fitted dinosaur army is complete and stands in formation as Krulos reviews the troops.
"Saddle lasers, blaser [sic] side-guns, and rocket thrusters all functioning as expected," Rasp proudly reports. ("BLASER side-guns?!) The mighty dinosaur force struts its stuff by stomping around and blasting a bunch of rocks into dust. Yup. They're ready for the Valorians.
"It's not enough," Krulos grumbles, "I must have the mightiest of them all...tyrannosaurus rex!"
Man, what are the odds that a super-advanced race of beings from another galaxy would not only recognize dinosaurs but have the same names for them? It makes you wonder...
Meanwhile, the Valorians are busy building a large wooden stockade around their ship in order to create a protective perimeter from the eeeeeevil T-rexes. In a moment of unusual levity, one of the brontosaurus, which are now being used as cranes, picks up a log and...I can hardly type this because I'm laughing so hard...but, it picks up a log and Gunner is unwittingly standing on top of it and almost falls off! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
"You crazy lizard! Whatta you doin'?!" Gunner shouts as he dangles from the air.
Get it? Crazy lizard? Because dinosaurs are reptiles just like lizards are? And...and...
Forget it.
(Don't worry. Gunner doesn't fall and die. Questar swings by on his flying pterodactyl and gives him a ride back down to the ground. Hee hee.)
To make a long story short, Questar and the other Valorians discover that the Rulons have been pulled through the time-warp as well. Questar sends Gunner and Turret out to find the Rulon ship, which I suppose he could have done by simply looking around with a pair of binoculars like Krulos did. I mean, hell, Yungstar (God, I hate that name!) is flying around in the sky and he can't see the Rulon ship just over the ridge?
Gunner and Turret sneak over to the Rulon crash site on foot, so really, how far away could it be? After reconnoitering for literally 10 seconds or so, they are discovered (idiots) and have to run like hell while the apparently legally-blind Rulons fire wildly with their laser guns and miss them with every shot.
Instead of just running away, since the Rulon compound has no kind of perimeter guard whatsoever, Gunner and Turret stupidly decide to stop and crouch behind a rock. Needing a diversion, so that they can start running again, Gunner fires his laser into the Rulon "RAM booster" (!?) thus putting the entire Rulon camp in danger of going up in flames. (Huh?) With all the Rulons running around trying to put the fire out, Gunner and Turret get to their feet and run away, which is what they could have done in the first place, so go figure.
With things somewhat back under control, Krulos has managed to corner the (only?!) T-Rex in some sort of dead-end canyon. (You know the kind.) Holding the beast at bay with laser blasts (which we earlier saw disintegrating entire boulders, but now simply irritate Rex when they happen to hit him), the Rulons manage to maneuver the humongous creature into position where two giant wooden tongs fall into place around its neck and immobilize it (!) long enough for a brain-box to be dropped onto its head.
Meanwhile, the Valorians prepare for the inevitable battle with the Rulons. When Llahd complains that he wishes he could join in the battle with the others, Turret quietly takes him aside and says that he has a special mission for him. Boy, I can hardly wait. I mean, I just knew there was a good reason that they brought an 8-year old with them on the mission. (Not to mention a blind octogenarian!)
Not wasting any time, Krulos begins the attack. As the first wave of Rulon-controlled dinosaurs lumber towards the Valorian compound, Questar orders a counter-attack, which consists of his dinosaurs lumbering towards the enemy, so you can imagine how exciting this is to watch on the TV. And like I mentioned before, the laser-guns that were previously shown vaporizing all manner of things now simply knock the dinosaurs onto their sides. (Even this is pretty rare since nobody seems to be able to hit anything, which, again, isn't too surprising since a dinosaur's head probably isn't the most stable platform on which to mount a weapon.)
Just as I couldn't take another second of this excitement, Rasp gets knocked off of his flying pterodactyl and falls several thousand feet to land on the metal hull of the Valorian ship.
Naturally, he's completely unharmed from the impact.
Standing up, Rasp realizes he's standing right next to the entrance door of the Valorian ship.
"Fire on the door!" he shouts up to his airborne underlings who are flapping around hundreds, if not thousands, of feet above him. (Man, do they have good hearing or what?) A couple of incredibly accurate blasts, compared to the recent accuracy shown in the earlier battle, hit the mark and blow open the hatch.
After a quick search inside the ship, Rasp and some other Raspoids (Where did they come from?) discover that the power cells are missing, thus making the STEP crystal worthless because, well, you know how STEP crystals are. Suddenly the lights go out and Mind-Zei pops out of nowhere and begins some weird Cartoon-Fu attacks on the intruders because, hey, the lights are out so now they're all on even ground.
Then again, why couldn't Mind-Zei just shoot them?
Then again, why can't Rasp pull out a flash-light and shoot Mind-Zei?
Then again, why in the hell do you leave a BLIND MAN to guard the STEP crystal??!!
In a most improbable sequence of events, even for this show, Mind-Zei manages to maneuver Rasp and the others onto a trap door in the floor, which he opens by pulling a lever, thus dumping the hapless reptiles outside the ship onto the ground.
When you stop and think about it, you really have to wonder just how smart it is to install a lever-activated trapdoor that leads directly to the outside...on a spaceship! Not only that, but the trapdoor is situated right next to a bank of controls on the ship's bridge!
I can just imagine it:
"Yeoman Jones, your station is to watch the gazeeble indicators on control panel 7. Oh, don't worry about the trap door you'll be standing on, it open only when somebody pulls this lever here..."
Back outside, the battle continues pretty much as before: lasers flying everywhere and nobody hitting jack shit. Sensing that this episode is almost out of time, Krulos makes his appearance on his newly pimped-out T-Rex, complete with rocket launchers, lasers, and all types of Rube Goldberg stuff, which honestly, must weigh more than the dinosaur itself, so who knows how the thing can even walk around.
Proving that the even bad guys from distant planets find it necessary to gloat before killing their opponents thereby allowing their victims a chance to get away, Krulos pauses just before wasting Yungstar to rub it in with a few glib remarks. Naturally, this megalomaniac pause allows Questar the chance to ride up and save Yungstar while Gunner, riding atop a totally pimped-out brontosaurus, lumbers up next to Krulos.
Before Krulos can react, Gunner opens the weird pods hanging on the side of the dinosaur to reveal, and I shit you not, look at the screen shot to the left, 4 crew members wearing jockey shorts!!! Oh Mighty Megalosaurus! What the hell is going on here?! I always suspected that Yungstar was a little light in the loafers, but where did these guys come from?
Anyhoo, Gunner and the Jockey Squad, despite standing 30 feet away, manage to miss a tyrannosaurus rex!!! My GOD! Basic marksmanship, people! Basic marksmanship!
I guess this is supposed to be exciting, but it's really hard to get to worked up when nobody ever gets hit, and when they do take the occasional close hit, the dinosaur just tips over, gets up again, and runs away.
"There's no stopping him!" Questar yells as he misses yet again.
Well, Questar, there is a way to stop him: AIM!!!
As one last desperate gamble, Serena swings by on her pterodactyl and scoops up Questar.
"Shoot them down!" Krulos orders his minions, which is a pretty tall order since now they'll be trying to hit a moving, air-borne target when they've proven themselves unable to hit a row of stationary triceratops a stone's throw away.
Questar takes aim and "de-brain boxes" the T-rex. (His words, not mine.) Now the dinosaur, released from Krulos' mind control, is naturally pissed off and chases the Rulons back to their camp without actually, you know, killing any of them because nobody can get hurt here, let alone be devoured.
Realizing that they've won the battle ("But only a battle...the war goes on," Minds-Zei sagely remarks...God, lighten up, dude! I hate that guy.) the Valorians stand around in their periwinkle uniforms, pump their fists in the air, and celebrate.
"We're not Valorians anymore," Questar says as he addresses the ensemble, "We're....Dino-Riders!"
Dennis Grisbeck (August 2008)
Well, there you have it. The adventure has begun, only 13 more episodes left to review...man, the things I go through for this web site...
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